He'd been walking along the second floor of Strong Hall, at the University of Kansas where he worked. In his mouth was stuffed a cheese sandwich, oozing with mayo and relish. Oozing so much that he had to tilt his head back to keep it in. His left hand held a heavy suitcase, which would help to break his neck. His right hand held two textbooks, and they would break a window.

Raymond had walked up and down the stairs in Strong Hall so many times he knew them like the back of his hand. He knew where the cracks in the wall were, he knew were the dust settled to escape from the weekly cleaning crews, he knew where the dents in the handrails lie. But his had only been a familiar knowledge, not an interested one. He could not, on demand, tell how many steps each flight had. And on the day he fell, it was his lack of knowing how many steps from his office to the first stair that killed him.

He did not see the stairs as his foot went over the first one, but the stairs saw him, and they sucked him greedily down with a speedy gravity. Raymond's foot, ignorant of the imminent change in elevation, step purposefully down on what it thought was going to be solid floor, and his other foot, sure that its partner had finished its step, picked itself up. For the barest, briefest moment, Ray seemed to defy logic, by floating on only the smallest edge of his heel, but the moment ended faster than even a slo-motion camera could have seen it, and Raymond's body went out from under him, or, to be more precise, Raymond descended fiercely fast, over the top of his own body.

Sickeningly, the last thought that pounced on Raymond's unsuspecting mind was that his vision had jumped, for his falling body tossed his head forward, and his gazing at the area where wall and ceiling met was shifted down to just the wall itself. There was a blur, then a sharp crack in his vision which was a white burst. He saw his own foot. He registered pain in his upper thighs. His right hand tried to move, letting go of the books, but a dull pow on his hip pressed his arm to his side. His left arm did a curios thing, and from momentum, swung up his back, crushing the briefcase into the base of his skull- Raymond didn't notice, because he'd been falling for all of three hundredths of a second, and his brain, more sluggish than gravity, screamed that he was spilling the contents of his sandwich. He did not hear the glass break as his books smashed through a window. His nose felt flat, his arms felt frustrated. His stomach tried to roll, and then his hair was in his eyes, his glasses! and then he was still.

Everything was dull. His body was doubled up, against a radiator, and the radiator was dull. The ache in his body was uniform, constant, and dull. His left arm was behind him, and clutched dully at something. He felt dull, and his thoughts washed dully in and out of focus. He breathed- or tried to- dully. His heart beat so dully that he did not feel it.

He wasn't embarrassed, but as Raymond rolled over to straighten his body out he wondered if anybody had seen him. He wondered if he had made any noise, if he had screamed. Not with that sandwich in his mouth. He wondered what had happened to it. He glanced dully at his chest, above his chin, and saw mayonnaise, relish, cheese, squashed and smeared bread, on his dress shirt. It was a nice shirt, given to him by his grandmother on his last birthday. As long as she was alive, she would probably give him shirts. Once, when he was thirteen, she'd given him money. Said, "Thirteen is an unlucky number- just get you something you wouldn't like, probably. This way, you can get it." Raymond had lost the money, and it had been unlucky after all. Then he'd gotten a pimple, his first one. Other kids got pimples earlier, but Raymond had kept himself clean, stayed away from excessive use of chocolate, fried foods, sweaty hats. And boy, did he sweat. Been sweating since he was five, always running in and out of the house. His poor mother, always picking up his soiled tennis shoes where he'd kick them after a hard day's playing. He was the fastest kid in third grade, and everybody said so, except Tommy Lafrentes, who insisted he himself was. But Raymond beat him in every race they ran for proof, and no sore leg or gust of wind excuse could convince the other kids. Once, when Raymond was in kindergarten, he drew a picture of a runner, out with his dog on a leash. It was a sophisticated subject for a kindergartner, but what it contained in sophistication, it lost in typical kindergartner artistry. The over sized head, the dog with five legs, the leash thick in the middle and thin at each end. The Browns had a dog, got it when Raymond was two, and just learning to raise hell. He'd been walking for about six months, and the house had been baby proofed, but the dog hadn't been, though they got along fine after Raymond got nipped on the hand for grabbing an ear. No need to baby proof anything when Raymond was still a crawler. He'd been a sluggish baby. Raymond remembered laying there in his crib, staring with unfocused eyes at the huge, ugly faces that smiled ghastly smiles at him. He was too dumb to complain. In the womb, there were no feelings, just warmth, soothing warmth, and a contentedness unlike anything else in the whole world.

Raymond sat up, and tried to wipe the mess from his shirt, but it wouldn't come off. His hand, and his chest for that matter, felt dull and numb. Raymond stood, and regarded the stairs above him, They were blank, unmoving, uncaring, unmocking. They didn't care. Raymond wanted to walk back up them, but he had nothing to prove. Just stairs. He continued along.

Halfway down the next flight, his hand assuredly on the hand rail, a very attractive blond co-ed ran up past him, a look of horror on her face. Her hair had a washed out quality, her skin seemed almost gray. Ray noticed these things not at all. He didn't notice that he failed to look up after her, to get a look at her legs. He didn't notice that he didn't sigh as her undeniable beauty dashed past him. He did, however, notice her screaming, but he didn't do anything about it. He wanted to be outside.

More people rushed past him, towards the scream. There were people. His mind was blank, he only wanted to get outside. Things were gray now, or brown, or merged, now they were white, now they were black, now they were flat green, empty blue, stifled orange, Raymond was outside.

Raymond sat down and shook his head. Must have lost it there for a second, he thought. maybe bumped the head on a wall, or something. He gave it a few rolls, to try it out. No pain, no pleasure, just a natural weight attached on a stem to his shoulders. He stood up, and looked at his hands. One held a briefcase, the other was empty. What had been in it? Clothes? Dogs? Chickens? Mailboxes? Raymond shook his head again. No, it had been books.

Raymond sighed, and turned to go back inside. The door was shut in front of him, so he reached out with his right hand to open it- he couldn't quite grip the handle. Maybe broke it in the fall, maybe bruised it, maybe wrenched a finger. Pain. What was that? Just a word. But. If wrenched, where pain?

Somebody didn't bump into him, and opened the door, and walked in. Raymond followed. There was a crowd of people up the left flight of stairs, so Raymond sighed again. He decided he was very tired. The colors of the black floor and the cream walls, the red shirts and the blue ones and the purple and the white, all the colors swirled and mixed together slowly. Raymond shut his eyes, and saw absolutely nothing: neither black nor white nor gray nor nothing at all. He opened his eyes, and the colors stayed where they were supposed to, so he decided to take the right flight of stairs. He clutched the briefcase very firmly and ascended.

Up one flight. Up another flight. Second floor. He could go over to the other flight, but felt like climbing the stairs. It seemed to be the thing to do. He climbed another flight, noticed his fingers where on the hand rail, couldn't feel it, climbed some more, climbed, stepped, walked, took more steps, climbed for about an hour, up the stairs. What was he doing? Trying, oh yeah. He turned around. He was still on the second floor.

Walk to the other staircase. Hey, there's Ray's office, wonder what's in it. Another crowd of people going down the stairs. Why? who cares. Gotta get those books. Why? Who cares.

Raymond didn't elbow his way past the people as he went down the stairs, this time on his feet. Yuck, a bit of relish on the wall. Where's the books? Whoa.

There was a body crumpled up on the floor at the base of the flight. Good day for bad stairs, Raymond thought. Or a bad day for good stairs. Ray stopped moving, and drew in as much breath as he could before he realized he wasn't filling up at all, and he stopped, holding what he had. Calm. He knew, then, that they weren't good stairs or bad, they were just. Stairs.

He looked under people's feet, looked under the body, looked under a few inches of the stairs. No books. Now, why did it matter? Raymond concentrated as hard as he could, and thought, books books books, those books. The first girl that had passed him on the stairs was blubbering.

"Oh, oh, o-oh, somebody, ah! Do? Something?"

A tall guy, green, trying to get back his guts. "Can't. Dead. Neck."

"Oh! Do it! VCR! Oh, o-oh!"

Raymond, for his part, didn't care. He concentrated without closing his eyes. Books, books. Those. Books.

Somebody giggled despite himself. "No, CPR."

"Do! O-oh!"

The tall guy, everybody stared at him. The tall guy, he wanted to go, wanted to stay. The tall. Guy. "Can't. Not me. Dead."

Raymond concentrated very very hard. Books. Aha! He glanced at the broken window, quickly, saw the books slowly tumble through, fall to the ground outside, and hit the pavement at the base of the wall.

Suddenly, the girl screamed again, loud, piercing, high, hard, looking at him concentrate. Raymond's concentration broke, and the girl fell over, softly, like a loose bag of flour. No one caught her. She lay next to the dead man.

Raymond went outside, through an open door. The window on the staircase faced the back of the building, and Raymond found his books. There they were. Raymond tried to pick them up. They were heavy, they were slippery, they were unwieldy. Raymond tried harder. Need. These. Books. He managed a cover, picked up the book by it, fanning it open; it slipped though his hand, and fell to the ground exactly where it had been before. Raymond. Tried very very hard, and picked the books up. He looked at them, back, front, sides. They were blue and orange, and he watched the colors fade, until they looked like they'd spent several weeks in the sun. They were very secure in his grasp. Raymond looked down at where the book had been laying. They were still there.

Raymond looked out at the hills behind the building. Where there always hills there? What about campus? What's a campus? Ray tried to blink. It took a very long time. When his eyes opened, he was still walking, walking through the hills. The moon, as Raymond watched. Zipped up, zipped back down, languidly at the speed of night, and Raymond was in front of the building again, or one exactly like it. He tried to open the door, but couldn't. He walked through it. It made him uneasy, so he decided to sit down, in the light drifting in from the window, next to an outline on the steps, a ghostly tracing, hanging in the air, among the dust motes in the sunbeam.