MISSING PERSONS REPORTED
Nobody ever talked about the mezzanine. Not because it was forbidden or because there was a sign telling people to stay away. There was simply no reason to go there. It sat between floors, suspended above the shopping mall, the Metro and the hotel lobby like an afterthought—a narrow level of polished floors, colorful storefronts, glass railings, and soft music drifting up from the stores below. During the day, children ran past it, couples leaned against the railing with shopping bags at their feet, Guests glanced upward in amazement and employees crossed it carrying coffee. It was completely normal.
Until the lights flickered.
Then the mezzanine changed.
Not visibly. Not enough for anyone to scream. The music continued playing, but sometimes the song wasn't the one that had been playing moments before. Advertisements on posters occasionally displayed unfamiliar faces. Every now and then, someone would notice that the reflection in the glass railing was standing perfectly still while they were moving. Most people blamed exhaustion, faulty wiring, or a trick of the light. They always found an explanation.
Until someone disappeared.
The strange thing was, nobody disappeared from the mezzanine. They disappeared to it. A woman would walk into an elevator after getting off the train. The doors would close. The elevator would stop between floors. When the doors opened again, she would step onto the mezzanine—except she wouldn't remember getting there. A teenager might take a shortcut through the mall after school, reach the mezzanine, and simply vanish. His friends would watch him walk toward the stairs, and then there would be nothing. No scream. No struggle. No footsteps. Just an empty hallway. The security cameras never showed anyone leaving.
Eventually, people began noticing another detail: a door on the mezzanine that didn't belong there. It wasn't marked EXIT or STAFF ONLY. It had no handle, no number, and according to the mall's original blueprints, the door didn't exist. Yet every night, someone could hear talking from the other side. Groups of people talking. A pause. Then the talking slowly quieted to silence.
Nobody knew who was whispering. Nobody knew what was waiting behind the door. And nobody understood why the mezzanine seemed to appear differently depending on who was looking at it. Some people saw a shopping mall. Some saw a waiting train. Some saw an abandoned hallway. Some saw hotel staff pushing carts of filthy towels. Some saw people they had lost. And a very small number of people saw something else entirely.
They saw stairs going down.
Past the mezzanine. Past the foundation. Past anything that should have existed beneath. At the bottom of those stairs was a sign that always said the same thing:
WELCOME BACK.
The problem was, none of them had ever been there before.
Or at least, that's what they thought.
Because the mezzanine doesn't take people by accident.
It chooses them.
And once it does, there is no such thing as going back to the floor you came from...
OR IS THERE?
