Bryan Vale
Rules for Our Airbnb
No parties! We cannot have more than 8 guests in this house at a time.
Please, no loud noises after 10 o'clock at night. This is not our rule but our neighbors' requirement.
Checkout time is 11 o'clock in the morning. Before you leave, please remove the bed sheets, place used towels on the bathroom floor, and start the dishwasher. Thank you!
The second hall closet on the right is locked, as we use this closet for storage. Please do not attempt to open it.
Please remove shoes in carpeted areas!
If the second hall closet should happen to be unlocked, please do not enter it. The closet is dark and it is easy to bump one's head or shins on the supplies within.
If you do enter the closet, please do not panic. Move slowly and carefully backwards without turning around, then shut the door tightly.
Failure to obey rule No. 7 will result in the discovery that rule No. 6 is a lie. Be aware, however, that you do not need to be afraid of the dark void, although we don't recommend exploring it.
The discovery that the house is fundamentally hollow, containing multiple dimensions of emptiness, may surprise you. But please do not explore the alternate dimensions, as we have not yet mapped and categorized the spaces between the walls. Do your best to return to the portal in the second closet on the right through which you entered the hollow void.
You will have discovered, by now, that not just the house, but reality itself, is completely hollow and in fact illusory. If the entropy captures you, try to aim for the black hole, which — if struck at the right angle — may send you into a time warp and put you back into the hallway before the point in time at which you entered the second hall closet on the right. Upon striking the event horizon, remember to tuck your knees into your chest to avoid injury. (You may, of course, decay into nothingness well before you are able to do so. The entropy is no joke.) The other possibility is that the horror of the nothingness of the universe may consume you psychologically. To exist or not to exist? Remember not to dwell in the angst, but to choose. You are free even in the floating void of a dimensional vacuum, even when you are rapidly approaching the point at which your choices no longer matter. Embrace the terror of the cliffside of existence, aim for the event horizon, and tuck and roll (this all should have been covered in your sixth grade physical education class).
After rematerializing in the hallway, please make sure to remove your shoes, as this is a carpeted area.
Bryan Vale is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. His fiction and poetry have appeared in several journals, including Streetcake Magazine, Paragraph Planet, Unstamatic Magazine, and Paddler Press. His work has been nominated for The Best of the Net, and he has read for the memoir journal Five Minutes. Learn more at bryanvalewriter.com, or follow Bryan on Twitter and Instagram at @bryanvalewriter.
