The Unfamiliar Room

The room is unfamiliar. You don’t know how you got here. The walls seem tired from the wear of countless cigarettes soaked into them. They drag down with wrinkles of memories and cracks of the past. A heavy whiff of onions comes from somewhere beyond, but there are no windows or doors it could seep into the room from. Your face crinkles like an unwanted piece of paper at the thought of staying stuck here.

You pace at first, from one wall to another and to the next after that, a caged animal losing itself. Perhaps there has been a mistake. After all, you don’t belong here. You’ve never done anything to warrant imprisonment. Certainly someone will come and release you from this strange place.
“Hello?” You knock on the wall that once was bright with flowerful wallpaper, now yellowed and faded with time. There is no answer. “Hello?!” Your voice becomes louder as the claws of panic tighten around your throat.

When no answer comes the second time, you return to pacing, your nails dig into your palms as you tighten them into fists. Perhaps you could punch your way through. Or scrape the wall until your fingers bleed. Peel away the wallpaper to see what’s underneath.

A realization, as if someone hit you with it over the head. No source of light, but you can see just fine. Just like the streets lit by sunlight below… above? Wearing down a hole in the floorboards, you think about your options. The wood under your dress shoes is soft and you believe it should creak, but it stays silent, like everything else. The light is steady and the smell of onions everpresent.

You grow tired. Your legs ache. Sitting down by the wall, you watch the one opposite of you. As if something were to happen. Wishing that something would happen. Perhaps a door might appear. Someone will come and tell you it was a test, a stupid experiment, not that you signed up for any.

The wall comes alive with the thoughts, dark and murky, smelling like damp clothes forgotten in the washer. You can make out your fantasies of freedom among them. A flower grows in the center, black and horrible. Everything else flows aside. You are so very tired. You doze off, maybe, you don’t really know; but every time you open your eyes, the blossom expands. You know what you must do.

You rise and peel off the wallpaper in small strips of cigarette smoke. You claw at the walls, your nails fall off by the time you realize you have a small pocket knife with you. You scrape off the cement between bricks. One by one, they fall into the emptiness behind. Following the flower’s stem, you walk into the void. The light of the room fades. The tendrils of the plant pierce your skin. You feel them in your lungs, complicating your breaths. When you trip over the root, darkness fills your mind too.