I Figured Out Walking Through Walls by Addison Zeller

As in walking down them. 

As in they open into corridors and aren’t tight at all. 

You can’t stick a bed in them, but a couch? Definitely. 

There’s one at the rec center. 

I was walking through a wall, looking out the peepholes while folks exercised and hydrated, and right by the pool was a couch probably a few decades old, a little ragged, with chip particles in the cushions. 

Now, I think it’s bad that people are doing this, and that I’m doing this, but I am doing this, and I will. 

I like it, it’s collegial. 

But without the work of hanging out. 

It takes concentration to wiggle in, but the rest’s super easy. 

I could bring a camp chair and sit for hours. 

Better than watching a log burn on Netflix. 

Better than texting friends who just blab about themselves. 

They say so much shit that isn’t true, and I know because I sit in their walls. 

And I know some of them do it too. 

I was stepping into my bathroom wall once when I heard someone get up and run out. 

An iPhone was still gleaming when I picked it up. 

I can’t decode the lock but I recognize the cat on the background for sure. 

How many people do it? 

All I can say is behind the veggie aisle at Kroger there’s a lamp, a trashcan, and a vending machine. 

If they installed a vending machine, it’s bound to be a pretty solid number of folks. 

The couch in that wall is super comfortable. Leather. Clean. 

There’s a fucking ashtray. 

It’s like heaven sitting there, watching mist hiss over the lettuce. 

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Addison Zeller’s fiction appears in 3:AM, Epiphany, Ligeia, minor literature[s}, ergot., trampset, and elsewhere. He lives in Wooster, Ohio.