— What are these stone doors doing in the middle of the ground in this building?!
Said the young Alex McCormac, his face all red with sweat and flushed with fatigue (he'd just ran from one end of the large floor to the other). His eyes were wide with confusion.
The scattered apartment of Level 11 shouted his claim around and around until it reached the ears of the stunned Harry Conagan. His hands hung low.
- EH?!
He couldn't believe a boy as bright as Alex McCormac say something so absurdly imaginative!
— BOY, WHAT'RE YOU ON?!
— Come, come!
He took the wrist of the old man and dragged him all to the far end of the building's floor.
The stone doors were indeed there and there were the spines of old and dusty books gathering wasteful memories, spewing out their memories through small fragments of dust.
Suddenly, a wave of old memories that had no reason to exist in Harry's mind ran through like a charging bull. Fireworks blew up in his mind about the history and the reason and the existence of the two doors and their contents. As if he was hypnotized, he began to slowly take steps inside until he was fully submerged in the darkness.
— WAIT FOR ME!
Alex ran in.
Unlike Alex's shock and awe, Harry had nostalgia for this place he supposedly never visited. A soft smile spread across his face and tears of all things ended up falling down his wrinkly skin, now rejuvenating it.
— Boy…
Alex was already fingers-deep in the tablets written in Ancient Greek.
- Yeah?
— These are the first ever renditions of the Iliad.
Then he turned around to the boy as the dust finally settled, like how a mixture does after you let it sit. However, Harry's heterochromatic eyes were vibrant and didn't ever fall from Alex's gaze as he now spoke,
— This place is an anomaly of the Backrooms that only a circle of mine has found.
The old man took the flashlight from his hands and clicked the button. The room was not riddled with mere dust and mud. There were facsimile artifacts; paintings on the walls (which were now cracked and falling).
They say—or at least the people who used to live here would say—that you won't remember anything once you leave this place.
The books, although apparently holding on to dear life on rotting-wood shelves, refused to fall no matter how much Alex tried to topple them over; only gentle movement worked. The old man waited for the boy to finish his curious escapade to continue his tangent:
That, instead, all you will remember are your blemished and puffy hands, your knees splayed about in dust, and a strange appreciation for life. You find this place only once when you're here, and it reappears to you one year before your death. Hah. This old man's time is running out.
— Will I remember anything about the stories when I leave?
He smiled warmly,
— No. That's the beauty of it. You see, ephemeral things are more appreciated by us. Give a man a fish, and he'll feed himself for a day, but teach him how to fish, and he can feed himself for his life. But after a while, don't you get bored of eating fish? And you start wondering to yourself, why do you just eat fish? The man who has the single fish for a single day enjoys it so much more than the permanent fisher ever will.
— But what's the point of that? I'll just have to wait 'till I'm a year before dying and I can have a re-read?
— You've read many fantasies, and they might not have lessons, and they might be short, and you might forget them, but,
His hand went through a tablet. Book XXIV:
- Once you see them again, you can remember every single line. It's beautiful. I've never read the Iliad outside of this place. Hah.
— I see. I see how it is. When do you think I'll die?
Harry had no reason to answer something of the such so realistically.
— Never.
It took the young boy a while to process what Harry had meant; he smiled once he did,
— Yes. You're a smart man. You're a very smart man.
They both sat down reading the Iliad.
After a good while, Alex got up to his feet, turned around with the book; putting it on the shelf, then said to Harry:
I'm leaving. Come on! We've spent hours here and I've already finished the Iliad.
Harry raised his dim eyes towards Alex and nodded slowly. He waved his hand in dismissal:
You go. I've got something I need to do here. I will see you eventually.
The boy nodded. His heavy trust towards the old man made him concede and he opened the two doors at the end of the Level.
When Alex McCormac left through the same double stone doors, he found himself in the apartment building. He did not know how he had arrived there and what he was reading only a handful of hours ago, but he did remember his blemished hands, his knees splayed about in the dust,
and a certain appreciation for life.
Ephemerality
I've left this small little note on the backside of Book I of the Iliad. Thank you for coming here.
It's funny that I proclaimed that the impermanence of this place is what makes it beautiful,
but I myself have not left and I choose to waste away here, refusing to let go.
Maybe along with the beauty of ephemerality,
I also embrace hypocrisy.
Humans are stupid.