Enskubók

The alarm goes off at six, although he does not remember setting it.

Outside, the sky is flat and grey, and the windows of the building opposite are still dark.

He lies awake for a moment, listening to a dull sound somewhere behind the wall.

Then he pushes the blanket away, sits on the edge of the bed, and slowly gets up.

Someone knocks at the door just as he is buttoning a shirt that does not belong to him.

Outside, a thin goblin in a faded postal uniform is holding a yellow envelope.

The goblin says nothing. He simply places it in the orc’s hand and leaves.

Inside there is a single note: Come to the Last Station before nine.

He has got a message, but not an explanation.

The tram arrives without noise, gliding through the wet morning street like it has been expected.

Inside, an elderly cyclops is reading a newspaper. A woman with small horns is asleep against the window.

No one looks at him.

For a second, he thinks about turning back.

Instead, he steps forward and gets on the tram just before the doors close.

The city changes outside the tram window.

Shops disappear. Apartment blocks give way to factories, empty car parks and silent concrete roads.

After what feels longer than it should, the tram stops beside a colossal building of dark concrete and endless windows.

There are no passengers waiting, no station clock, no trains.

At last, he gets to the Last Station.

Inside, everything is repetition.

Long corridors, numbered doors, broken chairs, flickering lights, and vending machines full of things he does not recognise.

He follows a sign marked EXIT, then another, then a third.

Twenty minutes later, he is standing in front of the same vending machine again.

That is when he realises he has got lost.

A ringing telephone leads him into a small office hidden behind a half-open door.

On the desk there is an old photograph of a young orc standing beside a woman.

He recognises the woman immediately: she is his mother.

He does not recognise the orc at first.

Then he sees the date on the back, and everything shifts.

Suddenly, he gets it.

The lights begin to flicker above him.

Dust falls from the ceiling. A crack opens in the wall behind the filing cabinets, and the office door refuses to move.

Then someone knocks once, slowly, from the other side.

A voice speaks his name.

The voice is his own.

He understands, with perfect clarity, that the situation is getting worse.

When the door finally opens, the corridor leads back to the platform.

The tram is waiting in the dark as if it never left.

He steps inside and sees the driver at once.

It is another orc, wearing the same grey suit, with the same tired face.

The driver turns and looks at him.

“You wanted to get out,” he says. “Now you can.”

The doors open onto an empty street, and the orc does not move.