Left, face Right

Escalator was on the wrong side of the entrance way this morning.

To be clear, I make the trip 5 days a week, so it's not a casual mix up.

Off the train, through the doors, by the shoe repair stop, into temptation alley where 500 calorie fat and sweat soaked monstrosities try and often succeed in seducing me with their cellulite rippling wares - and there it is. Left side, easy on, one lane wide, take me to street level where i cross 7.2 crosswalks, wait for 9.3 streetlights, say good morning to Otis, sit down to the laptop and bango, into the day.

Important part being, of course, that it's on the left side.

Things like this don't change.

Herded like heffers from the train. Going to be on the left side.

Through the lobby past the bearded wonder with unreadable eyes sitting outside the adjoining hotel lobby. Can just about see it now; left side.

Through the smells of the food judicial system ~ wtf?

It's on the right side.

I keep walking, nothing else has seemed to change, and this man's memory seems to hit more dry troughs than sweet springs these days, but this is something that has been repeated and coarsed into the pathways of the grey area like an alphabet - left side escalator.

And yet it's right.

People in general and this one in particular are adept at rationalizing the unexpected, the startling, the mis-belonged. So just like when I have carefully figured out a math problem and then checked the answer to find out how gloriously wrong I am, I gloss over the anomaly. It's a pre-verbal play, a slick silicon half cup I put over the problem and slide down to the other side. I KNOW that the tickler is back there, but it's behind the cup, mostly occluded. I'll stick with the right answer, even if it feel wrong. Too slippery to try and get back up and over the half cup.

So I take the escalator, and for the 12 seconds before I get to the top, it's all good.

Then all hell breaks loose.

The pulling I felt from the halfway point up the moving staircase has turned into a torrent; wind with claws that reach over my face, clamp in and pull. I feel like the cross between an errant top and a waxing operation gone horribly wrong.

Flesh is pulled off my face as I spin counterclockwise. Crimson opacity as blood sheets upwards in the torrent. And then I slow to a stop, and am guna-ed to the security desk. His face, too, is fine on the left side, but missing strips of skin, muscle and fat from the right side. Looks exactly what it FELT like happened to me.

Out and about me, the heffer herd of commuters moves without comment or consternation towards the doors that will take them to THEIR 7.2 crosswalks and into work. Thing that's most disturbing here is not that they're mauled but that they don't even seem to notice.

Which is probably my fate as well, given the sign up ahead.

Shrieking in neon green, over and over again "Sublation".

Thing is, I'm not sure if I want to be on this train, brother. Face hurts like a mother fucker, but at least I can FEEL it hurting.

Looking down though, I don't think there will be much choice in the matter. Moving sidewalk, and I'm clipped in.

The last thought I have before passing through the door under the sign is that the sidewalk and the escalator must have a common mother, that

...I'm outside, a little contracted and a tiny bit tired, but ready for another day in the trenches. A hint of something that happened behind me, but it's mostly forgotten by the time I hit the 3rd sidewalk.

Into the lobby and a cheery good morning to the concierge.

Onto the elevator - good old Otis, always there like a loyal lapdog - and the day unfolds as it should.

Three floors before mine though, the right side of my face starts itching. Turning to check out something reported from the peripheral, always-on vision sentry, I'm a little shocked - though not entirely surprised for some reason - at the layout of this elevator. Never remembered there being a door BEHIND me.

moopa.