A Notch in the Corner

My boots clicked against the damp, stained carpet as I ventured a few paces away from the camp patch. The constant hum overhead kept buzzing in my plastic ears. I wanted to see if the turns ever ended, but every corner looked exactly the same. To keep from getting hopelessly turned around, I knelt down by a loose tear in the mustard-yellow wallpaper and carefully aligned a tiny flat cardboard scrap against the baseboard, wedging it in tight like a trail marker. When I stood back up and looked down the long corridor, my small blue paper tag was still pointing directly back toward the brown log.