Dark Room

A misty sea breeze filled the air.  It was cool and offered relief to her sun-kissed skin.  She couldn’t find her sunglasses so she squinted to see the ocean before her.  From her grandmother’s quilt she even brighter light glistening from the tips of the water peaks before they crashed into the surf.  While she only heard the tidal rhythms, she was sure she would at least see a bird in the sky.

The sky today was so bright as to almost forbid the intrusion of such a blemish on it’s radiant glory.  And while there was no cloud cover, she felt herself cooling from the breeze in defiance of the sun’s rays.  Beneath her was warm and soft and her comfort slipped to coziness before plunging into unconsciousness.

She woke with a start at a pulsing light and a horrible sound.  The alarm was blaring.  She swatted towards it and missed.  It was worse than other mornings, it was making a sound she’d never heard before.  It was grating and awful.  Long steady sounds.  At least two seconds each with equal silences between them.  Louder than ever.  So loud and it wouldn’t stop.  It wasn’t the classical music station she’d heard every other morning for the past 2 years.  

Her hands fumbled for the clock on the nightstand.  But before she could reach the nightstand her hands met with something glass.  It felt light but had a wide base.  When she hit it by mistake it didn’t fall but she heard something slosh inside of it.  She pulled her hand back and reached for ears.  If only she could stop that sound and try to remember.  Her hand met a plastic object… a pill bottle of some kind. 

Ignoring the pain in her ears she reached a bit further, felt nothing new and was suddenly very confused.  She wasn’t used to there being so much bed.  But here she was, in bed reaching for her nightstand and finding only more bed.  She pulled back her hand again with greater force than before.

Where’s my clock?  What the hell is going on?  

Her hand hit the glass container which promptly rolled over, spilled liquid on the mattress and fell.  She heard it breaking loudly below the mattress.  The crashing sound of breaking glass on what was clearly not her carpet made Julia’s heart sink.  A cold sweat came over her and she began to tremble.

Where am I?!

She continued to reach for the nightstand, for something, for some light, for some answers.  Nothing.  There was nothing else around her.  The alarm wouldn’t stop.  It kept blaring as if warning her all too late that she was in some kind of danger.

The contrast of sight was menacing.  It was completely dark save for a flash of blinding white light that followed each blare of the alarm.  Julia tried to move.  She felt unsteady and weak.  Coordination was no more than a fleeting fantasy at this point.  She sat still for a moment and tried to focus on the room around her.  It was too dark to see between flashes.  The light from the flashes was just as frustrating.  

She looked about the room, trying to understand her surroundings with each pulse of light as her eyes tried to adjust to the madness.  It was too bright and too brief to tell her anything specific.  There didn’t appear to be any furniture save the mattress she was laying on.  One of the lights was directly above her, mounted to the ceiling.  The flashes were so fast and the gaps between them were so great it was hard to make out anything at all.

She was about to step off the bed when she realized she still didn’t know where she was or what could be waiting for her.  And at least for the moment, she wasn’t sure she could trust her own equilibrium.  She remembered the broken glass and slid to the end of the mattress so as not to step on the shards.  Before stepping down, she rolled onto her stomach and with her hands she slowly reached over the end of the bed and touched the ground.  Sweeping it gently for debris or anything else that may hurt her, Julia verified what she already knew.  This wasn’t her floor.  

She felt where the bed met the floor.  There was no space.  There was no “under the bed.”  There was nothing.  Just floor.  A bittersweet relief came and left in a flash as she understood almost simultaneously that nothing from under the bed could grab her… but from everywhere else, she couldn’t know.  

The floor was cold and solid.  It seemed smooth and felt damp.  There was something wet on the ground, she could feel it on her fingers but she didn’t know what it was.  She raised her fingers to her nose, it didn’t have a scent.  It was moisture, maybe water from the glass container.  She didn’t know.  She sat up slowly.  

“Hello?” she shouted over the alarm.  There was no answer.  “Where am I?  Who did this to me?”

In her last sentence her voice cracked and she began to sob.  The sobs didn’t last long, each tear warming as they rolled down her nearly infuriated face.  

“Whoever did this is FUCKING DEAD!  YOU HEAR ME?!” She shouted into the darkness.  The alarm failed to drown her out.  

And then it was silent.  The alarm stopped in the middle of a pulse and so did the light.  Julia gasped, realizing she may have offended whomever was holding her here.  

Holding me here?

Her mind raced at the possible scenarios of what was to come.  She tried to prepare herself for it… scrambling her hands around the mattress and floor for something to use or throw, but found nothing.  She stood and raised her arms, balling her fists as she did…  Waiting for it to come… Waiting for anything to come. 

But there was nothing.  Only silence.  Only darkness.

She immediately missed the pulsing lights though her head appreciated the silence.  The only sounds she could sense were her own breathing and racing heart.  She felt disoriented in the dark.  Her thoughts flashed to the pill bottle.  She ran her hands over the mattress again, slower this time, searching for it.  She found it, picked it up to read it but couldn’t see.  It was too dark.  Her hands were still shaking at the thought of what could be in the bottle, what could be in her body.  

“Always read the label” her mother reminded her from a distant memory.

She began to sob more and searched her body with her hands, feeling for injury, for violation.  She felt nothing.  Her clothing felt unfamiliar but intact.  They were pajamas of some sort.  There were large buttons on a collared shirt and a pair of pants with a similar button holding them closed.  They weren’t particularly soft, almost like nursing scrubs.  Julia knew she owned nothing of the sort.  

She had been dressed but she hadn’t done it herself.  Someone had dressed her.  She sobbed more.  

Someone had un-dressed her.

She tried to remember how she got to where she was.  Her last conscious memory was going to bed in her own home, in her own bed.  She thought of everything she’d eaten the night before.  All of it, she remembered, was prepared by her from her cabinets, from her refrigerator.  She’d had nothing out of the ordinary to eat or drink.  She’d seen no one out of the ordinary.

It’s a dream.

Her mind searched her entire day, trying desperately to find a clue to her current whereabouts and how she arrived there.  She remembered getting up the morning before.  Her alarm had played classical music then.  It had comforted her, the way it always had.  Bach, Beethoven… she didn’t know.  It was “cartoon music” to her.  But she adored the security it brought her every morning.

The consistency.  The safety.  Memories of cereal eaten on an old living room floor while Tom and Jerry violently danced with one another.

She remembered her shower, the long wait for the warm water and the missing curtain ring she never remembered to replace. 

She thought of her cat and her breakfast, her work day, her co-workers, her mother, and her drive home.  Nothing was out of place.  Everything until now was as it should have been.  Everything had been perfect and safe.  Everything had been warm and bright.  But not now.

Be dreaming.  Please be dreaming.

There was no reason to be in this hell and yet despite all her previous normality, here she was in this terrible place surrounded by terrible emptiness and darkness with no possible explanation and the knowledge that everything could change in an instant for better or worse and she’d be powerless to stop it.

I’m not powerless.  I’m dreaming. 

She went back to the edge of the bed and felt the ground again.  This time she lightly traced the outline of the mattress on the ground from the foot of the bed to where the glass had fallen.  The moisture she had felt before was colder than the moisture surrounding the broken glass.

She tried to be delicate and sweep the glass into a small pile next to the mattress in case she needed to leave the bed in that direction.  She continued to move around the mattress to the head of the bed where the mattress met the wall.

It may not have been the head.  There was no way to tell.  This had been where her head had been, resting comfortably on a pillow until the alarm.

It doesn’t matter.

 

Aside from the pillow, nothing was different about this part of the mattress.  she continued to trace the top of the mattress, along the wall.  It was larger than her mattress.  She tried to get her fingers between the wall and mattress and while she managed to get her fingertips into the small space, she found nothing useful.  When she finally found the other corner of the mattress she had only a slightly better understanding than she had before.

King sized mattress.  

Only in hotels had she slept on mattresses so large.  Several months ago she’d gone to a conference for work and it was there that she last experienced such spacious sleeping arrangements.  The sheets were white and soft.  The sun from the balcony seemed to activate some inner light that made the whole room warm.  It had smelled of detergent or fabric softener, foreign to her, but inviting nonetheless.  

Now she smelled moisture and something else.  Some kind of cleaning product.  She continued along the edge of the mattress.  Other than the pill bottle and the now-broken glass there was nothing.  

Julia thought about the flashes of light and tried to remember if she saw a door somewhere.  

There has to be a door, how the fuck did I get in here without a door?

Her breathing slowed in the silence as she forced herself to take deeper breaths.  She was preparing herself.  She reached behind her and grabbed the pillow, clutching it to herself as she slowly put her feet over the edge of the mattress.  She hovered them for a moment, hesitating before gently resting them on the damp floor.  She took another deep breath and leaned forward, clutching the end of the mattress with her fingers and abandoning her pillow.

She stood.  In the dark and cool air she stood, taking her hands off the mattress as she did, suddenly feeling very much exposed and very much afraid.  Her hands reached ahead of her in all directions.  She was reaching for anything that might hurt or teach her.  She was reaching for the wall she was sure she had seen when the alarm was blaring.  

Her slow shuffling footsteps made sweeping wisps across the floor to feel out any debris or hazards that may injure her bare feet.  

One step.  Two steps.  Three.  Four.  Five-

Her hands touched the wall and she startled backwards, then forward again, slowly reaching for the wall and searching it with her hands as her right foot found where the floor met the wall.  It felt identical to the floor… damp… cold… solid.  Favoring her right, she chose to explore the wall in that direction.  She reached as high as she could, hoping to determine where the ceiling met the wall.  It was too high.  She remembered from the light, it was very high.  She moved her hands and even her body along the wall searching for some weakness, for some new piece to this puzzle.  A door or window.  Anything. 

She counted her steps as she moved, assuming she had started directly in front of the bed.  The wall gave no clues.  Its uniformity was as frustrating to Julia as it was foreign.  She continued down the wall, to her right.

Four.  Five.  Six.  Seven.  Eight-

She reached a corner.  From here she would have to move to the right and she could almost picture the long edge of the mattress as parallel with this new wall.  Without the fear she had before, she searched the corner with her hands from the floor to as high as she could reach, looking for an imperfection, for a seam.  She felt nothing new.  No indication of a door or switch. 

Her unease quickened at the thought of her distance from the bed.  She turned back to her left and began to walk.  

Eight.  Seven.  Six.  Five.  Four.  Three.  Two.  One.

She stopped, turned towards the bed and walked back to it.  She sat.  She was close to where she had started.  She ran her hands along the floor again and confirmed her thought.  While she was pleased with her accuracy, the obvious concern remained that finding her way back didn’t guarantee her safety.  

Her world had grown now and despite the limited solace she found on the mattress, she did not allow herself much time to rest.  From inside, a deep place, a savage place, Julia felt compelled to move.  To learn.  To “see” more of her new world with the senses that had not yet abandoned her.

She stood and walked back to the wall.  Continuing to the left, she counted as she searched the wall with her sprawling hands and fingers.

One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five.  Six.  Seven.  Eight.  Nine.  Ten.  Eleven.

She stopped, her breathing quickened.  Her eagerness to explore was beginning to fade and she was doubting her accuracy over a long distance.

Keep going.  It doesn’t matter.  Keep going. 

She continued down the wall, hoping each step would bring her to a door.  At 24 steps, she felt the next corner, this one forcing her to turn left.  She considered retracing her steps back to the bed again but she hesitated.

She was afraid.  Of course she was afraid.  But now she was afraid to go back.  It felt so far away and where she was seemed… safe?  Not safe.  Familiar.  As safe as any other place she’d “seen” so far.  She considered the opposite wall that she hadn’t finished exploring.  It seemed so far away now and yet so close to the mattress.  

Keep going.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.

She moved down the new wall, continuing her search pattern as she had before.  Every ten steps she would pause, breathe deeply and try to hear through deafening silence interrupted only by her pounding heart.  Her fear came in waves and each crest brought with it a distracting static to her careful listening.  That in turn brought greater waves followed by longer pauses and deeper breaths.  But despite the silent tumult, her remaining senses found nothing.

At 40 fruitless steps she came to the next corner.  Another left turn.  She felt around it for a few moments, searching for new information.  Finding none she exhaled, considered where the bed must be if the room was truly empty and sat on the floor in the corner, clutching her knees into her chest.

She rocked for a few moments, trying again to remember how she got into this now obviously not-square room and into these clothes.  She smelled the air around her.  It was thicker and more damp in this corner than it had been near the bed.  There was a hint of lemon-scented cleanser and bleach.  She immediately thought about work.  The bathrooms in the office were always cleaned with bleach and a lemon disinfectant.  She thought about the area of this room and the possibility that there might be drains on the floor.

Is this a basement?  A dungeon?  

Her mind raced with images of concrete walls and emaciated souls chained to them.  She allowed herself to picture co-workers hiding in bathroom stalls and may have nearly smiled had the cloth of her shirt not shifted on the wall from the pressure she was applying as she rocked. 

She continued to rock, not wanting to keep searching, afraid of what she might find, afraid of how much of this room was left to search.  And then a light sound.  

Suddenly Julia stopped rocking as she heard a faint noise or voice or whisper from the other side of the room.  It was unintelligible and brief, but she knew she heard it.  She clutched her chest to mute her pounding heart but it did no good as she sat in silence, waiting to hear it again.  She did not.  She cursed herself for letting her mind wander.  For not paying attention.  For being in this place.

I’m somewhere terrible and there’s someone else here.  

Julia pushed herself as far into the corner as she could.  She was so firmly pressed against the walls that her back began to ache.  She was using her heels to push her knees so tightly into herself that the silence was broken again, this time by the sound of her foot slipping back out into the unknown darkness away from her body.  

Julia tried to map what she knew of the room and this new sound.  There was no doubt in her mind.  Her heart pounded in her chest and tears began to fall as her chin shook despite her fear.  

The whisper, long-since gone, had come from the direction of the mattress.  

 

There had been silence for what Julia assumed had to have been at least ten minutes.  She relaxed her leg and arm muscles, allowing herself to move from the corner.  It hurt to move.  She had been pressed against it so hard before.  Her breathing had slowed slightly and she stopped sobbing.  With her hands on the ground she pushed herself up and stood with her back to the wall.  If she could see she would have been looking directly at the mattress.  But still there was no light.  

She was grateful for that.  She hoped that if she couldn’t see it, then it couldn’t see her.  She didn’t even know what “it” was.  And despite her fears, she didn’t even know if there was an “it” to begin with.

With her hands and back flat against the wall behind her, she continued to search the wall, using her feet to sweep again, only this time facing the opposite direction.  She found the work more difficult and slow but she dare not put her back to the area around the bed.  She counted in her head from the corner as she searched.  

One.  Two.  Three.  

Her right arm touched it first and her right foot touched another side of it before she reeled back to where she was standing before.  Whatever it was, it was solid but gave slightly when touched.  It made next to no sound but Julia was sure that whatever she touched was on wheels.  

She stood silently for a moment, looking in all directions and using her hands to feel in front of her whenever she turned.  When her breathing slowed again, she quietly approached whatever she had touched before.   When she made contact she noticed it was cold and felt metal.

She put pressure on the place she was touching and it seemed to give slightly.  If it were on wheels, they were either stuck or whatever this thing was had to be fairly heavy.  As Julia tactically inspected the object, she concluded that there were in fact wheels on the bottom.  The wheels were small.  The object itself seemed to be a cart of some kind.  Julia felt two separate rectangular shelves on the cart, one above the other.  The bottom shelf was grated and carrying nothing.  Parts of it felt brittle to the touch.  Julia imagined it was rust and inspected the top shelf.    

The top shelf had what felt like glass tubes in a wire rack and several small vials with varying amounts of liquids in them standing on the shelf next to the rack.  Julia continued to search the shelf but found nothing else.  

Damn.

She had hoped to find a syringe.  She had hoped to find something, anything, sharp she could use to protect herself if the time came.  She found nothing.  She thought of the vials, wondering what could have been in them.  She thought of her mother’s diabetes and how much she had hated giving herself two shots of insulin every day.  Those vials were small too.  They were also cold.  Those vials had to be kept cold.  For a moment she considered that these couldn’t be insulin because insulin has to be refrigerated.  Her chin quivered slightly and she began to cry.

Nothing made sense here.  There weren’t rules here.  The vials could be anything.  She should be home.  She should be getting ready for work.  She shouldn’t be here.  There was no reason for her to be somewhere she didn’t recognize.  There was no reason she should be in a dark cold place with vials and tubes and carts and whispers.  The tears flowed from Julia’s eyes as she leaned back against the wall and sank to the floor, hoping to find comfort in the only certainty she’d discovered so far; the wall.  

She sat for a few moments with her face in her hands, wiping tears away as quietly as she could, shaking her head and imagining all the things she should be doing or could be doing if she wasn’t here.  She couldn’t imagine why she was in this place or away from her life.  She couldn’t imagine anyone who would want to hurt her.  When she used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe her eyes she remembered again that these were not her clothes.  She stopped crying and did not wipe the last tear from her face.  Julia took a deep breath and slowly let it out. 

Rising to her feet once again she approached the cart and thought about its contents again.  She took one of the vials and placed it in the large baggy pocket of her foreign pajama bottoms.  She thought of the wire rack and glass tubes inside.  She ran her fingers across it and decided against taking out the individual tubes.  She was afraid of the sound she might make.  On the tops of some of the tubes were rubber caps.  Some of them had no caps and Julia wondered what each one contained.

She thought about hospitals.  She thought about the nurses, and specifically the phlebotomist that took her blood.  She had stuck Julia with a needle, filled the tubes, bagged the tubes and sent the tubes to the laboratory for study.  Julia was no stranger to that.  Every year Julia made a point to have a complete physical that included blood work.  

Her heart sank.  She closed her eyes tightly, refusing to cry this time.  The idea that her blood may be in some of the these tubes made her nauseous and she ran her fingers over her arms again, this time searching for a bandage.  Her left arm was clean.  Her right arm also had no bandage but when she pressed the inside of her right elbow she winced slightly in pain.  

Horrified, Julia turned to the corner, leaned over and with a painful heave, emptied the contents of her stomach on the ground.  It wasn’t much.  It tasted like bile.  Her eyes watered, this time not from sadness.  Her nose began to run.  She stood there for a while, leaned over with her right arm extended out, bracing her up from the wall.  She clenched her eyes tighter, more furious than ever.  She tried not to think of what was taken from her or what could have been placed inside her.  Her right hand tensed against the wall, curling her fingers to scratch down at it as she pushed herself upright.  Wiping her mouth and nose with her sleeve, Julia checked her body again for injury.  She was even more thorough this time.  She felt no tenderness or harm anywhere else.  

She assumed she had at least been drugged and considered that her blood may have been taken.  She could not imagine for what but she assumed it was possible.  She thought of the cart again and the small puddle of vomit she’d created in the corner.   She approached the cart again, and decided it should be moved in case she needed to maneuver later in the unexplored void that was the area of the room.   

She tried to move it again, using more force than before, figuring she could place it in the corner, and cover a potential trip hazard.  She pushed harder than before and whatever had been causing the wheels to stick gave way with a sharp and quick squeak that broke the thundering silence in the room and terrified Julia again.  In a panic, she huddled over the cart, gripping the sides with her hands to stop it from moving and to prevent that awful sound from happening again.  

When she leaned over the cart, her shirt grazed one of the vials.  It fell over, hitting the shelf with a light clink that was followed by the louder and deeper sound of the tiny glass bottle rolling across the shelf.  Julia instinctively hugged the cart from above, pressing her body firmly against the top of the cart, her feet nearly off the ground.  The wire rack holding the vials bent and twisted under her weight but her plan worked, the vial stopped rolling and again there was silence.

She thought of all the time she’d spent here, wondered again about the whisper and worried that perhaps she could be seen though she could not see.  

Then Julia felt something cold on her chest.  It was spreading slowly.  In an instant she knew it was liquid and correctly guessed it was from one of the recently displaced vials from the rack.  She closed her eyes and tried not to move knowing that getting up meant making more noise.  It was silent.  Her mind raced with what could have been in the vials that was now on her shirt and on her skin.  She tried to comfort herself by imagining it was only her blood and therefore couldn’t hurt her.  Her stomach felt sick again at the thought of her displaced blood being the best possible substance to now be dampening her shirt and her spirits.  She took a deep breath and clenched tighter onto the cart.

It was at this moment, that three very distinct events occurred, one right after the other.  The first was the most direct response to Julia’s increased pressure on the cart.  In defiance of the recently established quiet, one of the tubes, confined by the twisted metal of the wire supports around it, cracked.  While the sound was not particularly loud, it was more noticeable than the few low groans of the metal cart, now supporting Julia’s entire body weight.  Julia did not move or change her position, choosing instead to wish away the sound and any further glass disturbances.  Her wish fulfilled, there was no further breaking of glass beyond that one tube.

However, as Julia was about to experience relief from her granted wish, the second distinct event unfolded.  She felt a sharp pain in her stomach, near the spot where the mysterious liquid had previously stained her.  She bit her lip to keep from screaming in pain.

Oh God.  Oh God.  Oh God.  

Using some of her strength, that which not currently dedicated to the task of silencing her scream and controlling the noise of the cart she kept moving, she lifted her abdomen slightly, hoping to move away from the broken glass and slowly begin to release herself from the cart.  She had hoped for relief from the sharp pain in her stomach but that did not subside.  Most of the glass beneath her shifted but she could feel that one piece was still very much touching her and was currently inside of her.  She could not tell how large of a shard was now embedded in her skin, nor could she determine the depth.  She told herself again that if it had anything on it, it was likely her own blood.  It was when she re-planted her feet firmly on the ground that the third event shattered the delicate serenity of her careful plotting and movement.

A low groan followed her shifting weight from the center of the cart to the edge as she planted her feet.  The groan grew louder and deeper and in an instant the cart buckled and collapsed.  In the chaos, Julia heard the sharp threatening sound of every vial and glass tube scattering and shattering in the dark abyss around her.  Despite how fast the incident was, Julia’s experience was in slow motion as if every crack and drag of glass was it’s own symphony of terrifying alarm.  Some of the glass objects didn’t break but rolled in all directions.  The event took only moments but destroyed any sense that Julia had tried to imagine that she might be unnoticed.  

Julia had rolled to the right of the cart when it crashed and was now just sitting on the ground, some distance from the familiar corner, and now in unexplored territory.  She quickly reached for the damaged cart and flung it quickly into the corner, figuring there was no need to be silent for the time being.  

Feeling sure that the cart was in the corner, covering her vomit, she reached for her stomach.  Her shirt was soaked.  Whatever the mysterious liquid was from before was now mixed in her own warm blood.  With her right hand she slowly inspected the site of her injury.  The shard stabbing her in the stomach was a longer large portion of the tube.  Her fingers, now slick with blood and possibly some other substance, fumbled for the end of the shard, trying to pull it out.  

When she had a firm grip, she slowly began to pull.  While the shard wasn’t very deep and Julia was certain she hadn’t hurt anything internally, her stomach continued to bleed.  Julia wasn’t sure if the nearly four inch shard of glass was the only piece to pierce her skin.  However, the pain subsided when it was removed and Julia was satisfied with not exploring the wound for further pieces of glass.  However, while she was not gushing blood, it was certainly enough blood that she felt she needed a bandage of some sort.  

Julia looked around despite there still being no light in the room.  She nervously unbuttoned the shirt she was wearing and removed it, now sitting topless in the strange room.  She felt along the shirt for the hole the glass shard had made, placed her finger inside it and began to tear a long section of fabric from the shirt.  A tattered square about eight inches on each side was as good as she could do.  She put the shirt over her shoulder and folded the square before pressing it firmly against her stomach.  With her free hand, she searched the floor around her for any other surprises and shuffled back against the wall.  She kept firm pressure on the wound, wishing she had a way to secure it to herself so she could have the use of both of her hands.  

The wall felt cold on her bare back.  Julia leaned forward, pulled the shirt from her shoulder with her free hand and carefully re-dressed herself in what was left of her garment.  Satisfied that she was covered, she leaned back against the wall, comforted slightly by the warmth of the foreign clothing between her and the cold surface.  Her stomach twinged in pain as she moved again but she kept firm pressure on her wound.  

She looked in the direction of the corner and felt for the cart.  She only had to lean slightly to the left to find it.  Julia imagined about a 10 minutes had passed since she left the corner.  In all that time she’d only moved about five feet.  She leaned further back, rested her head on the wall and sighed.  

Julia was no longer trembling.  Having had her hand pressed firmly on the makeshift bandage for quite some time she was convinced the bleeding must have stopped.  She took her hand away and gently removed the bandage and slowly began to explore the site of the injury.  She could feel dried blood but was sure the bleeding had stopped.  It was tender but the pain was bearable.  

Folding the bandage in half and reapplying it to her stomach, Julia stood up cautiously so as to avoid reopening her wound.  She let out a deep sigh.  She was feeling more confident than before, perhaps due to the previous excitement being unmet by whatever it was she was afraid may be watching or lurking.  She faced the wall and tucked her bandage into her pocket with the vial she had stolen from the cart.  Continuing her search pattern, she used both hands and her feet as she had before.  

Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten

She remembered the opposite wall was very long.  Twenty four steps from the foot of the bed.  Thirty two steps in total length.  She kept counting.  It was at 19 that she came to the next corner.  This one, like all the others turned inside, not out.  

She had counted ten steps from this new corner before her fingers touched a raised area on the wall.  Julia’s heart immediately began to race as she frantically ran her fingers across what she was sure was a door frame.  She felt around the door.  It seemed to be a standard size and shape and felt metallic.  Julia thought it might be an exterior door.  She became excited at the possibility that beyond this door was the outside world.  A world of sunlight, cars, phones… people.  She reached for the doorknob.  She found it on the left side of the door.  It was cold and solid.  There was no lock on her side but the knob did not move.  It didn’t turn and felt as though it were locked from the other side.  She put her body weight into the door and pushed, hoping to pop the lock without making a lot of noise.

The door moved only slightly, but did not open.  Julia sunk to the floor.  Her hands fell to her sides as she leaned against the door in defeat.  From the beneath the door, Julia felt a warm air on her hands.  In her excitement she hadn’t noticed the change in temperature on her bare feet.  The air was not moving fast but felt warm and inconsistent as it passed under the door.  She lowered her head to the ground, placing her face in front of the small opening under the door.  The warm air gusted in at various speeds, some enough to move her hair.  Julia breathed in.  The air seemed fresher and more dry than the dank air she had been breathing.  There was some kind of dust in the air and she couldn’t inhale much before she began to cough in spite of her fear.

She tried to stifle it as best as she could but she had to cough.  The first muffled cough caused a sharp pain in her stomach where the glass had stabbed her.  She reached for it instinctively and the second cough was loud and echoed in the room.  She closed her eyes tightly and tried to focus on not coughing.  Her hand felt slightly damp.  The cough had opened her wound.  With one hand on her wound and the other holding her bandage over her mouth, she coughed more and let her breathing return to normal.  She took some deeper breaths and switching hands she placed the bandage back over the wound and propped herself up against the door again, resting her head below the doorknob.  

She felt tired.  Her anxiety had been so high for so long that she hadn’t realized how tired she really was.  She considered for a moment the possibility that it might not be morning yet and that there may be light once the sun came up.  She hoped that piece of metal behind her was all that separated her from the outside world and that maybe when morning came, the sunlight would be visible from under the door and give her a better idea of where she was.  

She peered under the door, hoping for a sign of light or life but found nothing but more warm air and dust.  Turning away from the door she laid her head on the ground and closed her eyes, pacified for the moment that she might soon be safe. The warm air and the thought of the rising sun comforted her.

 

On a strangely yet powerfully lit stage danced a myriad of medical personnel.  They all wore scrubs, vibrantly colored and form-fitting.  There was music or perhaps there wasn’t.  There was a rhythm for sure, but the tone was neither gleeful nor somber.  It just was.  There was a mist about it, gray and random.  The dancers moved in harmony to the “being” of sound and misty movement around them.

With perfect choreography, the first group of nurses, clad in yellow, performed flawless aerials as those in forest green elegantly surfed crimson medical carts pushed by stronger nurses in brown.  Blue trapezing surgeons swirled in from above on large rings.  Their backs were flanked by flowing brilliant white lab coats.  While they spun above, the green surfers began to fling glass vials from pockets and sleeves, seemingly endlessly as they performed center stage.  The vials sparkled in the light like prisms in the sun.  And in the air, the vials remained, spinning in perfect synchronicity but not falling.  Rather, they were floating.  They spun and then floated a slow and delicate descent towards the marble floor.

All at once the vials made contact and instead of resting softly as their journey would have implied, they exploded.  Tiny misshapen shards took all positions at once, their instantaneous travel marked only by the threadlike trails of blood now spilling from every dancer on stage.  And then time stopped.  All were frozen in space and in the horror of their prop’s explosive wake.  No longer was there music.  No longer was there sound nor harmony or any semblance of order.  There was chaos.  Frozen chaos flanked by beautiful ruby curtains destined to remain open on this macabre scene.  A diorama of brutality so intricate in detail that every scratch, every tear of flesh was perfectly accented with blood.

The brilliance of the light remained the only constant, though it shown through the violent shards, now coated in blood, igniting the stage in a brilliant display of Merlot and Noir set ablaze by blinding light.  The frozen dancers maintained their poses, now surrounded and penetrated by what could have easily been mistaken for red laser sights had one not seen the prior explosion.

The prolonged instant began to regain pace with time, though very slowly and not in unison.  The wounded moved first, faster than the glass and blood trails around them.  Their concentrated expressions were now gone and replaced with fear and pain.  They moved slowly, clutching at the holes in their bodies and the injuries to their skin.  The blood trails moved next, even more slowly than the dancers.  Blood streaked downward from every line, coating the floors and walls and replacing the wine-colored light with tangible suffering.

The light faded as the dancers fell, now in sync with the shards and blood.  The curtains closed and there was total darkness.  It became warm… very warm.  And then hot.  Burning and searing.  The air became thick and rancid of burning wood, flesh and embers.

Julia began to cough.  In her first waking moment, she had forgotten where she was.  In the next moment she was angry for still not knowing where she was but merely remembering her short tour around this unknown space.  With no light nor apparent changes to her surroundings, she couldn’t determine how long she had slept.  Under the door there was no light.  The sporadic pulses of warm air continued.  She reached for the door knob again.  It remained still as always, despite Julia trying to hang her full weight from the small round protrusion.  She let go and grabbed at her stomach feeling the sharp pain of irritating a wound.  Her fingers remained dry.  The bleeding had long-since stopped and the delicate scab that had formed seemed more solid than it had before though still very tender.  She put her back against the door as she sat.

Julia was angry.  She had hoped, and for that she was angry at herself.  Realizing at once that her situation had not changed she slammed her elbow backwards into the door before laying her face in her hands.  She would not cry though her body shook now in fury more than distress.  There were few options for her now.  She knew that.  She could retrace her steps back to the bed and what she was becoming less and less convinced was a whisper, proceed into the unknown area of this place with random steps or strategic tracing… or she could wait.

She felt she had already waited, though unconscious when she had done so, and her adrenaline would not allow her to sleep again.  She also felt certain that nothing about the path she had taken thus far had changed.  Perhaps a vial or two had changed positions, collided with some unknown object in the void in front of her, but nothing so significant as to warrant a retreat.

Retreat.

With a sad acceptance and defeated resolve, Julia stood and felt the wall beyond the door.  Again, Julia counted her steps as she did.  Only two steps this time and a new thing in her life emerged.  Heavy.  Denim.  Or maybe plastic?  It swung slightly when touched as if hanging.  A curtain perhaps.

A window!

Julia frantically batted at the cloth, again hoping for hopes sake and this time not for an unlocked door, but a window.  A window of glass as frail and brittle as her emotional state.  She thought of the cracking glass tube and the shard she removed from her stomach.  She scratched beyond the hanging thing and found cold wall where she had prayed a window might be.  She reached further beyond the thing, thinking perhaps another may hang nearby.  Nothing.

As her hope faded, so too did her frantic search.  She inhaled deeply, preparing for another sigh into the abyss and suddenly she clutched at her chest as though she were choking.  The air around this hanging thing was foul.  Whatever this was smelled of smoke and mold.  Julia stepped back, closer to the door and cleared her lungs as best as she could.  She began to feel anxious, more so than before, almost as if under attack by the smell.

Smoke.

Her heart raced, and she felt a cold wave overcome her.  Again, clutching at her chest, she found herself struggling for air though not choking.  She was panicked.  Having never had a panic attack before, Julia’s mind raced with thoughts of heart failure.  Her chest ached.  She thought of the vials and the soreness in her arm where surely a needle had been.  Her hyperventilation brought her again to the floor, head between her knees and rocking.  She was dying.  She could feel her lungs collapsing and despite knowing in her heart that the world around her was a mystery, she knew it was menacing and had come for her in a pitch black tidal wave of all her fears combined.

The smoke.  I can’t breathe.  It’s hot.  Smoke.  I’m dying…

Julia fainted, rolled to her side and began to breathe normally again.

 

The demon had found her.  It had come from the darkness, it’s long thick wings now beating against the air as fire raged around it.  There was light from the fire.  Somewhere from behind this wretched beast was fire light broken by falling debris.  The creature moved in on her, quickly and without hesitation.  Smoke swirled behind it as the thing’s black wings caught the air like sails against the wind.  She could not move.  She could barely breathe.  It had come for her.

The creature was grabbing for Julia’s face.  Through smoke the thing was without contrast making it impossible to recognize.  It smelled horrible and as it drew closer so did the intensity of the odor.  Its face was close and through the random light Julia saw the twisted and mutilated features now moving as the thing’s mouth opened.  Hot foul smelling breath hit her face and she managed one desperate act of defense with her right hand, slapping the monster before it restrained her arm.  She could see its teeth moving towards her.

There was pressure on her head and then the air cleared of smoke and of heat.  The thing no longer had Julia, but she knew the creature lingered somewhere in this new place.  She could not see it for she was now blind, but she could smell it.  Old filth and smoke.  Unmistakable scent of the demon.

She tried to scream yet there was no sound.  More pressure.  This time on her skin.  Cool.  Damp.  Caressing.  It may well have been comforting had Julia the motor skills and vision to identify what was happening to her.  Pressure again, this time on her arm, followed quickly by pain.

Nothingness.

 

She stirred.  Panic began to rise again but curiosity for the winged thing of her dreams held it at mild anxiety.  Julia stood, closed her eyes and slowly breathed the air around her.  Faint hints of charred air grew stronger as she leaned towards the not-curtain.  Her breathing quickened but defiantly she reached towards it, determined to identify the thing that had incapacitated her through mere existence.

It was cool, rough and dusty in places.  There were seams and folds like no curtain she’d ever known.  Reaching up she felt where it was hanging.  A hook was embedded into the wall and from this hook hung what Julia believed was a large cloak.  She took it down, moving it slowly to be sure it was not attached to anything else.  There was a shifting in the fabric from something inside.  Julia examined the article and concluded this was a very thick and very large coat.  It had pockets and straps.  Searching the pockets, she found wads of thin, dry paper.

She unfolded a piece, hoping to make sense of it in the dark and was not surprised when she was unable to do so.  In another pocket she found something much more interesting.

Keys!

Her heart raced again at the prospect of unlocking something that may lead to her freedom.  Perhaps one of these keys operated a vehicle that could take her home quickly and safely.  Her inquisitive ponderings subsided when she realized she hadn’t yet discovered a lock into which she could insert a key.  Nevertheless, she took the vial and bloody cloth from her pocket and replaced them with the keys.  She wrapped the vial with the cloth and gently placed it next to the keys.

Considering this for a moment she contemplated the unknown of the space around her.  Would she find other items of potential value to her in her methodical wanderings?  Would they all fit in this one pocket?  The thought of wearing the heavy coat scared her.  Despite the chill in the air and upon the surfaces she had come across, the warmth this coat could provide may not compensate for the fact that it clearly belonged to someone else who had at one time, or another had been in this same room… and could have potentially been the one who imprisoned her herein.  She tried on the coat.  As expected it was much too large.  The sleeves fell beyond her finger tips while the bottom touched her knees.  The collar was also large and just as sturdy as the rest of the garment.

Julia thought of the cart again and the glass that had impaled her.  She imagined that sliver of glass would have a much more difficult time puncturing this coat than it had her skin.  Despite the smell and her own apprehension, Julia kept the coat on and leaned against the wall once more.  The lack of cold was immediate and comforting.  Julia closed her eyes again and considered her position in relation to all of the steps she had taken.

She knew she had left a bed behind her and walked about 5 paces to a wall.  To the right of that wall she knew there were nearly 8 steps before the wall met a corner.  Beyond that, she hadn’t explored.  Instead, she had traveled back to the spot on the wall opposite the bed and moved to the left, roughly 24 steps.  Again she met a corner and turned left, walking another 40 steps where now there sat a properly destroyed medical cart covering an unknown amount of her stomach contents.

From there was another left turn and around 19 paces to another corner.  Ten steps from that corner brought her to the  door and her new layer of clothing.  It was difficult to picture the space around her.  It wasn’t a square.  And unless she confused her steps along the way, it wasn’t really a rectangle either.  It seemed like more of an “L” shape at this point and that was assuming that beyond the hook on the wall was 20 or so paces to either a corner turning right or a wall separating her from the strange bed and distorted sound she hadn’t heard in a long time.

For a moment she wished she had paper and a pencil to map out her position and then rolled her eyes upon remembering the total lack of light.  For her sake, she prayed her memory and sense of direction would withstand.

It was about five steps when she was again confronted with change.  Another corner, another left, another piece of a now very confusing puzzle.  She didn’t stop this time and instead continued down the wall.  Three paces and yet another change.  This one was familiar.  Another door frame and yet different than the first.  Very different.

The frame, on this wall, did not house a door.

It’s another fucking room.

Feeling around the frame she determined it was nearly as deep as her arm from her finger tips to her elbow.  Carefully reaching beyond the frame she felt nothing.  The air felt the same.  On either side of this new opening was no switch, hook or other artifact.  From here she found only more questions and uncertainty.  Remembering the area surrounding the bed and regretting not having explored it in its entirety, Julia opted not to enter the new space and continued down the wall.  Ten more paces of nothing and then the wall simply ended.  It remained as thick as the entrance to the previous room and did not corner into a new wall.  Keeping one hand on the wall and reaching out with her other hand she tried to reach for the opposite wall, convinced she had been there previously.

She felt nothing.  She imagined if she were correct, that the wall across from the one she was touching was a place she had been before and that she would not be able to reach it without losing contact with her anchor.  Julia considered the possibility of releasing the wall and forging ahead to prove her theory.  Anxiety crept over her like a cold rain as she imagined the void in which she would find herself.  Closing her eyes and controlling her breathing, she started to feel dizzy at the notion of having no bearings on the world around her save the cold concrete floor beneath her.  Surely the wall she was so firmly attached to now would remain in the same place.  Surely if she were wrong about her position she could easily return to the feigned safety of the familiar.

Surely she was in no space to be sure of anything.  Leaning forward, her fingers now barely contacting the recently-ended wall, she tried again to reach across.  Something inside her desperately needed to know what was there.  Something begged her not to follow the ended wall to the other side and forge ahead.  Something pleaded within her to have some certainty in her uncertain situation.

Her fingers, now merely grazing the aura of the wall descended and rested, with her arm, at her side.  Julia existed on an uncertain platform in the vacuum of eternity feeling pulled in every direction and none at all.  The air around her was still and cool.  She was a singular point in a vast and infinite space.  Moving in any direction other than where she had been would lead her to something or nothing and she would never know which unless she did so.  She felt her head swaying slightly and considered her own balance as she reminded herself she was on firm ground in a finite space with a reality surrounding her that at least proved she existed in a measurable area.

Julia knelt to her knees, felt the ground around her and laid down.  With her feet, she found the wall she had recently abandoned and for a moment felt grounded and safe.  With her arms she reached forward, longer now than she had been while vertical and firmly touched the opposite wall.  She couldn’t be sure it was a place she’d been but she felt confident that it was likely less than 20 paces to the left if she wanted to revisit her last meal or the remnants of whatever had stabbed her earlier.