Cloak Room

I was in a bad direction. I had taken the job in the cloak room at the Cannibal Club specifically because I didn't care anything for it. I could work without thinking and still have the time and energy to focus on building the New York Dream: an acting career. But I wasn't building an acting career. I wasn't even auditioning. I just wasn't trying. I'd go to work, I'd come home. Sometimes I'd date. What a waste of time THAT was. Mostly I slept, or just sat around thinking. And worked, of course. Mostly I worked.
More and more my job became a source of anxiety. My self-esteem became wrapped up in my ability to check coats and keep track of tickets with the efficiency of, well, something impossibly efficient. Like a bad boyfriend, the cloak room had become my entire life. Or so went my train of thought as I dragged myself out of the house that night.
I looked up at the Manhattan skyscrapers as I walked to work from the subway station. I felt the dizzying anonymity of living alone in a city with 8 million people, every one of them striving and struggling to get to that perfect penthouse overlooking Central Park. I could almost see them climbing the walls of the buildings all around me, kicking and spitting and reaching and grasping and stepping on each other's necks. They coated the skyline like bacteria and fungus and swarming flies, but flightless. Desperately flightless. They climbed, spurred on by the promise of affluence, recognition, freedom. Rooftop patios, sexy parties, and spectacular views. As they fought for Manhattan's zenith I remained on the street, slipping through the cracks, falling through sewers and subway tracks to the deep tunnels that supplied the city with water. I was drowning in those forgotten underground arteries.
Someone bumped into me from behind and swore. I wasn't drowning. I was standing on the sidewalk at the top of the stairs leading out of the subway station. I had stopped walking. I was getting lost in my head again. Bad habit. After a perfunctory "sorry" I hurried on.
There was already a gathering of club goers waiting outside when I arrived. Strange for a Wednesday night. Maybe there was a party? The managers rarely kept me updated about that stuff. I never knew what to expect. I guess I'd find out. The bouncer waved me inside wordlessly.
Groans and screams of laughter made their way through the thumping dance music to my ears. Someone must be fucking in the bathroom again. Not. My. Problem. Thank god. I ignored the sound and squeezed through the already pressing crowd to the cloak room.

* * * * *

"Can I put this with my coat?"
The woman standing at the window was tall, thin and fashionable. She had checked her coat (2 layers) earlier in the evening and was now indicating the light denim blazer she was wearing.
"Sure," I said, "I just need to see your ticket."
She rifled through her pockets. Pink ticket, number 357, ok. She removed her blazer and handed it to me. Her top was unseasonably scanty, but I hardly noticed due to the overpowering scent being wafted towards me by the movement of her unwashed body.
The small jacket was impregnated with the smell of alcoholic sweat, stale cigarette smoke, and at least 3 weeks worth of direct contact with that tiny torso. I took it from her gingerly and hung it with her other things. Dammit, now the cloak room would stink all night.

Faces passed by, one blurring into another. I chatted automatically. Hello. That'll be 2 dollars. No, you and your friend can't share a hanger. Yes, you may check your bag. Yes, I can break a $20. If you lost your ticket you have to wait till the end of the night. No you can't come into the cloak room. Thank you for coming, have a nice night. Coat check was killing my soul.
The pace picked up. The line was swollen with people waiting to pick up and drop off. Hello. 2 dollars. Thanks. Here's your coat. Goodnight. I was tired and bored, but I kept telling myself that the faster I could get through this line of people, the sooner I could go home. That was a lie and I knew it. Nevertheless, I worked frantically, rotating the mechanical rack, flinging coats, bags and umbrellas in and out of the tiny window, re-ticketing hangers, tossing used tickets haphazardly over my shoulder. I didn't even know where the rubbish bin was anymore and it hardly mattered anyway. Some tickets stuck to the bottom of my shoes. I ignored them.

The night wore on and the pace continued to mount. Where had all these people come from? Soon there was an inch-thick carpet of tickets on the floor. With every step more of them clung to my shoes, creeping up past the sole onto the toe, the heel, the instep, the ankle. And the line of customers just kept getting longer. There couldn't possibly be this many people actually going into the club. Where would they fit?
Pink, white, yellow, blue. How many times had I re-ticketed? 500 tickets in each box, and each box a different color. The swoosh of coats on and off the rack, in and out of the cloak room window, created a small wind, disturbing the ever-deepening layers on the floor. I was wading and slipping now. Tickets clung to me as high as my knees. I glanced down to brush some of them away as I climbed the small step-ladder to reach the upper rack. More coats, more tickets. Orange, purple, green. The mechanical rack spun faster, creating a whirlwind. It wasn't supposed to spin that fast, but I wasn't complaining. Small scraps of multicolored paper flew through the air. Soon I was covered in tickets up to my waist. I couldn't understand why they were being so sticky.
A ticket flew into my face, nicking my cheek near my eye. I reflexively touched the spot and my fingers came away marked with a tiny streak of blood. What the hell? I jumped down from the stepladder. As I landed I slipped in the growing flood of tickets on the floor and felt my feet fly out from under me. I heard my shoulder pop as it hit the floor, my full weight on top of it. Blindly reacting to the pain, I arched violently and cracked the back of my head on the metal stepladder. I lurched forward into the fetal position, clutching the back of my head with my good arm as fireworks exploded in my vision. There were no more customers, the rotating rack was still, no more coats in and out of the window. But tickets still zinged about as if a small tornado had descended on the tiny room. They seemed to be multiplying of their own accord. I tried to get up but I couldn't see for all the tickets flying in my face. I was disoriented from the bump on the head and could hardly tell up from down. The maelstrom of tickets spun dizzily around me, or maybe the room itself was spinning? I felt around for something familiar; the rack, the stepladder, the walls, anything! But my searching fingers met only the sharp and hostile edges of discarded coat check tickets. My hands were raw, stinging and itchy. "A person can't die of papercuts," I thought desperately, half laughing to myself, "that's ridiculous." But who said anything about dying? Suddenly I was in a real panic. I tore at the tickets that clustered themselves around my head, but for every handful that I threw away from me dozens more came rushing in. All exposed skin was now raw and bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts. I called out for help but when I opened my mouth a cyclone of tickets leaped down my throat as if they were being sucked up by a vacuum. I tried to cough but couldn't. I was suffocating. I could feel each ticket slicing at my esophagus, the sharp corners poking at my lungs. I gagged uselessly and more tickets flew into my open mouth. My eyes were bulging out of my skull, unshielded from the poking and slitting of the murderous paper. I covered my face with my hands, trying to protect myself, and still trying unsuccessfully to breathe. I thrashed and writhed on the floor, my movements echoing those of the non-existent wind that continued to animate these hitherto inanimate scraps of paper. Oh god, I was disintegrating, I could feel myself disintegrating. They were slicing and slicing and slicing and slicing from inside and outside and peeling me into paper thin 1-inch square replicas of themselves. I was pink, white, yellow, blue, orange, purple, green.

Red.

…

Black.

The flurry of tickets gradually died down. There weren't really so many of them after all. There wasn't much of anything, actually. No coats, no tickets, no customers... The security cameras showed just a few discarded tickets scattered on the floor of an otherwise completely…
empty…
cloak room.