Short Story: New Dimension
A previously unpublished short story
While looking through the files on my computer I found a short story I wrote back in 2021. It’s been sitting there, unpublished, in my documents folder under the title “New Dimension” for over five years. Maybe it’s time it saw the light of day.
Miami, Florida
“Hey,” Tracy whispered, putting a hand on my shoulder as we walked down the empty hallway. She put her lips up against my ear. “Want to fuck in the family bathroom?”
This was bizarre behavior, considering the massive fight we just had.
I laughed and looked over my shoulder, making sure no one else overheard her. “First of all, someone’s drunk,” I said, smiling and pointing at her. “Second of all, hell yeah I do.”
Tracy squeezed my hand and made a beeline for the door. She opened it, walked in, and turned around to face me in the doorway with one hand on the doorknob and the other on the frame. “Come on in.”
I mock-grimaced, put my hands in my pockets, and turned my head from side to side to make sure that the coast was clear. I could hear calm piano music from the lounge at the end of the hallway, but there wasn’t a soul in sight in this part of the building. The hallway was completely empty.
“Too late,” she said. She took one step backwards into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. I jogged the three or four steps that separated us and turned the door handle. I’m way too old to be taking risks like this. Getting arrested for public indecency at my age would be absurd. I thought of how embarrassed I would feel when my mugshot appeared online. The thrill of going on our first vacation as a couple was definitely causing me to do things that I normally wouldn’t, say things I normally wouldn’t. Like those horrible things I said during our argument earlier. What was I thinking?
I pushed open the door.
The bathroom was empty. What the hell? It was your standard family bathroom, with a toilet on one side and a sink on the other. The door I had just passed through was the only way in and out. There was no supply closet or any other hiding place.
Tracy had simply vanished.
A lit candle flickered on the sink, just below the mirror. Who puts a candle in a public bathroom? I reached out and flipped the light switch on the wall behind me, turning off the overhead fluorescent lights. I stood in front of the sink and stared at my reflection in the mirror, watching the shadows created by the candle dance around on my face before switching the light back on. I took one last look around the bathroom, hoping that Tracy would somehow appear and that this would all make sense, then opened the door and exited into the hallway.
I was taken aback by what I saw.
The previously empty hallway was teeming with hundreds of people. An overweight man who was talking loudly into a cell phone he was holding six inches from his face bumped into me. “Sorry, man,” he said over his shoulder without stopping. A young couple holding hands slowly walked by. A group of three girls wearing dresses and heels, clearly drunk, stumbled in the direction of the women’s bathroom. I scanned as many of the faces as I could, hoping to find Tracy in the throng of humanity.
She was gone.
I walked down the hallway to the bar where we had finished our drinks less than ten minutes ago. Everything was different. The vibe of the entire place had changed. Instead of being a semi-quiet lounge with soft music playing, it had transformed into a nightclub. A packed dance floor took the place of the soft, elegant couches and the quaint bar stools had been removed to make way for a crowd of people five layers deep waiting to be served.
I did a lap around the small venue. Nothing. Tracy wasn’t here. The only thing left to do was to go back to the hotel and see if she had somehow made her way back on her own. Yeah, and how did she get out of the bathroom? Did she somehow gain the ability to walk through walls? Or are you completely nuts?
“Hey man,” I said to the bouncer on my way out. “Did the girl I came in here with leave by any chance? I can’t find her anywhere.”
The bouncer looked up and off to the side. “I’ll be honest, buddy, I don’t remember you coming in here with a girl. I might be trippin’, but I remember you walking in alone.”
The whole losing-my-mind theory was starting to seem more accurate by the second. What would I do if Tracy wasn’t in the hotel room? I would have to call the police and file a missing persons report, but what the hell would I say? Listen, officer. I watched my girlfriend walk into a bathroom and disappear into thin air. She walked in and poof she was gone. No, officer, I’m not on any drugs. If they didn’t laugh me out of the police station, they would arrest me and force me to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Calm down. She’ll be there. She has to be there. I’ll find Tracy in our hotel room and she’ll give me an explanation that makes sense. Something obvious that I overlooked. Maybe there actually was another way out of the room and I didn’t see it. We’ll be laughing about this for years.
Our hotel was a short walk from the bar. When I turned the corner, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. Several police cars and one ambulance were lined up on the street in front of the hotel. A few officers were gathered around a sports car with a caved-in roof that was parked on the street. One was snapping pictures of the car from different angles, squatting to get a close-up perspective before standing with his camera held up over his head to get the birds-eye. The picture-snapper lowered his camera and tapped another cop on the shoulder, pointing directly at me. He summoned me over with a wave of his hand.
“Sir, do you have any ID?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, reaching into the front pocket of my jeans. I handed him my driver’s license. “What’s this all about?”
He squinted at my license and then at my face. “I think this is our guy,” he said to his partner. He turned his attention back to me. “Sir, do you know a woman named Tracy Crenshaw?”
“Yeah, she’s my girlfriend,” I said.
“When was the last time you saw her?” the officer said.
“We were just at a bar down the street,” I said. “I lost track of her ten minutes ago and decided to see if she went back to the hotel without me.”
The officer raised his eyebrows and paused before speaking. “You were at a bar with Tracy ten minutes ago?”
“Yeah, that’s correct. Now what’s this about?” I said.
He cleared his throat. “Tracy Crenshaw died over one hour ago. She fell off the tenth floor balcony and landed on that car over there,” he said, turning his upper body to point at the caved-in car directly behind him.
My jaw dropped. I looked up at our tenth-floor balcony on the colorful art deco-style hotel, which was barely visible through the leaves of a palm tree, and back down at the destroyed car. Instead of sadness, all I felt was confusion. That’s impossible. I just saw Tracy ten minutes ago. I tried to think of an explanation that made sense. Maybe they had bad information. What if they had the wrong room number? What if they assumed the dead body belonged to someone who had jumped from our room in when in reality she had jumped from the room next door?
The officer with the camera and his partner were looking at my face intently. They were clearly gauging my reaction. Oh shit, am I a suspect? They both looked at each other before the partner spoke for the first time. “See that building across the street from the hotel?” He pointed at a modern-looking office building with reflective windows. “They take their security very seriously. It just so happens that they have a camera pointed directly at your hotel.”
“So the camera recorded what happened?” I said. “Thank god.”
At least there’s some good news. They’ll know that I didn’t kill whoever it was who fell onto that car.
“Yeah,” the first officer said in a gruff voice. “It did. We have footage of the entire incident.”
The officer looked at his partner, who nodded at him, encouraging him to continue. “The footage shows that you walked up behind Tracy, lifted her up by her feet, and threw her over the railing.”
I took a step back and put my hands up, palms facing outward. “No way.” I began stuttering. “That… that’s impossible. We were just at -”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know,” the officer interrupted. “You already told us that load of bullshit. You were just at the bar down the street. Now tell us what really happened.”
The second officer spoke. “Hey man, the footage is crystal clear. You’re on it, and you threw Tracy Crenshaw off the balcony. Maybe you have a good explanation. Did you two get into a fight or something? Maybe she really pissed you off? I mean, me and my wife, we’ve been getting into these huge fights lately and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some intrusive thoughts from time to time. It’s part of being married. Sometimes shit just kinda happens. You don’t want it to, but y’know, it does.” He shrugged his shoulders.
Fucking hell. They’re trying to get me to confess to murdering my girlfriend? What is happening?
“With all due respect, I’m not answering any questions without my lawyer present,” I said. This is unbelievable.
“Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”
Allentown, Pennsylvania
My lawyer posted bail and got me out of jail in less than twenty-four hours. He promised me that he’d work on getting the security footage from the bar, which would prove that Tracy and I had walked in together. As soon as I got out of jail I went to the airport and paid the fee to change my flight to the next available. I didn’t want to stay in that god-forsaken city any longer than necessary.
This was all a huge misunderstanding. Whenever those fucking dipshit cops in Miami got around to actually running a DNA test on the body, they’d realize the magnitude of their fuck-up. There was no chance that I’d go to prison over this. That part I wasn’t worried about. My innocence was obvious to me and would soon be obvious to the police as well.
But there was still one massive problem: my girlfriend was missing.
I told my lawyer that I wanted to file a missing-person report immediately. Tracy was out there somewhere and I had to find her. He advised me not to, telling me that it would look too much like I was trying to build an alibi after I’d already been arrested for her death. “Just wait,” he’d told me over the phone. “Let me pull that security footage. It should only take a day or so and then you can file your report.” I took his advice. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
My phone buzzed. It was my lawyer, thank god. It was less than twenty-four hours later and it seemed like this nightmare was finally over. “What do you have for me?”
He cleared his throat and remained silent for a heartbeat longer than normal before speaking. “I need you to be straight with me. What really happened in Miami the other day?”
“I told you the truth. Did you get the security footage? I promise you it’ll vindicate me. I’m not lying.”
“Yeah, I did.” Another long pause. “Listen. The jig is up. Footage from the office building across from the hotel shows you pushing Tracy off the balcony, clear as day. And the police have testimony from other guests in the hotel stating that they heard you two arguing with each other beforehand. The cameras at the bar showed you walking in and out alone. You lied to me. Now I need you to start telling me the truth. I’m your attorney and I’m trying to help you, but I can’ t do that if you continue lying to me. Do you understand? Maybe there’s some kind of self-defense angle that we could -”
I slammed the phone down on the table and swiped the screen to end the call. My hands shook as I ran my fingers through my hair and took a step back. The phone vibrated again. There’s no fucking way this is happening.
I went to my laptop and began searching.
———
The internet is a crazy place.
I found tons of articles and websites about topics that had potential for explaining what was happening to me. Some of them were paranormal, others were much more pedestrian. False Memory Syndrome, time travel, psychosis, the Mandela Effect. All of these phenomena could have held the key to the mystery that was consuming my life, but something about them didn’t feel right. Nothing did. Until I discovered an obscure community dedicated to something called ‘dimensional jumping’.
The members of the community listed several methods that enabled one to jump between dimensions. One technique, the Two-Cup Method, consists of pouring a cup of water representing your current dimension into an empty cup representing your desired reality.
Well that one’s obviously bullshit.
The second technique… well that one actually made the hair on my arms stand straight up. It sounded exactly like what I had experienced.
The so-called Mirror Method is a technique wherein a person gazes at their reflection in a dark room, with only a candle or dim light bulb providing illumination. Apparently, if a person imagines their desired reality while performing this method they will then instantly transport to that dimension. Was it possible that I had accidentally jumped dimensions? I remembered the candle that was flickering in the bathroom, and remembered thinking how weird it was that there was a candle in a public bathroom in the first place. The theory was far-fetched, but in crazy situations sometimes the most unhinged answer is the right one.
I grabbed a candle off my coffee table and carried it into the bathroom. With the lights off, I flicked on the lighter and touched the flame to the wick. I carefully set it on the edge of my sink, just underneath the mirror. There’s a ninety-percent chance that I’m fucking crazy, but it’s worth a try.
Staring at my reflection in the mirror, I thought intently about a reality where Tracy was still alive. I imagined that we had returned home from Miami after a pleasant first vacation together, and that she had just stepped out to buy groceries.
The flame flickered briefly.
My phone began vibrating on the table outside.
I made my way out of the bathroom and checked to see who was calling.
If you enjoy my writing you can also read my novel Your Life Does Not Exist, available in both physical and ebook editions.