The biggest wooden staircase in the world

I have a friend and he's the richest man in the world. Having recognised early the dangers of being a rich person, he hid that from the world. Everyone who sees him knows he has money, but they have no clue how much. I do, but it's not important for now. He likes to keep me around because I largely don't give a damn about his money. I am a free rider in a sense of not picking up bills for beers or private jets, but I can give it up at any point. That gives me the ability to tell him what I think. There is no value in it itself but rather in what I have to say. Over time, rich people tend to accumulate sycophants in their surroundings. Once you're surrounded with sycophants and sycophants only, you're done. You might have enough money to go on like that even till your death bed, but in some sense, you're done. Done and gone. Thus, we became partners in various non-business endeavours. But enough about him. He's not the main character of this story. He's not even a character, merely an enabler for me.

I like staircases. It all started from a dumb sketch on the TV. A fake popular-science show presented viewers with the biggest staircase in the world. As I remember it, they shot it in an unfinished building, with raw concrete walls. It wasn't even that big but did the job with smart camera angles. A man was enthusiastically walking the "reporters" around. It was silly, but it planted a seed. I really started paying attention to staircases after that: in houses, office buildings, apartment buildings, public buildings, schools, construction sites that only had skeletons of buildings. Anywhere. And my friend knew about that. He would joke every now and then when we were somewhere and they had stairs there, but I didn't treat it seriously. It wasn't a hobby, I wouldn't take pictures of any places or catalogue them or anything.

But then, one day, my friend said he had a surprise for me. We took a plane to Russia, which wasn't trivial after the war, and there we drove in all-terrain cars (one for us and two for military-grade bodyguards because it was still Russia) for a couple of hours, finally reaching a cave.

"A cave, you say," I remarked getting out of our car.

"Wait for it," he said, very proud of himself.

We went into the cave, which reminded me more of a mine at this point, and we ended up on a wooden platform made a long time ago. Solid work. I took a step further towards stairs leading down and I gasped. The stairs were spiralling down the shaft so deeply that it was not possible to tell how many floors would that be. I looked at my friend in amazement.

"I found out about it by accident," he explained. "Local legend has it that nobody knows what's downstairs. It's too deep. Some kids sometimes go there, but not too deep. Their babushkas forbid them."

I looked down again and felt my heart was racing.

"Let's go," I said and started walking down.

"Nah, too deep," my friend stopped me. "I organised ropes to shorten the trip."

"Clever," I admitted.

They gave us harnesses and installed everything, and we started climbing down. It took forever. The way down was tricky enough to not talk much. At some point, ropes ended, and my friend wanted to go up, but I refused and continued on foot. A tad reluctantly but he joined me. Now we could talk, but we were tired, so we just walked. And walked. And walked. This would make a great walking simulator.

And then, finally, we reached the bottom. There was another wooden platform there and a mining shaft in front of us. I wondered if we were going forward compared to the entrance to the cave or left or right, but there was no way of knowing. We had a couple of flashlights and the tunnel in front of us seemed leading into the void. As much as it was demanding for our legs, we continued walking.

"Whoa!" my friend exclaimed at some point. "Look at that."

I don't know if I was so tired that I didn't notice that myself or what, but at the entry to a bit larger cave was standing a hooded figure. Like a monk or Grim Reaper or a character from a fantasy setting. I stepped forward, but my friend decided to stay and wait for my report. Fine, I thought.

As I was nearing the figure, it/they moved further away from me. But not walked. No, it was as if they were floating in the air and just keeping the same distance. This way I noticed that there was still some corridor to enter the larger room. As if the surroundings were changing. But in the end, I entered the room. At the entry, I looked back at my friend, but he was too far. I was alone. This made me shiver a bit and reconsider if I really wanted to continue, but the sunk costs fallacy kicked in (probably a while back). The hooded figure continued "escaping" me until they were in the centre of the room. Then I was able to approach them.

"Who are you?" I asked. "What is this place?"

"There is only death here," he replied in a perfect whisper that sounded everywhere around me, not only from his direction. The voice belonged to a man.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"You can go back or you can stay and die," he answered.

"Are you going to kill me?" I asked, curious about the details.

The hooded figure didn't reply and I rose my hands and looked at them, and they were like a fog, slowly dissipating in the surroundings. I realised I was dying, but there was no stress in it, nothing negative. I don't remember feeling that calm in my life. Calm and reconciled. And in front of me, a wall of blue lights started emerging. Lights which I somehow knew to be the sum of all the people before me. They were calling me. Or rather, there was a calling telling me to join them. I looked again at my hands and they were still there, albeit foggy. I made a half-step back just to see how would that affect me, and I felt becoming more solid. Ah, fuck it, I thought and I started walking ahead. With each step, I felt that I'm dissolving into the surroundings, but it didn't feel like disappearing or fading or ceasing to exist, but rather becoming one with those before me. At some point, the blue light started embracing me and everything became blue and--

When I opened my eyes, I was in my bedroom, looking at my ceiling. I felt very thirsty, so I got up and went to the kitchen where I drunk a jug of water. Was it all just a dream? I wanted to call my friend, but I couldn't locate my phone any more. (I left it in the car, along with my wallet, because I decided that if there was a chance of getting lost in Russia, then I didn't want to have a cell phone or documents on me.) The last thing I remembered was the room in the mine at the bottom of the biggest wooden staircase in the world. Did I pass out? Was I even there?

I decided to go to my friend's brownstone, hoping I would find him there. Not having a phone meant I couldn't get a ride there, so I took a bus. The servants let me in.

When I entered the lounge room, my friend was looking at me with a pale face.

"Where the fuck were you, Jo?" he asked half-scared and half-pissed-off.

"Actually, I came here to ask you that very same thing," I replied. "I woke up in my bed. Were we in Russia?"

"We were-- three weeks ago. We went down that fucking cave and then you went after that hooded someone until you disappeared in the dark. I waited for a moment, but then I thought what the fuck and returned to the top. I wanted to sent the guys after you, but they said you were gone. And anyway, I could see in their eyes they would never go after you. I considered sending some robots, but the location was too remote for that. I hated it, but we left you there. And now you're back," he finished with visible relief on his face. "What happened there?" he asked.

"I died there," I replied.

"Stop fucking with me," he replied jokingly, but then he saw my eyes and something in them made him take my response seriously.

"I dissolved in there, like a fog. And it wasn't scary. And even now, I am still calm."

"Have you seen the other side?" he asked, as in giving up with reluctance to his curiosity.

"No. But I saw the gates. Well, sort of gates, they didn't look like gates."

He laughed with relief, as if a huge stress was letting him go. "I am not taking you anymore to a single staircase," he said. "From now on, only elevators!"

I looked around the room.

"Do you happen to have my phone and wallet?"