The Nice Garage by Tom Milani

from Doors, Gates, & Portals: a Pistol Jim Press series

The Nice Garage by Tom Milani

Tom and Alison held hands as he drove. The concert didn’t start for an hour, which should have given them plenty of time to get to their seats, since the venue was a five-minute walk from where they currently sat in traffic. Unfortunately, the lot where they’d intended to park was full. The GPS showed several garages nearby, but in the last ten minutes, they’d managed to move only a hundred feet, reduced to watching the traffic light at the end of the block cycle multiple times.

When they finally got past the intersection, they had forty minutes to find a place to park and walk to the show. Alison pointed to a blue neon sign that said NICE GARAGE, the N winking like a firefly.

“There,” she said. “It’s open.”

Tom turned, and they proceeded down a ramp, rounding a corner where a few cars were scattered between the white lines that marked each parking space. Tom pulled straight into a spot that appeared to be waiting just for them.

They got out of their Mazda just as a blue car sped by in a squeal of rubber, followed by the rattle of the overhead door lowering. It closed with a thud that seemed to shake the building.

They walked up the ramp. On the right was an electrical box with blue and white lights. Tom looked for a button to push—some way to get the door to open—but there was only a reader a few feet away.

Alison grabbed a red handset mounted to the opposite wall. “I’ll see if I can get someone to open it.”

As Tom jogged down the ramp, a white mist rose from the floor, so thick he could no longer see his feet. On adjacent walls were two doors: one marked STAIRWAY, the other ELEVATOR. Tom tried each one.

Locked.

He turned. The mist was waist high now, and the sound of low murmuring followed him as he rounded the corner again, looking for Alison.

She was where he’d left her, the phone still in her hand. “They’re telling me they’ll send someone to see about letting us out, but they need to verify our IDs.”

“It’s a parking garage.”

“There’s a question of jurisdiction.”

“Jurisdiction?”

“That’s what they’re saying. Apparently, we’ve crossed a border.”

Tom understood each word Alison spoke. It was the sentences they formed whose meaning he couldn’t parse.

Alison hung up the phone. “We’re never getting out of here, are we?”

At the bottom of the ramp the mist roiled like silent whitewater. Tom hit the lock button on the Mazda’s remote. The horn sounded faintly, as if from far away, but the flare from the tail lights speared the mist like blood in water.

The murmuring grew louder, and outlines of figures began to appear in the mist.

“Do you see that?” he asked.

The figures rose, their eyes glowing red, the lower halves of their faces shape-shifting masks of blue.

Now the forms pointed at them, and their murmurs began to coalesce into words. “Move. Freeze. Get on the ground. Hands in the air.” The orders repeated as if in a loop, each identical voice coming from a different direction.

“What the hell is happening?” Alison asked.

Tom turned to her. “We should get in the car.”

She pointed down the ramp. “What about them?”

Hundreds of figures swayed, their voices growing louder, their eyes brighter.

Inside the mist, Tom lost all sense of space and time. His body felt weightless. The figures surrounded them, flickering like flames. He couldn’t see their car.

“The remote,” Alison said. Her voice echoed, as if at the end of a long hallway.

Tom pressed the unlock button. A path in the mist opened up, the car just a few feet from where they stood.

They jumped inside. Tom backed out of the space and headed up the ramp, following the narrow path in the mist they’d just passed through. He stopped a few feet from the door.

“What now?” Alison asked.

Tom shifted between reverse and drive, rocking the car and hoping to trigger some unseen sensor. Finally, he stopped. He looked in the rear-view mirror. The mist rose like a tsunami barreling toward them. Now the forms floated, their red eyes blinking like the sign outside the garage.

“Can you drive through the door?” Alison asked.

Tom turned. Her hazel eyes were beginning to glow, and her lips were losing their shape, smearing across her face. He tilted the rear-view mirror down but quickly looked away.

Tom shifted into reverse. As they backed into the mist, the red-eyed, blue-masked figures surrounded the Mazda, as if the car was submerged.

Tom braked and glanced at Alison. He didn’t recognize her. He was afraid to look at his own reflection. The figures outside beckoned. He felt their pull.

Before they could take hold, Tom shifted the car into neutral and pressed down on the accelerator. When the engine reached redline, he threw the shifter into drive.

The tires spun against the concrete before gaining purchase. The car shimmied as it rocketed up the ramp.

#

Although Tom and Alison never spoke of their time in the garage again, they weren’t the same afterwards. They began working remotely and stopped leaving their house. They had all their groceries delivered. Soon, the place they’d loved felt less like a home and more like a cell.

“I’ve had enough,” they said simultaneously, in the way of couples long married. Tom reached for his keys, and Alison reached for her coat.

They headed out in the Mazda, once again holding hands.

Bio

Tom Milani’s short fiction has appeared online and in several anthologies. His stories have been selected for The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2026 and The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2026. Places That Are Gone, his debut novel, was published May 2025. You can find him on Instagram milanitom, on Twitter tom_milani, on Facebook Tom Milani, and on his website: www.tommilani.com.