I woke up in a strange room.
It all started with the sound. Strangely familiar, it cut through the blackness, crudely smashing its way into my eardrums like a wrecking ball into an unassuming wall. Although I heard the piercing noise, my consciousness remained stuck in a strange, frustrating sort of limbo state somewhere between wakefulness and slumber. I laid there for a bit as I tried to muster the strength to wake up fully, and the sound continued to grate at my ears and rattle my teeth in the meantime. With a burst of irritation, I finally got my eyes to snap open.
White ceiling. White walls. White floor. No windows, no carpets, no lights. In fact, this room was so pristine that it was devoid of even the smallest speck of dust. It had no distinguishing features besides a single doorway, the metal bed I woke up in, and me. Despite the lack of an obvious source of illumination, however, the room was brightly lit.
I looked around blearily yet nervously for the source of the sound and suddenly noticed a nightstand near the bed. On it was one of those telephones you see used in offices: it had a handset, keypad, cord plugged into the wall—the whole nine yards. Except the handset was hanging by the cord. It swung gently, nearly touching the floor. I looked at it for a moment, struggling to decide if I should return the handset to its holder or get out of the room first. Within a few moments, the desire to fix this anomaly won. After all, what if this sound was putting me in danger? Who knows what lay beyond the door, and since I probably would have to confront whatever it was at some point, I might as well catch it as much by surprise as was currently possible. I reached down and took the handset gingerly, placing it as soundlessly as I could back into its holder.
The noise stopped.
I exhaled, realizing that I’d been holding my breath the whole time. After a moment of relief-filling (yet crushing) silence, the phone began to beep softly. Something in my gut told me that this was supposed to happen, so I didn’t touch it; instead, I focused on quietly getting out of bed. It was a bit silly, since it’s not like the room was silent—the phone was beeping away, after all—but I still wanted to be as cautious as possible. I didn’t know the rules of this place, if there were any. Besides, I didn’t want to be careless and disrupt the peace that seemed to have only just then descended over the room.
I put my feet down on the floor, one at a time. It was icy and tiled with typical small, square tiles. Their edges dug into my feet slightly as I stood up. I suddenly realized that my feet were bare.
I rubbed my eyes and looked around again, both my vision and mind much clearer. The room was basically empty, like I’d thought. There weren’t any mirrors, either, so I couldn’t even see what state I was in. I looked down at myself. Aside from a few bruises and what felt like a couple pulled muscles, I seemed to be fine. I wasn’t sure where these bruises had come from, but I somehow felt like whatever had left me here wasn’t responsible for them. I then noted that I was wearing what looked like a hospital gown, which was as white and clean as the rest of the room. This creeped me out even more than I already was, and an unsettling thought entered my mind.
I wasn’t dead, was I?
No, there’s no way, I thought.
I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but subconsciously, I was pretty sure I had no way of actually knowing for a fact that I was still alive. I mean, I was stuck in a weird place with no memories of either my past life or who I was, so frighteningly enough, anything was possible.
Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that part. Yes, at some point after I’d woken up, I realized that I didn’t really remember anything: my life, where I was, how I got here, who I was—nothing. I knew that I should have probably been panicking about that, but somehow, I felt strangely serene. Well, not serene, exactly—it felt more like I was in a kind of daze.
In any case, I knew I had to get out of here at some point, so I quietly walked across the large room towards the door. I placed my hand on the cold metal doorknob and took a shaky breath, swallowed heavily, then slowly turned the knob and nervously cracked open the door.
I wasn’t sure if I was more comforted or disturbed by the sight before me. When I peeked outside my room, I saw what looked like a somewhat narrow and completely empty and silent hallway. It was lined with identical-looking doors on the opposite side and was lit in the same ethereal and unexplainable way as the inside of my room. As the initial wave of relief passed, I felt myself getting more unnerved. A cold sweat started to break out on my back. I highly doubted that I would have been lucky enough to have ended up anywhere near an exit. I suddenly remembered that the phone was still making noise, so I shut the door as noiselessly as possible and leaned back against it for a moment, thinking about what I should do.
There wasn’t much to think about, though. I could either stay in this room and wait for whatever was going to happen to happen, or I could take initiative and leave. Maybe then I’d have at least a chance of escaping. I fretted for a moment about having done something I wasn’t supposed to. Then, I remembered that nothing had been obstructing me from leaving my room, so it seemed like whoever—or whatever—left me here was either giving me a choice or just didn’t care enough to lock me up.
I took another deep breath and opened the door again. Once more, I was facing the silent hallway, and it was still as empty as it had been before. Before I could chicken out, I stepped through the doorway and closed it. The faint beeping that had been accompanying me all this time was cut off, and I was left alone with the oppressive silence. I realized then that I’d begun to find the sound comforting, and without it, I felt myself getting nervous again.
I took another quiet and deep breath. At the very least, the silence would help me detect in advance whatever could be wandering these halls, although there was no guarantee that whatever that… thing could be would make any noise at all. I found myself reaching for the doorknob again, and with a shock I realized that it wasn’t turning anymore.
I was locked out.
It seemed like the door locked automatically from the inside. Fuck, I groaned mentally and gritted my teeth. I really hoped I hadn’t fucked up already, but again, anything felt possible here. I clenched my jaw, then looked around.
The hallway was monstrous, stretching and winding to either side of me for what felt like miles before rounding a corner at each end. It felt longer and more ominous than any other hallway I’d probably ever been in. It was just as pristine as what had previously been my room and was devoid of not only living beings, but also any furnishings or anything at all besides the long rows of identical doors. I didn’t hear anything coming towards me, so I picked a direction—right—and started to walk.
Although I really did try to walk without making a sound, the sound of my bare feet padding across the cold floor still felt deafening to me. I found myself panicking for a second, and then I forced myself to calm down. There was not much I could do about my situation, anyway; I’d already been locked out and I couldn’t walk any quieter than I already was trying to, so if there was anything wandering the halls, I couldn’t do much to prevent it from finding me. Instead, I focused on sharpening my senses to the max so that if I did encounter something dangerous, I’d be able to get away from it before it could catch me.
I rounded the corner and kept walking, following my intuition. Eventually, I lost track of how many turns I’d made and how many hallways I’d gone down. I did my best to prevent myself from going in a circle, but… there were so many hallways, and each was as vacant and still as the last. Although I stayed as vigilant as I could throughout, I couldn’t help but start eventually getting used to the monotony. I felt like I’d been walking for hours. I wasn’t tired, no—only later did the strangeness of that strike me—but I knew that a very considerable amount of time had passed since I’d left the room I’d originally found myself in.
Just as I began to lose hope that I’d ever see anything other than infinite white space, I suddenly realized that I’d noticed something strange out of the corner of my eye.
I froze and looked to the left. I was standing at a sort of T-intersection of hallways, which, though not commonplace here, I’d still encountered before, so that wasn’t very unusual. What had caught my eye was a set of wide double doors at the end of the branching-off hallway I’d almost passed just now. Not once had I seen anything like this in all the time I’d spent walking, and the sight of something so out-of-character for this place frightened me. My heart pounded in my ears and I hesitated, unsure of what to do. On one hand, the doors seemed to be not particularly threatening, but on the other, I couldn’t be sure that I could say the same for whatever lay beyond them.
I sighed softly, then shook my head to get rid of my anxious thoughts. Standing there and endlessly contemplating a choice that I couldn’t escape wasn’t an option. Even if these doors didn’t lead to an exit, they could still act as a sort of relief from the unbroken pattern of the endless hallways. They might, at the very least, give me a clue about where I was and what I was doing here. Or maybe I was wrong and they were actually a dead end. But I couldn’t be sure of that until I gave them a shot.
I turned down this new hallway and began walking down it. After I approached the doors, I hesitated for one last time and then tried pulling on the large handles. The doors didn’t budge, so I tried pushing. Of course, that’s when they opened. I laughed to myself for a moment over my mistake, then refocused on the task at hand. I looked through, and then hurriedly stepped through the doors, still taking care to be as silent as possible about it.
Windows! There were windows here! In fact, besides the double doors, the hallway was completely devoid of doors. Instead, it was lined with windows all the way to the end. I hurried to the window to my right and my eyes widened. Not only could I see what looked like the outside world, but that outside world was also… on fire. My eyes took in the brilliant reds and flashing yellows of the flames below me; the pillars of smoke rising to the infinitely soaring gray sky; the burning, dying trees. As my eyes continued to feast on the first color I’d seen in what felt like days, I noticed two more things.
The first thing that I saw was that the fire seemed to be running on loop. It was baffling and, frankly, disturbing. The trees wouldn’t stop burning. I saw them collapse into sparks and ashes, and then somehow, they would rise back up and start burning anew. The grass was also afflicted with this disease. It was perpetually shriveling, poisonous black bleeding into dying green, withering to charred dust and then bursting forth again in a neverending cycle of life and death.
The second thing I noticed was the figure in the distance. To my horror, it looked like whatever or whoever it was was covered with searing burn marks all over: hospital gown, body, and all. As it stumbled closer through the acrid haze, I saw that the figure appeared to be a woman. She didn’t notice me and instead kept moving painstakingly forward, one step at a time. A few more steps and she reached the edge of the field of fire and collapsed in the grass, the smoke billowing maliciously around her. She was still a couple hundred feet away from the building I was in. Even through the windows, I could hear the furious roar of the raging flames.
My feet felt frozen to the ground. What do I do? I thought frantically. She was not moving, and who knew how much longer she had left? I couldn’t call for any help, either; I seemed to be the only hope this person had around here, and yet I couldn’t even get down there to help her. Jumping from the window would be suicidal. I know it doesn’t make sense that I would trust a total stranger—if she was even human—considering the position I was in. However, the gut feeling I had was real, and it was screaming at me that I absolutely must help whoever this was. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes and I wiped at my face, distraught, my mind racing. What do I do? WHAT DO I DO?
“I can help.”
I screamed in surprise and whipped around towards the source of the voice. Behind me was a man dressed in all black, a languid, Cheshire cat-like grin on his sharp yet handsome face. He was leaning back against the windows casually, examining his fingernails like he hadn’t a care in the world. I backed into the window I was looking through, my back pressing against the cool glass.
“Who are you?” I barked at him. I tried to sound intimidating, but even I could hear the slight tremble in my voice. Whoever this man was, his abilities weren’t to be taken lightly. I had been absolutely certain when I’d entered this hallway that there was no one else there besides me, and yet here he was. He must have appeared soundlessly behind me at some point without me even noticing.
The man looked up at me, his smile widening slightly. His piercing eyes were a brilliant, sparkling gold. He didn’t say anything. Instead, he pointed down the hallway.
I followed his finger with my eyes and saw a sign hanging beneath the ceiling a short ways away from me. I knew for a fact that it hadn’t been there before. “STAIRS”, it read. A little person walking down stairs was drawn beside the word. Without thinking, I bolted for them, gasping out a quick instinctive “thank you” as I passed by the man. I heard him chuckle lightly, but I didn’t look back. I shot through the doorway and into the stairwell. Down, down, down. Just when I began to wonder if the stairs would ever end, I reached the bottom and almost ran smack into a set of narrow double doors. I flung myself through them and into the open outside space, my chest heaving like a racehorse’s, and looked around wildly.
There she was, still unmoving in the grass.
I made a dash in her direction, and somehow, within moments, I was by her side. I coughed as I reached down for her arms, grabbing them and hauling her in short, jagged bursts of movement back towards the building. The smoke stung my eyes and burned my throat, and, unable to take the strain of pulling the woman in conjunction with the poison of the fire, I collapsed, my vision going black.
***
When I cracked open my eyes, I noticed that something was blocking my view. It was the man again. He was standing over me, his golden eyes glimmering, the smile on his face as calm and relaxed as ever. I sat up suddenly, almost smacking him in the forehead with my own, and scooted away from him on my butt.
I felt my hand brush what felt like another person’s hand, and I grabbed it, realizing at that moment that it must belong to that woman. She was still lying on the grass where I’d fallen with her. I then noticed that this grass was fresh and springy, and that the air I was pulling into my lungs was clean. I must have somehow made it outside of the circle of flames and passed out in the safe zone. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed since then.
I eyed the man suspiciously. “What do you want? I have nothing to give you.” My eyes filled with tears of fear, and I felt more dread than ever.
The man looked at me for a moment silently, then looked away and let out a short laugh. “Yes, you’re right,” he looked back into my eyes. “You don’t have anything to give me.”
He paused.
“Nothing that you’re thinking of, at least.”
I swallowed. His voice was sonorous, smooth like the song of a double bass, but behind its musicality I could hear that this man was nothing short of the purest form of absolute power and authority.
“Check on her first,” he said, pointing at the woman.
I wasn’t sure what else I could do, so I followed his suggestion, turning around to assess the woman’s condition. As I’d guessed, she was still lying on her stomach. With some effort, I flipped her over onto her back, then pressed an ear to her chest.
I heard nothing. Horrified, I passed a hand over her burn-covered lips, hoping to feel even the faintest whisper of breath. But there was still nothing.
Tears spilled from my eyes and flowed down my face like rivers. I wasn’t sure why I was crying, then, but I knew that whoever this was was someone who I had needed to save, and I’d… I’d failed.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I stopped crying immediately, as if on command. Something told me that that was what he wanted me to do.
“Good,” he said. I could hear the Cheshire grin in his voice again. I turned to face him.
“I couldn’t save her!” I cried. “I was supposed to and I co-“
Something in the man’s eyes made the words die in my throat.
“Do you know why you’re here?” He asked, suddenly serious.
I started to shake my head, but then I realized something and my eyes went wide. Suddenly, everything flooded back to me. I hadn’t remembered anything concrete at that moment, no, but even though I couldn’t put it into words, I knew.
The man inclined his head slightly, seeming pleased, though he wasn’t smiling. He watched me quietly for a bit.
“This is the one time I will ever permit this,” he spoke softly. “I know how much you care. Do you understand?”
I nodded, and I felt the tears running down my cheeks again, try as I did to hold them back.
“You know what you have to do now,” he murmured, then smiled again and turned, walking soundlessly away from me back to the building. “Farewell,” he said, raising his hand in languid goodbye.
As my vision faded to white, I noted vaguely to myself that that last smile had been different from the rest. It was warm and full of nostalgia, like the kind of smile a grandparent might have on their face as they wistfully, yet contentedly watch their grandchild play.
***
I woke up to a white room. Unlike the one I had originally awakened in, this one had a ceiling lined with fluorescent lights and was filled with all sorts of complicated equipment. I then realized that I was lying in a hospital bed.
Within a few moments, the door opened and a doctor walked in. He was old and had a gray beard; he looked grave, but when he saw me looking at him, he suddenly smiled.
“What-“ I began to say, then coughed. My voice made me sound like I hadn’t drunk any water in aeons.
The doctor shook his head lightly and briefly, and I didn’t say anything after that. A nurse walked in afterwards, and they both checked on my condition, taking notes. The nurse then offered me some water, which I gratefully drank.
Eventually, the nurse left, and the doctor and I were alone.
“Do you remember what happened?” he asked gently. I had a vague idea, but I wasn’t totally sure if I remembered everything, so I shook my head.
He then concisely explained to me why I was here. There had been a fire, and my mother and I had been rushed to the hospital. I’d flatlined on them at some point, but miraculously, I came back. He said they still weren’t sure how that happened considering how long I’d been dead for, technically speaking, but that they were happy to have me here with them. When I asked if my mother was okay, he said that in spite of the burns and smoke inhalation she’d suffered, her condition seemed to be stable. He also mentioned that, strangely enough, she had also briefly flatlined and then recovered like I had—at the very same time, too. I nodded, taking everything in, my head still hazy. After giving me another once-over, the doctor left me to myself.
***
I’m writing this from my computer now while I sit at my mother’s bedside. I’m really glad that I’d had the foresight to ask for a pen and some paper as soon as I felt that I could write. There’s no way I would have still been able to remember so clearly what had happened while I was dead without the notes I took.
My mother and I were both so lucky, considering all that transpired. I’d had a fight with her that evening and, when I couldn’t take it anymore, had stormed out of the apartment complex to get some air. She stayed up all night waiting for me to come home, but eventually tired and fell asleep. When I came back, the complex was on fire. I’d tried to force my way in to get my mother out. I remember screaming for her, choking over my words in the smoke, then dragging her past the blazing sections of carpet and splintering beams. At some point, something heavy fell on me and I passed out.
I’ve apologized to my mother now and she has done the same to me. Thankfully, we’ve made up. I’m glad that we’re alive, and I’m glad that I got back there in time to help her at least a little before the fire overwhelmed me.
I’m… not really sure if God exists. I’ve wondered about that for much of my life, and I’ve alternated between tentative belief and disbelief throughout. Now that I’ve experienced what I did… I’m still not sure. Even if there is a God, I’m not certain if that is who the man was. I’m grateful to him, though. Whoever he was. He saved us.