Escalator

She almost fell off the escalator right then, almost tumbled into the abyss below, almost toppled on top of broken chairs, long-extinct mobile phone models and ancient radios playing white noise and old jazz. The old jazz could be heard on the boundary, it played forever and without self-awareness, looped on speakers at the beginning and end of the looped mechanical steps. In the coming days, things would get worse and worse, the act of balancing would become more and more difficult and the music would get louder and louder. Some may call it a form of vertigo. She did not know it then, but it would be a difficult climb away from the escalator steps.