Story / It's Just a Room - Part 11
Baffled? Start from page one.
08:12
Rise and shine, Olly, today’s a brand new day. The sun’s peeking his head through lofty clouds, the birds are chirping wildly, sharing secrets in some tongue we could never understand, the morning dew on the evenly trimmed grass finally beginning to evaporate.
I had to shut the shades this morning because the sun was so bright, as I got off of my comfortable memory foam mattress, and slipped into the bathroom to do my daily routine.
Daily routines are a funny thing, you know? So mundane, yet you do them every. single. day. You know why you do them? It keeps you sane, I think.
Wake up, get out of bed, go to the bathroom, take a shower, brush your teeth, put on deodorant, put on some damn clothes, walk downstairs, grab your keys, grab your shoes, grab your phone, grab your jack--don’t forget your tie, honey--et, grab your lunch and get your ass out the door.
It’s life, right? We all do it. We go to school, we try to get good grades so we can be looked up to, instead of down upon. We use this advantage to get a job that will “satisfy us creatively,” and sometimes that job takes us to “exciting new places,” and we get to travel somewhere away from wherever we are. We get to meet new people, find a new place to live, make a new life for ourselves. Maybe even bring a new life into the equation. Every single thing we do in this cycle that we call life is made up of our choices. Routines are cycles for a reason. Our lives are just the “daily routine” of Humanity. We do these things every morning to keep us clean, to keep us groomed, ready for the day, so we aren’t wild beasts with untamed hair, yellow curling and cracked fingernails, and gnarled teeth. We are Humans. We separate ourselves from animals, from animal instinct, because we want to show ourselves that we are better than them. We write books, we make movies, we tell stories, we build monuments on this rock, we have even explored an itty bitty sliver of outer space. But we do all of this because we want to say we aren’t animals.
Picture this if you will, just for a moment, a Human who is acting entirely on animal instinct, without what we call “rational choice.” They’re feral, wild, and dangerous to boot. So, if you came across this person in your every-day life? You would call them crazy.
“Look at that crazy person, wandering down the road. Look over there, that crazy person is climbing that tree. Watch, that crazy person is taking a piss, right in public! What. An. Animal.”
What an animal, right? Replace that person with a god--whoa, Freudian slip--replace that person with a dog, how would people react?
Look at Spot wander down the road, look at Whiskers climb that tree, look at Harley pee on that mailbox. It’s a different story. They’re in their place, because they’re animals. The reason I have this typewriter, the reason I have the desk I’m typing at, or the chair I’m sitting on, or the light bulb behind me, is simply because we refused to become those animals.
Refused to become… Really if you go back far enough, we already were, we just came out of it like some kind of dream. Like we woke up, or at least to us, hell we don’t even know how other animals really experience reality, they could be vastly different from one another. But that’s a story for a rainy day.
Certainly, not a topic for a day as bright and cheerful as this. Look at Sally wagging her tail! It’s so adorable…
10:10
Of course it’s not sunny out. I’m in a small wooden room, remember? That isn’t the point. What I was trying to get at is that we have these routines that keep us “sane,” or Human, or whatever you want to call it, but they also help to foster the evolution of our race. Humanity has evolved so much faster than any other species on this rock. But it’s interesting to see how the world, or maybe our species as a whole--singular identity--is just rolling us over, all the time. We live our lives in this particular order, and then we have children, and they do the same. Eventually we all die so it doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that each generation is a little different. New technologies are built, entire new worlds are imagined. We change so quickly, and even though we all die, we all leave an impact on shaping what Humanity looks like.
Yesterday afternoon, I checked the drawers again, hoping to find another bottle of some sweet nectar, and to my surprise, I did. Another clear plastic water bottle, but this one tasted like Jäger, which I wasn’t complaining about. I drank pretty much the whole bottle over the next several hours, and then passed out. I woke up to a knock at the door. Rather, three short raps from a single knuckle. I heard this loud and clear, and woke up immediately. I thought someone must be coming to let me out, surely, someone found me and they’re going to see if I’m okay, then they’ll give me a ride somewhere so I can get a bite to eat, and then haul me off to Cali.
No, as you can tell since I’m still here typing this, someone did not in fact come to let me out. There couldn’t have been anyone knocking, or at least there shouldn’t have been; but I heard those three knocks, and jumped straight up from the chair, absolutely on edge, like the hairs on the back of my neck as I type. I rushed to the door as swiftly and quietly as I could, and I pressed my ear up against it.
I could hear something, someone on the other side, gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. I could hear them breathing in, in and out, like the tide. I could hear their curling yellow nails scratching across the other side, ever so gently.
Scritch.
Scritch.
Scritch.
It sounded so cold and dry, like a cave. And I could hear the ocean, crashing outside that cave. I took my head away, too frightened to listen any longer, and I stood there for a few moments. Now I had realized someone was--must have been--behind that door. They knocked, I heard them knock, but I can’t open this piece of shit door, so what should I do? What could I do? Well, I guess I’m not sure what I should have done, but here’s what I did:
I took two steps back, facing the door, I took deep, deep breaths, exhaling very slowly, and then I stepped forward, and knocked back three times.
On that third knock, two things happened, first of all, the sound of the ocean disappeared. I couldn’t hear the waves any longer, and I was left in silence.
Imagine you’re in your room, you’ve got the fan on high, TV musing quietly in the background as you play some video game. Suddenly, the power goes out. Suddenly it’s quiet. It’s an interesting feeling, to say the least. When the power goes out, the inevitable hum of Human existence--progress--stops. And so do we. We stop playing our games; we stop teaching a class, or paying attention in a class; we stop preparing a sandwich for a customer; we stop watching our movie; we even stop talking to people for a brief moment. In that moment, everyone affected by the outage stops, and then, naturally, we try to go back to whatever it is we were doing, and if we find that to be impossible, we simply do something else. We know that eventually the power will come back on, and we can go back to normal, but sometimes the outages last a lot longer than we expect. Suddenly you’re a week in, and you notice little changes in people. The grocery store is still open, but they’re having a hard time keeping the cold things cold, and the hot things hot. People help out, someone runs to a gas station to buy some ice, they find out that the gas station is also still out of power, and their ice has either melted, been sold, or is being used to keep their cold things cold.
But the gas station clerk doesn’t turn the poor guy away, she helps him figure out who in town might still have ice (It’s Summer and you’re not in the Arctic, deal with it). People help out, and I’m not sure if that’s just from a mutual understanding of the loss (in this case power, but this example could probably be applied to the loss of a loved one, or some other loss), or if it’s a result of the lack of this hum. We’ve all grown accustomed to it, and when it’s suddenly gone, your personality changes. At the grocery store, an older gentleman is telling a man that they had brought the grandkids over because of the outage, and they were having a pretty good week, spent mostly outside, around the nearby lakes, the various local parks, and all that good shit.
Point is, when you take it away, society changes. But when you take away that sound, and you’re isolated in a room, you begin to change. You get scared, I get scared, you don’t dare speak, I don’t dare speak, you don’t even move, I don’t even move, Because on the outside, you’re probably alone, but on the inside, you feel like you’re being watched.
The second thing that happened on that third knock, was that I realized there is nothing behind that door. No hallway, just a wall, made out of whatever the rest of the walls are made out of, it only looks like a door. It only fucking looks like a door!
I knocked on the wall next to the door, and compared the sounds, both were deep, booming, and neither was as thin as a door. ’Tis some visitor, tapping at my chamber door--Only this and nothing more.
12:13
I just don’t understand what’s going on. I feel like that painting is staring at me--piercing through me--with those green eyes, those windows in the jetliner, the gleaming menacing stare. The grim stare of guilt, of regret. The jade caw of death. Maybe… the painting--Okay, I’m about to sound crazy here--but maybe the painting is possessed or something. I don’t know much about possession, I’ve never really been a religious guy, so I don’t believe in demons and devils, and all that nonsense. But there’s something about this fucking painting, it keeps changing, and it’s still mocking me. I measured the sides with my knuckle as a reference point, and when I woke up today, I noticed it seemed a little different. On a hunch, I measured it again; lo and behold, it is. It was 17 knuckles wide, and now it’s 19. That’s no margin of error, this painting is physically changing size.
What is happening?
14:56
What do you do with a drunken sailor?
What do you do with a drunken sailor?
What do you do with a drunken sailor, early in the mornin’?
Splash him with a bucket of water and tell him to get his ass to work. And it isn’t morning, but I am drunk. Found another bottle in the drawer, only drank half of it so far, figure I’ll save the other for tonight. I wish I had a meal though, pretty much anything would do. Haven’t eaten a scrap since before whenever I got stuck in here, days ago.
Here’s what I think: something fucked up is going on, and I’m quickly becoming the butt of a joke. A sick, twisted joke, like in a horror film or something. Like someone out there is getting off, just watching me suffer in here.
The painting? It’s gone. In fact, I’m beginning to think it was never here in the first place, maybe I imagined it. I looked over at it a few minutes ago and it had disappeared. The easel, the canvas, the green eyes, all just gone.
NOT SURE, REALLY
The lights went out about a minute ago, and I haven’t been able to see a damn thing since. I can only hope I’m typing this right, I can’t see shit, but I know where the home row is…
It takes a while to get used to a typewriter, but once you get the hang of it, it makes sense, and you can pretty much type anything blindfolded, which I may as well be right now.
Resetting each new page might be a bit complicated though. I’ll try my best.
When the light went out, there was no noise, normally I’d expect a small tick, the final breath of that mortal coil. All lights burn out, but can you even image the sheer darkness? Ever been in a cave without a flashlight?
I used to have dreams like that. Dreams that I was lost in a cave with no light, that I’d wandered in by mistake, and found that the way out is in fact not through. However, by then I’d been completely turned around, and lost in the endless dark labyrinthine cave. I would walk for miles and miles, keeping my hand against the right wall, trying to follow the lining of the cave so I might be spat back out after many more miles and miles. Hang on.
Sorry about that, new page. Anyway, in these dreams, I would always come close to the exit / entrance, but I would never reach it. I could see the light of the cave mouth in the distance, but it was only in the distance. No step I took could bring it any closer, and I was trapped in this darkness. Lost, I suppose is more like it.
Now here I am, in a cave with no exit, a ruddy hole in the ground where no thing ever wanted to call home, and I’m stuck here, sleeping on the hardwood and dying what seems to be the slowest death by starvation in history… Honestly I’m pretty impressed with how long I’ve held on, but I am getting tired, not from lack of sleep--though I could use a few more hours--but from a lack of everything else.
You know what I think would be best? Sleep. Now that I don’t have a light hanging above me at all times, maybe I’ll be able to get some shut eye.
STILL NOTHING
Just woke up, and the light is still out. I’m not sure if I expected it to be back on when I woke up, but there ain’t much I can do about it.
It doesn’t matter how long you wait, your eyes never really adjust to complete darkness. When there’s no light, there’s nothing to reflect back to your eyes, which means you don’t see anything.
Nothing.
No shape, no color, nothing at all. Can’t even see myself blink. Who knows, maybe the power will come back on soon, I’ll get my little bulb back, but for now I’ll be typing quite slowly.
BINGO
And the lord said let there be light, and there it was. In all it’s splendor and glory, a light by which I can type! Type, type, type, it seems there’s nothing else to do. I was asleep when the light came back on, but my familiar room has returned, and my illusion of safety to I guess. I’m not sure how many days its been.
You know, I’ve read stories about what the government did to prisoners of war in the fifties and sixties. Stories about forcing people into horrible positions, doping them with experimental drugs, and fucking with their heads.
Am I a prisoner?
I feel like it’s about time for me to open that door and find out, but I still haven’t figured out how. I punched the door a few times, slammed my whole weight into it. I think I might have thrown out my shoulder even. But it still wouldn’t budge.
I sat there a while, I might have cried a bit, I don’t remember. I just… I pressed my ear against the door, and I listened. Didn’t hear the ocean. No, no what I heard was voices. People talking, back and forth like a conversation. Only they weren’t people, at least I don’t think so. They were low voices, very slow, almost like if you playback a metal song at half speed, you know? Just back and forth for a while, I must have sat listening for an hour, or ten hours. I couldn’t really make out what they were saying, just the cadence. But to hear someone else’s voice was… well, it was mesmerizing.
Time passed, and I could make out a few words, like “breath” and “take” and “door.” When I heard that last one I stopped listening for a while.
10:45
It took me a while to remember I had a watch, honestly. I went back to the door after a few hours. The voices had stopped by then though. So I’m pretty sure, in fact I’m damn sure that I’m not alone in here. But I haven’t heard other people calling out like I used to. I haven’t heard any other prisoners. Is that really what I am?
Whose prisoner?
11:00
I’ve taken to laying on the ground staring up at the ceiling, tracing my eyes in a circle around the little light bulb, burning revolutions in my corneas. Probably not good for me, right?
Well here’s the deal, I’ve determined that I’m going to get out of this room one way or another, tonight. I haven’t worked out any details, but I think it has something to do with this desk, I mean why else would it be here? Every lock has a key.
The drawers of the desk are empty, except for the paper, I checked again for more liquor, but just got dust and paper. The bottles from earlier are gone too, I’d put them back in there, but there nowhere. So I figured, there must be some kind of secret drawer back there to another room or something. I got up and took the Oliver typewriter off the desk, placing out of harms way. Then I just kinda started shoving the desk against the wall moving it to the left.
Guess what, I was right.