……over the edge

Richard paced the square, he had seen this on film. That he was a prisoner had been a very slow realisation nonetheless. He knew his name, but how did he know his name? Who had named him? His mind was a cell.

Richard paced his square as he did every morning, every day perhaps, for as long as he could remember. He felt good this morning but did not know it because the only conditions he could rationally realise were comfortable or uncomfortable. He comfortably looked at the walls and the floor and the ceiling. They were their eternal white. The surfaces almost glowed and looked too hot or too cold to touch? Yet again he turned this over in his mind and dared not touch. He simply continued to shuffle around the perimeter of his square, in his protective boots, which he only wore for this simple exercise which began every day.

He reached the triangular symbol for the twentieth time and as it always did, it grew in size to accommodate return to his circular room. He never attempted to break with his routine on any occasion as he knew he would immediately feel uncomfortable. He could not remember the last time he had broken the scheme of his day, but he remembered the pain which started in his lower back and raced at terrific pace up his spine into his head. This thought began to ricochet around his mind as he found the entrance to his round room sealed?

He concentrated harder but did not struggle with the entrance, just passively tried to open it by replacing his hand on the red, glowing circle beside it. Almost immediately the circle moved off and down the corridor, away from Richard’s exercise square and circular room, he dutifully followed. One hundred yards further on in a direction he had never ventured before he stopped as quickly as the circle halted and obediently entered the triangular entrance which developed to his size. He gazed in wonder at this new place. He squinted and blinked and stretched his eyes wide open but still could not see where dimensions or perspectives he was used to, began or ended.

Then he received a tremendous shock that made him shake and tremble. Everything was suddenly blackness, something he had never known was complete darkness. This was the opposite to his extreme existence in the reassuring white glow he had always known. It seemed an age before Richard unravelled himself from the protective foetal position which he had crumpled into. The convulsive sobbing still in his throat he sat up and touched his hand to his face and suddenly his fingers felt different and then between his thumb and forefinger. Why was he experiencing moisture from his eyes? In the lightless environment he could not fully appreciate what even teardrops were.

Before he could ponder any further the light which had led him to this discomfort reappeared beside him. It did not lead him any further but the slight illumination it provided fell upon a form which he recognised immediately. It was the same as the rectangular bench he lay on to sleep in his circular room. This floating transparent slab, somehow invisibly supported, was at that moment as reassuring to Richard as anything he might of thought of in this strange place. Despite its familiar hardness, he stretched himself out expecting to feel the inner warmth he normally experienced before sleeping in the white circular room. As he did so more light began to permeate the area around him. Despite the lack of expected warmth and increasing light he fell asleep.

Eight hours later he awoke as usual in his circular white room, next to his wife, the first Lady of America. He realised he was late for a visit to a pentagonal room on Capitol Hill! He sat on the edge of his bed and pulled on his protective boots.

(wrote this in 1981, I was still at college. Found it in old diary pages.) dwk