The lift was under maintenance that evening, which is how I ended up on the stairs with my hand torch out even though the stairwell bulb was technically working. Technically is an important word in facilities work. It means the fitting receives power. It does not mean the light holds steady or reaches the landing where the paint is peeling in a shape like a map of nowhere. At about ten past nine I stood at the ground-floor door, clicked the torch on, and began the count I have performed since moving to Blk 109: one through twenty-three on the first flight, then the landing, then the shorter second flight to my level.
Estate lighting through the small window in the stairwell door cast a grey rectangle on the first step — not bright, not dark, the kind of in-between that makes you trust your torch more than the fixture above. I aimed the beam at step four because step four has a chip in the edge where a trolley knocked it years ago. The chip catches shadow differently from the steps around it. I use it as a checkpoint the way some people use landmarks on a jogging route.
Halfway up, the stairwell bulb hesitated. That is the only word that fits — not flicker, which implies repetition, but hesitation, as if the filament considered going out and decided against it at the last moment. I paused with my foot on step fourteen and listened. The building held its usual sounds: a door closing three floors above, water in a pipe, someone's television reduced to muffled rhythm. The bulb steadied. I continued.
A stairwell bulb hesitates the way a person hesitates — briefly, without explanation, and then as if nothing happened.
On the landing between flights I switched the torch off for a moment to see what the estate light alone could do. Almost nothing useful. A faint wash on the handrail, the corner where cobwebs collect in a clump I keep meaning to mention to cleaning. I clicked the torch back on and the circle returned — sharp, white, no wider than a dinner plate. Step sixteen received the centre of the beam. I have photographed that step in my mind more times than I have photographed anything with my phone. The grain in the concrete, the small gum stain faded to grey, the screw head rusting in the railing bracket.
Why count stairs at all? I asked myself that on the second flight, where the count is only eleven and always feels shorter than it should. Counting is a way of keeping the body honest while the mind drifts. At work I count checkboxes on inspection sheets. At home I count steps. The numbers do not mean achievement. They mean continuity — the same twenty-three, the same eleven, the same creak on the landing board that sounds like a note held too long.
A neighbour descended as I reached my floor, nodding without surprise at the torch. We have all learned the lift schedule by inconvenience. She carried marketing flyers she would throw away upstairs. I held the door for her because the hinge sticks and the torch made the handle visible. Small courtesies in narrow spaces. Neither of us spoke. Speech would have widened the moment beyond what the stairwell could hold.
Inside my flat I set the torch on the shoe cabinet and looked at the scuff marks the base has made in the laminate — a crescent repeated every evening. Evidence of a ritual. I wrote the numbers in my notebook not because I might forget them but because writing makes the ritual visible to future me, who will otherwise merge this April evening with every other stairwell evening until they become one grey memory.
The maintenance notice said the lift would resume by midnight. It did. The next morning I took the lift down without thinking and felt slightly guilty, as if I had skipped a page. In the afternoon I walked the stairs once on purpose, torch in pocket, bulb steady, count unchanged. Some things do not need drama to matter. They need repetition and a narrow beam pointed where the general light refuses to commit.
I still do not know why the bulb hesitated on step fourteen's breath. I only know I was there to see the circle hold on step sixteen afterward. Is there a stairwell in your building whose light you trust less than your own hand?
