Matthew Raven

“Arthur Gets Lost”

1
Arthur Gets Lost

Arthur’s existence was a sad, lonely one whose mundanity bordered on the
absurd, and it seemed today would be no different. Despite the probable beginning of
such situations, it appeared that Arthur would for the first time ever be late for an
appointment. There is a first time for everything of course, and no human is perfect, but
what was particularly frustrating for Arthur was the knowledge that he had no control
over the events causing him to be stuck in traffic. He had gotten out of the office late on
account of Mr. Edwards, of Edgars, Eggers, and Edwards, the accountancy firm Arthur
worked for, lecturing him on the importance of punctuality. Then despite the fact that
they were working this morning, the elevators were now out of order, and Arthur had to
take the stairs to get to his car. Now traffic was ground to a halt five agonizing blocks
from the building his appointment was in. Of course, all of this made sense. The
appointment was at five, which was rather late in the day, and most people were heading
home; he had gotten stuck in rush hour. The elevators broke like clockwork every week,
leading Arthur to develop the suspicion someone was actively sabotaging them for secret,
conspiratorial purposes.
Though Mr. Edwards was always lecturing anyone walking within earshot about
the importance of punctuality, Arthur had already, long before ever working for that
particular firm, developed a habit bordering on obsessive-compulsive of checking his
watch. In fact, although he was not aware of it, he had checked his watched eleven times
in the last fifteen minutes. The problem with such a repetitious habit of watch-checking
is that, like all habits, it eventually becomes instinctual and unconscious, for the human
brain is very good at desensitizing itself to common phenomena. However, although
Arthur would check his watch without thinking to, the habit had in fact become so
habitual in nature that his brain barely registered what the time was that he checked. He
was now aware on some level that he had about fifteen minutes before his immaculate
appointment record was gone forever, but he didn’t know exactly how much time was
left. His attention to the precise position of time in relation to himself had devolved over
the many nervous years of his life, 33 to be precise, to an almost instinctual panic-
inducing paranoia with regard to all temporal issues. Instead of keeping track of time,
Arthur lived in fear of it.
He realized at some point—perhaps fourteen minutes till?—while sitting in his
car—which was five blocks away from the building—that he car was no longer a viable
option for reaching the building in time. Showing the practicality that had gotten him this
far in life, he parked his car the first chance he got and, with carefully ordered papers
stuffed under one arm, rushed out of the car, slammed the door, and realized he was
parked in a spot with a parking meter. Wasting precious seconds, he searched around in
his pockets for coins, found a couple quarters and dimes, stuffed them in the meter, and
dashed off without checking to see how much time he had paid for.
He treated the five blocks like the 100 yard dash he had never taken in high
school. He blew into the building he was supposed to be in, or at least what he hoped
was the building he was supposed to be in, gasping like a fish. The lobby had a big
fountain in middle, with a shiny marble dolphin that was supposed to look like it was
jumping into the air but instead looked like it was being pulled underwater by a
mysterious gray ooze grabbing onto its tail. It was shooting water out of its mouth, either
Matthew Raven
“Arthur Gets Lost”
2
in a deliberate attempt to show off its multitasking skills or in a startled double-take of
pure horror. The rest of the lobby was the same marble gray and was completely devoid
of life, except for the dolphin and the receptionist perched behind the monolithic
receptionist desk. And Arthur too.
“Hello, is Mr. Addvern in this building?” This is what Arthur said amid gasps of
air to the receptionist who spent several precious seconds not noticing him. Mr. Addvern
was Arthur’s five o’clock appointment. Mr. Eggers, who never talked about punctuality
but always talked about money, informed Arthur that Mr. Addvern ran a very prosperous
company, so messing up this appointment, Mr. Eggers said, would not be a good career
move.
“May I know who is inquiring?” asked the receptionist, in the peculiar way of
sounding both servile and superior at the same time that is possessed by receptionists,
clerks, and secretaries everywhere.
“Mr. Walpole. I’m Mr. Addvern’s new accountant. I have a meeting with him
in…” he checked his watch, “…three minutes!” Arthur was shocked. He still had three
minutes! He had run fast enough after all!
“Now let me see…” and the receptionist took her own sweet time (and Arthur’s)
looking at her computer, the occasional mouse-click and Backspace tap the only sign she
was doing anything at all. “Ah, yes, Mr. Addvern is on the eleventh floor. Room eleven-
eleven.”
Arthur thanked her while running for the elevator. He ran in, slamming into the
back wall, spun around while dropping some papers, and pressed the button marked “11.”
He hopped around a bit, picked up some papers, heard a bell somewhere go “ding,” and
slipped out the door as soon as it was wide enough. He exited through the same door he
had come in, but walked into a different hallway than he had entered from. He didn’t
stop to check what floor he was on, but was reassured to find all the doors had little signs
on them starting with “11”: 1101, 1103, 1105.… The hallway was completely empty, and
mostly dark, except for bare illuminated pools of light coalescing around the center of the
floor every five feet or so that faded out into the dark corners where floor imperceptibly
met wall. Arthur felt like he was traveling through a sewer. A very clean sewer.
After turning the corner he found himself facing a room marked 1111. He
knocked. “Come in,” a voice said. At this precise moment, he realized that he had left a
trial of papers along the hallway. He cringed. “Those might be important,” he thought.
But he had been asked to come in, so he better come in. Best not to keep Mr. Addvern
waiting.
Stepping across the threshold, the first thing he saw was another door, looking
much like the one he had just walked through, positioned directly ahead of him. After he
closed the door, he saw that sitting at a desk in the corner of the room, which was square
like a monk’s cell, was a man with dark hair and pale skin, dressed in a black suit. He
had deep eye sockets and looked, though sitting, to be very tall, which immediately made
Arthur feel intimidated. This was not at all how Arthur pictured Mr. Addvern, but then
this man couldn’t be a secretary, could he?
“Are you Mr. Addvern?” he asked, a noticeable quiver in his voice.
“What?” replied the man. He looked up as if noticing Arthur for the first time.
His voice was deep, thundering and monotone.
“Uh, are you Mr. Addvern?”
Matthew Raven
“Arthur Gets Lost”
3
“Hmm,” which came out as an impatient rumble. “You will be wanting the next
door.”
“Uh, thank you.” Arthur supposed this meant the tall man was a secretary after
all, and headed for the next door. He entered and closed the door in his usual rush, and
when he turned around he found that he was in the exact same room as before. There was
the door directly in front of him, a mirror image of the last one (or was it the last two?),
and there was a perfectly identical tall, dark, hallow-eyed man in a black suit, sitting at a
desk in the corner. Arthur checked his watch. It was now five o’clock.
Were they twins? Arthur was completely confused by this sequence of events.
“Uh, do you know where Mr. Addvern is?”
“What?” Same voice. Was his mind playing tricks on him?
“Uh, do you know where Mr. Addvern is?
“Hmm, you will be wanting the next door.”
Arthur walked slowly to the next door, making quick glances at the man sitting at
the desk, who had resumed working and seemed completely uninterested in Arthur. He
was unsure if he wanted to open it. How could there be this many doors? And two
identical men? Arthur decided that they just had to be twins. Twins employed by the
same company. The same man. It wasn’t that impossible. He closed his eyes and
walked through the next door. He opened his eyes as soon as he heard the door click shut
behind him, and he immediately started to panic. Sitting, in a desk in the corner, was a
tall man, in a black suit, with dark hair and hallow eye sockets. And across from him
was the same, identical door. Without thinking, Arthur turned around and raced through
the door he had just entered. It was not until the door was slammed shut behind him that
he realized, to his firm regret, that he was not in the room he should be in. He was not in
a room at all. Instead of a room with a tall dark man sitting at a desk in the corner, he
was standing in an endless desert, with sand so red he immediately thought of Mars. The
sky above him was not the normal sky-blue, or even some storm system hue, but a
mixture of yellow and blue gases, mixing among each other, though never forming green,
like a lava lamp or some little novelty item in a dentist’s office. Somewhere in a corner
of Arthur’s mind a thought wondered if perhaps the gases were poisonous.
Arthur, still panicking, turned around and, in what was quickly becoming the only
option available to him during the day, opened the door and walked through it. However,
this time all that happened was the door opened upon the same exact red desert he was in.
The door and its frame were just erected incongruously in the middle of the desert, and
opened upon what any door would open on if freed of its wall; the exact place where it
was. Just a door erected in the middle of the desert.
Arthur tried opening the door from the other side, but still it just opened upon the
desert. Thoroughly perplexed by the events of the last few minutes, he sat down, leaning
his back against the door frame, which seemed firm in its place. It was while sitting in
this position that Arthur, looking up, noticed that there were three moons in the sky, each
of different sizes. Sometimes, the blue gases crossed in front of them, though the yellow
never did. After an undetermined length of time, during which Arthur didn’t bother to
look at his watch, he got up, dusted himself off, and started walking in no particular
direction. “Well,” he thought to himself. “I guess I am going to miss my appointment,”
not feeling all that disappointed about it.