A room. A chair within the room.
A young woman sits on the chair within the room. Hands folded neatly into her
nap. She is well dressed in a pair of dark jeans and an oversized shirt. She is
surprised the room looks like this. She had expected something else but unsure
what. She was just certain that she had expected something different. There is
nothing special about the room, nothing extraordinary except its complete
mundaneness. It is medium sized the walls are a dirty cream colour. Once upon a
time it may have been a bright pleasant room but now the dust had settled and
stained the walls brown. There are no windows just one light- electric and
dull.
She sits.
She had expected something
different. Unsure what. Certain it was meant to be different. She looks around
slowly and stares blankly at the walls. She looks at the brown stains. They
always use the colour black, she thought. To describe this. It’s always black.
Never brown, shades of brown. Shades of dullness. Shades of decay and
wretchedness. She moves her hands from her lap and stands slowly. Her legs feel
weak and heavy at the same time, her knees like tired cogs too old to carry the
weight. The light dims slightly and she looks up. The bulb looks the same but
the room is darker. Her head turns slowly to face a wall. A shape slowly begins
to emerge, she blinks rapidly. The walls were blank a moment ago but now she is
sure there is a shape. She closes her eyes tightly and opens them. The shape is
still there. She walks forwards and looks closely. A solid edge is now in the
wall. Her eyes follow upwards and the shape of a door is present. She runs her
fingers tentatively around the edges and takes a step back. Something twinges inside
her and she turns her head looking at the other walls. They are now covered
with doors of all sizes. Something pulls at her, an invisible rope pulling at
her stomach leading her. She takes a deep breath and walks towards a door on
the opposite wall. The room darkens and her steps feel slower. She looks down
at her feet and notices a sticky residue on her shoes. They squelch as she
moves cementing her gradually with every step she takes. She looks up at the
door determined to reach it. The room expands before her. The door is further
away and smaller but she continues onwards. Her shoes rip at the edges as she
forces her feet to move forward defying the glue, challenging it to make her
stand still. She struggles towards the door putting all her strength in taking
one step at a time. The glue is thicker and stronger but she pushes forward.
Her breath is ragged. The muscles in her legs pull agonisingly against
themselves. Levers and pulleys groaning against the burden of the task. She
reaches the door and touches the handle. Sweat covers her face dripping onto
her clothes. Patches of sweat have formed into stains on her shirt. She
breathes evenly and twists the handle. It crumbles in her hand and she thinks
she can hear the sound as her mind cracks slightly. Her heart squeezes against
itself.
Her eyes search the ground
looking for the glue. She sees wooden planks on the ground. Her shoes are now
free of the glue and she follows the slats which form into a small bridge.
Slightly rotten and damp it squeaks when she puts a hesitant foot upon it. It
bares her weight and she walks slowly her hands grasping at the rails, a heavy
pressure in her chest. She feels nervous. She walks forward into the different
shades of darkness. Around her dust swirls into large circles building into a
tunnel of shades of black and brown. It swirls around her surrounding her with
its claustrophobic colour its lack if air. She can’t breathe and yet she
continues. The dust blows into her eyes and mouth and her skin feels cold goose
bumps building across the surface. Her hands pull her back and she forces them
across the wooden rails splinters digging deep into her skin. Flesh wincing and
breaking against the force of her resolve. She is on the edge of the abyss and
looks down. The tunnel leads into a limitless void of precious nothingness. She
craves it and yet knows that the step will be final. Finality that can never be
undone. Her foot dangles cautiously over the edge and she tries to remember
something. A quicksand like grip tightens around her ankle. It pulls her
forward. Her face is wet without her realising and she allows her body to become
lax. The fingers of the grip thank her and pulls her closer. She watches as her
ankle is now under the dark black and her leg is pulled in deeper. As she
watches herself sink the smallest of lights appears in her peripheral vision. A
slight light easily missed but it glimmers and wills her to look at it. She
turns her eyes, left, and there it is. A small fire fly. Its bottom twinkling
making her smile. She looks at it hovering near her face. It seems the tiny
creature is waiting for her, beckoning her. She steps back, the grip loosens
willingly and the firefly flies away. She runs after it the wooden slats
merging into ground. Her shoes have disappeared and she is now wearing a skirt
and a vest. She has flowers in her hair and her feet are bare. The fire fly
lingers above her head, the room is still dark but the firefly points or so it
seems to point behind her. She glances behind her and there is a flickering on
the dark walls as though a projector was loading up. An image forms and there
she is. Laughing. A long time ago, sitting on the grass with old faces she
hasn’t seen in years. Faces that belong to new strangers and old friends.
The crush begins. It starts in
her head and spreads across her face and her chest pressing against her lungs
tightening around her waist crushing her thighs wrenching at her bones. Nostalgia
wraps its strong arms around her and squeezes. She tries to scream and nothing
happens. Her throat is dry and the room is filled with the sound of her silent
sobs and her pained laughter. And she remembers, finally. The feeling. The
firefly watches her, hovering slightly above her eye line. She watches the film
of herself and stares at herself. The colours are in a dreamlike 70’s
overcompensating vintage brightness. The edges are slightly blurred the frames
a tad slow. A film made by unknown hands with amateur zoom in’s and unrealistic
tableaus. The grass is too bright. She cries as she sees the yellowness of the
daises, the green stems crowning her head. The polished nails the pedicured
feet. Bare. She tumbles to the ground content and full of laughter. She
remembers that feeling that word; that she was happy. Once. She wants to go
back to that time. That was the time.
The firefly watches her. She is not seeing, he thinks. She continues to stare
willing herself to remember clearly and fails to see the details. The colours
begin to change gradually. The green grass is not too bright, the daisies
slightly wilted. Her feel are sandaled and there are grass stains on her skirt.
She was happy she decides. She poses
for a photo with her friends smiling showing off her white teeth at the camera.
She doesn’t see the tiny crisscross pattern across her wrists. A brown a shade
darker than her own skin colour. The firefly watches her. She looks up at it
blinking its light at her. She doesn’t want to see. She looks at the screen and
the colours have faded and now she notices the details. The bags under her
eyes, the marks on her arms, the label on a box popping out from her handbag,
the twitch in her smile, the hesitancy of her eyes. She looks up once more at
the firefly and tries to run. The firefly hovers and flies away. She can’t run,
she is stuck. There are more fireflies; they are everywhere, twinkling in the
dark room. She closes her eyes and sobs pleading with them to leave. They fill
the room with her memories distorted over the years. The colours are sharp and
dull. She runs after them, swatting at them to leave her. But they mean no
harm. They mean nothing. She stands in the middle of the room and looks at
herself. She sees the years flashing past slowly revealing the details. The
walls begin to whisper filling the room with unfinished sentences and hissed
words. Her head is full with empty sound and her cries are silent. The
fireflies continue their watch. They cannot leave her. Not yet. The room floods
with the sounds of her sobs and the sounds in her mind. The walls close in,
inch by inch. She falls to her knees and clasps her hands to her chest.
The room brightens slowly and the
images die away. She looks up to the ceiling and her heart screams out in rage.
She is on her knees, her head bowed before an empty room and she begs. Every
part of her screams into silence, help me. Reward my faith. Help me.
The room darkens once more and
the images appear once again. They are random. Appearing and disappearing in no
particular pattern. The chair is now there once again. The wooden slats are
before her. The voices begin their malevolent harmony and dust blows into her
eyes. The doors appear and disappear, the abyss calls to her enticingly. She
sits down neatly and looks around her. Nothing is real, reality was distorted
from the moment it began.
Someone is asking her a question.
She faces familiar eyes. It is dark outside and she can hear distant tides
moving towards the moon. The wind blows warmly through her hair. She looks at
the face. ‘I’m fine’, she replies. She receives a kiss on her forehead. A squeeze
on her hand.
A small flickering catches her
eye. A small twinkling.
A tiny flying creature twinkling
at her. Waiting for her. A firefly hovering above her eye line. It makes her
smile.
