It’s blank. The wall is blank. There is a knocking once more. The wall is featureless. Painted a soft grey. The knocking happens again. It’s beyond the wall. I get up. Why was I here? I came here for a reason, I know. I always have a reason. It isn’t a chair. I was sitting on a bed. It wasn’t a comfortable bed. Felt more like a bench. The wall is still blank. The knocking grows louder. I’m forgetting something. Something important. That thought that there’s something missing is like an itching in the back of my mind. Ever present, ever irritating, and the more I scratch at it, the worse it gets. I walk over to it. It isn’t far. Two paces, at most. I touch it. The wall is cool, but not cold. Rough. Stonelike. The knocking returns. No, not knocking. It almost is an echo. Some loud banging sound echoing around outside the wall.
I didn’t turn on a light, I muse. Why can I see the wall so clearly? I look around. There is a window, a small, rectangular slit above the bed. It shines a light in. Not sunlight. It is supposed to seem like sunlight, to feel like it, but something is off. A humming in the air. The slight taste of wires burning metal. Why would whoever made this place want it to seem like sunlight? If there is a window, there ought to be a door. I look around. There isn’t one. Not one apparent, in any case. The window is not big enough for me to get in here through, so unless I somehow appeared in here, or this room was built around me, There has to be a door. I touch the wall, walking around the room. Three paces, by two paces. Not a particularly large room. The knocking continues. Louder still. There does not feel to be a door. No telltale cracks between the floor and wall, no unexpected airflow. If there is a door, it isn’t on the bottom of this place.
Turning around, I leap up to the thin rectangular window. It’s been a while since I’ve worked out. Holding myself up there is not super fun. Peering through, it is very bright. In fact, it seems almost like it is nothing but bright. Slowly, I push one of my hands forwards, deeper into the window. The ledge is around four inches deep, then my fingers hit something. Glass. It feels hot. I pull my hand back instinctively, like they were burning up, before I remember that doing so would leave me hanging by my fingertips. They hold out just long enough for me to realize and start to raise my hand back up to grip the window. I fall onto the hard bed. Okay, I think, something hinky is going on. I try to relax on the bed.
Staring up at the ceiling of my doorless room, it looks similar to the walls, though not as well lit. Taking a deep breath, I think. This place being built around me is a ridiculous notion. Which leaves a door I cannot see. A door up high. Like, perhaps, on a ceiling. And if I’m to find that, I need to be at my best. I look at my hand, at least I pulled my fingers away before they got burned at all. Not having functional fingers would be trouble. Which just leaves some rest, to focus up my mind. In the not particularly comfortable bed, I fall asleep.
There is a knocking at the door. It stirs me from my rest. Bleary eyed, I get up off of the couch. I’m in my living room. Massive. I could have sworn I was elsewhere. The sun shines in through the bay window. Another knock at the door. I slowly get up and look out the peephole. I don’t recognize the couple. But they are carrying a fruit basket. “Yes?” I say as I open the door.
“Hi,” one of the pair says. “We were just wanting to welcome you to the neighborhood.”
The other of the pair adds, “Yes, we’re just across the street, and if you need anything, feel free to pop over and ask.”
Behind them, there is a man staring at me. Watching me. Waiting. “Thanks?” I say slowly as they hand me the fruit basket. I don’t want it. But I smile and nod and thank them like it is a nice thing to do. “I’ll be sure to do that.”
“By the way, we’re on our way to the other neighbors, I know you don’t know them and they don’t know you but we could introduce you,” the first of the pair offers.
I smile and shake my head. “Sorry, I’m busy,” I say. They nod understandingly. I close the door, turn around, and head back into the house. I need to repaint these walls, I muse. They’re just a bland, light grey tone. Like they want to be stone but aren’t. I head over to the trashcan and drop the fruit basket into it. I go back to the sofa, turning on the TV. As I watch the news, someone comes into the room. A young looking kid. Maybe seven. Looks a lot like me. I’d say my son, but I don’t have any children. I’m pretty sure, at least.
“Hey,” he says to me.
I look confused at him and reply, “What’s up?”
“You look comfortable,” the kid answers.
I nod. “I guess I kind of am.” Though, as I say that, the sofa does feel harder than before. Almost like a bench.
“Why didn’t you go with that couple to visit your neighbors?” the kid asks.
I shrug. “I didn’t want to?” I ask as an answer.
“But you could meet the neighbors if you wanted to?” the kid presses.
What kind of question is that, I think. Of course I could. Why would I not be able to? “Why are you asking me these questions?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “If I told you, it wouldn’t mean anything,” he answers. “Go, meet the neighbors.”
“No,” I say instinctively. Weirdly instinctively. That’s not an instinct. Something hinky is going on. I head over to the front door and open it. The neighbors are gone. The man is still there. Still staring at me. As I start to walk through the door, the man opens his mouth. I hear an echoing, knocking sound.
I stand up in the room. The now familiar walls lit by the shining slit in the wall. That knocking that started from the man’s mouth finishes the echoing. That must have been what the kid was trying to tell him. The kid was his own subconscious, appearing as his son for some reason, trying to convince him that he was dreaming. To keep him from getting lost in the dreams. A voice speaks from behind him. The kid’s voice. “If only it were that simple,” it says.
I whip around. No one is there. “What do you mean?” I ask.
The voice of the kid repeats, once again from behind me. “If I told you, it wouldn’t mean anything.” It’s almost like he’s standing right behind me, just out of sight. I shake my head. Just ignore the kid. Focus on the here and now.
No door in the walls meant the door was on the ceiling. That’s why I tried to rest in the first place. Once again, I climb up onto the hard bed and hop up to grip the window. I slide one hand in, wedging my full forearm inside. Pushing in and down, I pull my other hand out and start to feel the roof around the window. Sure enough, there is a slight break in the ceiling’s seam with the wall, slightly off center in the room. I return my hand to the ledge, then drop down. “That was pretty easy to find,” the kid’s voice says as I walk over and mark the area of the wall directly under the door. I pivot the bed so it is directly under the marks. There is another echoing series of knocking noises from outside the walls, further away this time.
“You mean the trap door on the ceiling?” I say to the kid, dismissively. I start to push the bed up on its end.
“Just curious, of course,” the kid says, “How did you make that mark on the wall?”
I almost chuckle. It was with the piece of chalk in my hand. I can feel it. I look down and see it. “This piece of chalk,” I state it with a heavy, grumpy exhaled breath.
“And when did you pick that up?” he asks. I chuckle. Then I think about it. I didn’t have it while I was holding myself up. Obviously, as I needed both hands. Then I dropped down to the ground. I walked over to the wall, and I made the mark. Then I moved the bed, and I don’t remember having anything in my hands. And then the chalk was in my hand.
“Wait,” I say, “The chalk was only in my hand after you asked about it.”
“Curious,” the voice of the kid replies, “What do you think that means?”
I must still be dreaming. I sit down and think. The last dream was an open space visible everywhere, but all my instincts were telling me to stay at home. This is a prison without any outside world, but all I’ve wanted to do since I woke up the first time was get out. To get out of the last dream, I walked outside, against my instinct. So do I just stay still? Not sleep, but not try to escape. I’m feeling a bit claustrophobic, but the light shining in is helping that. Making it feel more open than it actually is. Taking a deep breath, I sit. I breathe. And I wait to wake up.
“So you believe doing nothing will help you?” the voice asks, after a few minutes. I turn my head, forgetting for a moment that he is not actually there.
“What else could it be?” I press the voice, “Going against instinct was what got me out of the last one and into this one.”
“And your only instinct here has been to leave?” the voice asks, “Your only comfort has been hope for escape?”
Yet again, he asks a ridiculous thing. But every other time the voice has asked something ridiculous, it has had a deeper meaning. The light has been comforting, I realize. And after another moment, I remember. When I touched it, it was warm, but my hand reacted like it was burning. There’s no burn on my fingertips. In fact, they seem fine. So I need to touch the light, I think. No, I don’t just want to touch the door. This is a prison. I need to break the door down. The underside of the bed has springs. I rip one off. Climbing onto the bed, I try my best to look like I’m breaking out. Doing what the dream wants. Then, with a swift motion, I stab the spring into that slit. Glass breaks. The light begins to fade. After a few whacks, the room falls into darkness. The knocking approaches once more. One of the walls is no longer there, revealing a hallway. And a figure stands there, in the now open wall, knocking on the other walls with a stick. The figures’ mouth opens, and I can feel a shiver down my spine.
I wake up on a metal bench. The room is wholly metal. Strange designs on the walls. Looks almost like computers. First thing I notice is the figure, masked, in the doorway. It is glaring at me. The door shuts. And some purple gas begins to spill into the room. I look around as the figure stares at me through the door. It looks almost like the figure from before. The one in the hallway. The one on the street. Something is wrong. I try to use the weird computers, but they don’t work. No, they do work, they just aren’t real. None of the words written on the screens are words. Am I still dreaming? I wonder. The purple gas is heavy. Makes my limbs feel heavy. This is when the voice would normally say something. But it has nothing to say. I collapse onto the metal floor of the room.
I’m in my room. My face hurts. I think I just fell out of my bed onto the floor. I think I’ve had some weird dream, because my heart is racing. From behind me, some kid whispers, “How do you feel about the walls?”
I whip around, but no one is there. The walls are fine. I kind of like the soft grey tone. It’s almost stonelike. Austere, even without any decorations on them.
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