I began to draw myself naked a lot after I left home. Nothing special or grotesque -- just me leaning against boxes piled to the ceiling with an easel and a mirror in front of me. I suddenly found myself in a space and time thirty-four floors over the rest of the city, and it was private and mine. I couldn’t find any way to christen it but to do the one thing that would fully expose me to it; though, my drawings never really looked like me, just someone standing where I stood. The charcoal seemed to permanently stain my hands, too.

Not much was unpacked in those first few weeks. I spent a lot of time visualizing how I wanted the rooms to look without actually moving many things around. The boxes functioned like the furniture I was going to buy eventually, though I did hang up all my important clothes in a closet and made sure the plates and utensils were in a convenient place. I went shopping once and bought a mattress, the only major purchase I made for a month or more.

I celebrated my twenty-second birthday a week later by going out to a bar my friend Liam had told me about and got hit on by forty-year-old men all night. I walked home alone, hardly buzzed. I got a good job working as a stenographer for the county the next day, and I took comfort in knowing I could finally exist without wondering when I was going to be able to pay rent on my own. My parents had promised the first three months, but nothing after that.

I decided to finish one portrait per week. The one sitting on the easel then was of me sitting, legs spread and my elbows resting on my thighs, hands clasped in front as if I were praying. My eyes were staring critically back at me. They still weren’t mine.

When I got back from my first day at work, I glanced at it as I unbuttoned my shirt. I tried to look past it, but the Me-That-Wasn’t-Me watched me walk past. I looked in the mirror instead. It was leaning against a stack of boxes labeled Junk; T-shirts; Bongs, and as I maneuvered past the easel, something in the reflection caught my eye. I stopped and knelt down to get a better look. Tucked behind more boxes was a small door. Not much more than a big dog could have fit through, and as I moved my hand closer to the small latch on it, I felt a cold draft. A chill snagged my shoulderblades and goosebumps climbed down my arms.

I looped my finger through the ring on the latch and pulled. I felt it give a little, so I tugged again and it burst open in a blizzard of paint chips and dust motes. The doorway was much larger than I thought; I could have easily crawled through. My apartment suddenly became very cold. I looked into what seemed to be an empty elevator shaft, though there were no ropes or weights – just complete, breathing blackness in all directions. My landlord hadn’t told me about this when I took the apartment, though I suspected she wouldn’t care much about it anyway. When she gave me the key, her red, freckled face was puckered in the sunlight and she didn't smile when I thanked her.

As I looked up and down that space, it dawned on me that thirty-three long floors down, a terribly firm ground was waiting to meet me, so I immediately backed away. The vertigo swam in my head then subsided after a second, and I peeked back in. I shouted a “Hello!” into the pit, but heard no echo.

I decided to throw something down. It felt somewhat akin to a well, and isn’t that what everyone does when confronted with an abyss? We throw things?

Taking a penny out of my wallet on a nearby box, I held my hand into the shaft – there was a wind that touched the hairs on my arms and made them stand on end – and dropped the coin. When you drop something down a well, part of the delight is in hearing the satisfying (Plink!) when it hits the water, far, far below you. It affirms of your expectations. But when the well does not react to the object at all, when there is no satisfying (Plink!), you are left with an incredibly unnerving anticlimax that you can’t help but be aware of. This is what happened.

I waited. Maybe it just didn’t hit yet. Maybe it was too small for me to have heard anything.

Nothing.

I inched back slowly and shut the door. For the next few hours, I began to unpack the boxes around me. I put plates into cupboards, shampoo in the bathroom, and clothing in the drawers I assembled. I broke the boxes down.

Have you ever been so aware of something that no matter what you do, you can’t stop being aware of it? It’s like when someone says the word “Blink,” and suddenly, you notice how often you’re blinking. Or when someone says the word “Breathe,” and suddenly, you take very controlled, full breaths. These unconscious bodily functions suddenly move to the front of your mind and you are now very, very conscious of all of them.

This was me. I could not be anywhere in the apartment without being aware of where I was in relation to this space. I actively looked for where this space would be as I circumnavigated the rooms, but found nothing. All the walls joined up with all their space accounted for. The shaft was a good five feet across both directions – that's a large hole to cover up by design. It was as if the apartment just paid the space no heed and gave it no audience.

As I carried a box from the bedroom to what was to become the living room, I heard a (Plink!) on the hardwood behind me. A penny rolled to a stop in the center of my floor.

I paused, stared at the penny, set the box down. I picked it up and flipped it over and over in my hands. It clinked against my rings like a muted windchime. I felt like I had to be sure. I walked back to the door and opened it up, another blast of cold air rushing my face. I dropped it in, listened to the silence again.

Blink. Breathe.

I waited.

(Plink!) called the penny from the other room.

I rushed to the bedroom and grabbed my jar of change. It shattered on the wall of the shaft when I threw it in and the coins all fell down. Moments later, I heard them all (PlinkPlinkPlinkPlink!) into my living room.

I threw boxes down. I took off my clothes, threw them. I rolled up my self-portraits, my easel, my charcoal – I threw it all in. I just kept throwing things, over and over, and heard them all reappear.

When I couldn’t find anything else to throw, I stared into the abyss and kneeled on the lip of the shaft, completely naked. There before me was an unimaginable depth that cycled everything right back to me, and before I let myself think, I threw myself in as well.

There was no entire life flashing before my eyes. No movie flashbacks. I could only focus on the tiny square of light that climbed out of sight rapidly. The cold rushed around me.

I blinked.

I breathed.

I found myself sitting on the warm hardwood among piles of boxes. Still naked, I grabbed the easel and immediately filled the entire canvas with charcoal. When the page was completely black, I began to erase myself in.

The door, I found later, disappeared without any evidence of it ever having been there. Even as I finished unpacking everything, the only reminder that the shaft had ever existed at all was the fact that, after throwing all my not-self-portraits down, they never came back.