Beyond the Door

I squeezed past the rubber sweep under the front door and darted into the long building hallway. The thick carpet muffled my steps completely—pure stealth mode. At the end of the hall, a heavy fire door was propped open with a triangular wooden doorstop. Naturally, I couldn't resist a good ramp. I took a running leap onto the wooden slope, popped over the threshold, and grabbed onto the cool metal baluster of the stairwell landing. Peeking between the painted bars, the whole staircase spiraled down into the quiet glow below like a giant winding coaster track. Talk about an epic descent waiting to happen.