The fluorescent lights flickered endlessly above, stinging my eyes as I waited patiently on my name being called. I’d been sitting in the same uncomfortable waiting room chair for God knows how long and my backside was becoming sweatier and more irritated from the cheap synthetic leather cushioning by the second.
I glanced around the reception area of my local doctor’s practice, the pristine interior now so familiar to me. I was utterly perplexed by the absence of any other patients. All the seats were empty. Unusual, given it was a Monday; typically the busiest day when the town’s old crones would populate the space, eager to moan about life’s impartial cruelty amongst themselves and to anyone outside their temperamental clique who’d pretend to listen. The place was desolate. I hadn’t even noticed a receptionist manning the desk on my way in. Like the good boy I am, I had simply found a chair and planted myself without a second thought. I was early by about a half hour, after all.
Making my way over to the front desk, I rang the antique little bell they still continued to use after all the years I had been going there. Shiny and functional despite its age, it echoed out, resonating long enough through the empty beige-painted halls to make me uncomfortable. Nothing but a jarring silence followed. Now, it really was obvious. Dead silence. No chatter, wheeling of chairs or the coughing and retching of the sick. Nothing at all.
A chill ran through me like I was being stared down by some wild, unseen beast, ready to tear me limb-from-limb and consume my meaty parts.
I turned around, staring through the glass sliding doors at the cold, muggy day outside. It was starting to rain again. A number of cars were parked in the small lot, clearly someone must have been home.
Incensed, I rang the bell several more times, becoming increasingly frustrated with each sharp ding.
“You know what? Forget it!” I said aloud to noone, spinning around and walking the short distance down the foyer hallway and out the automatic sliding doors. I hurried over to my car in an attempt to escape the incoming shower pouring from the imposing gray clouds overhead, beeping it open as I jogged before throwing open the driver’s side door and practically leaping inside. When I slammed the door shut behind me, I became instantly aware that something was very wrong. My mind reeled in confused awe.
The sleek interior leather scent of my coupé was suddenly replaced by the strong, overwhelming stink of bleach and dank water, the warm seats by cold, damp concrete; my relief by shocked terror. I sprang to my feet, feeling around in the darkness until my fingers met a switch, flipping it dimly illuminated the area in faint flickerings before the single bare bulb became steady. A supply cupboard?
A mop bucket filled with dirty, stagnant water and a row of metal shelving containing sealed packets of A4 paper were my only companions. I lunged forward, turning the handle and throwing the door open, realising I seemed to be in some sort of office building. A long windowless hallway stretched before me, seemingly endless in both directions.
I stumbled out from the dim closet and made my way forward. Trying the doors on either side accomplished nothing at first. All locked. I walked for hours until finally a handle turned completely, relinquishing its mysterious interior. Darkness was all that awaited within. Nothing but opaque, impenetrable darkness. I had a lighter in my pocket, sparking its flame seemed to make no difference as I held it into the black void ahead. It was as if the darkness swallowed every shred of light which crossed its threshold. For all I knew, there was no floor, no walls and no ceiling. My first step could very well be one into an infinite abyss, tumbling downwards for all time, swallowing me up just like the light.
No. No way, I thought. Slamming the door shut, I trudged along further down the fuzzy-carpeted hallway, now almost more infuriated than frightened. Another few hours went by, and once again a handle turned and revealed the unknown. This time, there was light. Near-blinding light. It invited me in and I held my arms outstretched as I stepped into it, ready to be embraced and returned home. Something about it, I’m still not sure, it was just so unbelievably comforting.
I felt no ground when I stepped inside. The incessant light scorched my eyes as I soared very ungracefully downward, screaming all the way. No wind rippled my cheeks as I fell face-first, and then, once more I was somewhere else entirely.
Pulling my quivering hands away from my eyes as I lay curled up and shaking on a cold hardwood floor, it quickly became clear that I was in the midst of some strange, vast library. Rows and rows of books created a roofless corridor ahead of me, each large bookcase giving way to another interchanging corridor. The ceiling was less of a ceiling, but more of a foggy white nothingness, wisping tendrils of thick mist licked down to meet me before dissipating back into its billowing mass. Opting not to take any turns, I stayed true. Never deviating much in the fear of getting lost. Although there clearly was no being ‘lost’ there, just by being there, I was lost, and I realised that any rationality I brought with me was now completely meaningless.
Again, I continued for hours, until I lost track of quite how long, vainly hoping to be met with a wall in the distance, something, anything to indicate I was even in a real building anymore. That hope was rapidly dwindling, my resolve all but turning to blind panic as I struggled onwards through my fatigue, when something to the right caught my eye. It was a little girl.
Sitting amongst a mess of books, her bright pink dress stood out vibrantly against the brownish backdrop of the library. Tentatively, I approached at a snail’s pace, foot over foot, working up the nerve to address the inexplicable child who sat either entirely oblivious to or, more frighteningly, seemingly unfazed by her surroundings.
Her focus was on a thick leather-bound book, eyes pointing straight down as she intently scanned its many pages, flipping to the next every so often. Her ebony brown hair draped down, obscuring her face.
When she looked up at me as I reached out to get her attention, I realised that she in fact didn’t have a face at all. Her head was there, but where the features should have been was just an impossibly dark and empty chasm.
For some reason, at that moment, I wasn’t afraid. I lifted up my arm and with an open palm I pushed it through into the blackness of the girl’s face. It swallowed me, and everything disappeared. Dissolved, somehow, piece by piece. Sucked in along with me.
I screamed aloud, loud enough to wake the dead, like I’d had the sort of intense night terror that I thought I’d left behind in childhood, and I fell out of my seat, startling the other people in the waiting room. I apologised broadly before hurrying off to the disabled bathroom by the reception desk. Locking the door behind me, I checked myself out in the mirror and splashed tepid tap water over my sweaty forehead.
After taking a few deep breaths, I peeked out into the waiting area, where all was apparently completely normal. A few agitated pensioners shot me a glare, clearly disturbed by my sudden awakening, but that was it. Still shaking, I stepped out and began to make my way to the sliding front doors, the gloomy weather appearing as the salvation from my nightmare which still felt as close as ever.
“The doctor will see you now!” The receptionist called after me, but I kept going, quickening my pace, desperate to feel the rain on my skin.
Bursting into the car park, I broke into a run towards my Mercedes, peeling out dangerously onto the road home as soon as the engine started.
The front door slammed shut behind me and I bolted the lock, finally allowing myself to relax. It was over. It was only a dream.
Pouring myself a whisky, I had a light dinner, then some more whisky, and as I watched the sun go down through my bedroom window I nestled in for the night. Glad to be free.
I woke up in that same supply cupboard. Every way out is a lie. A sick joke designed to toy with me and extinguish any hope of freedom.
I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this, but whatever it was, I am so, so sorry. Please. I can’t keep turning these doorknobs and falling into the light. There are things that come from the dark pits. They crawl from the void like hungry insects. I can’t escape the children. Faceless, all of them. They call out to me despite their lack of mouths… and they’re so loud. Deafeningly so. They want me dead, I know it. No, not dead… something worse. Even worse than this terrible purgatory, I just know it. They feed from me like ticks. I can feel it…
The time tally I continue to etch into the walls to keep track of the days has filled the entirety of the tiny room, the sickening bleach smell ever-present despite my moving the mop bucket a mile down the hall when I decided to make my new ‘home’ here. It lingers just the same.
All those little black lines, floor to ceiling. Too many to count at this point… too many to even fathom as the product of a single individual lifetime. Though my body doesn’t rot and my stomach never growls, I ache for life as though they did, or the release of death, even that would be a mercy. Whichever the powers that be decide for me, the possibility of that coming day is all that keeps me going.
The depressing sameness of this place… these places. They have clear differences, and yet the feeling remains the same. A tedious dread… an overwhelming, agonising loneliness. How I long to watch these walls fall apart and degrade, the way they would in a natural world. I find myself missing decay desperately.