Beep…My eyes flicker, though still in sleep. Beep…Muffled sounds enter my ears, unable to be processed in my mind. Beep…Jolted out of sleep, I struggle to raise my eyelids, heavy with weeks of sleep. Light pierces my pupils, forcing me to turn sharply, burying my face in the soft pillow, damp with sweat. Somewhere I hear a door slide open, and the soft thud of footsteps. I know nothing of my whereabouts but a sharp pain in my thigh tells me I am not well. I manage to open my eyes underneath the sheets where I try to figure out where I am. I hear a second lot of footsteps, louder, faster than before. Hurried voices mumble beside me. Then more footsteps, exiting this time. I lay still in my bed, trying not to let myself be known, frantically searching my mind for a trace of a past memory so as to tell me who I am and why I am here. The second set of footsteps leaves the room, and finally I am alone.
I raise the corner of the sweat-soaked sheets, my eyes closed at first, then slowly I attempt sight, weakly raising my frail eyelids. Light burns my eyes, causing my to flinch, but I keep at it, resiliently. Sight finally returns to me and I observe my surroundings. The room is white, with machines filling every corner, softly beeping in time with my own heartbeat. A single ray of sunshine creates a pool of light on the tiled floor. My head feels numb as I let my eyes wander around my prison. My scanning comes to a halt as I see another machine, bigger than the others, humming silently. I concentrate on this machine, trying to realise its purpose. Small dials protrude from its chrome face, random numbers and letters dotted the surface.
As I tilted my head to examine the screen, a third man entered, wearing a white coat. He made a remark but I could not hear. I could not move. My legs felt wooden. I struggled to move them and as I did so, I slipped out of my bed, head slamming onto the cold hard surface, although somehow, no pain was felt. I was now lying on my back, and I was able to see the room as a whole. The bed from which I had just fallen was white like the walls. There was a kink in the middle where the bed rose. From the top rose a mass of wires and tubes, entwined into each other like pythons, never seeming to end. I traced one wire back to where it ended. Me. I reached over to my arm and felt a cold, hard tube entering it near the elbow. I then saw where it began. A metal pole rose from the ground, and attached to it was a bag of clear liquid slowly dripping into the tube.
I kept my focus on the dripping as I ripped the tube from my arm. My vision suddenly changed. Fluorescent colours danced before my eyes as the cold, harsh white of the room was destroyed. The machines in the corners that were once so still leapt at me, drowning my thoughts. The door slid open like a great yawning beast ready to hunt and the man from before entered, his jacket swimming with bewildering colour, swimming, dancing before me. The spotless clean tiles of before now became black with hatred and pain. As I struggled with myself, my eyes returned to the knot of tubes. Each one had eyes, staring, glaring at me. This was my prison. As the dark walls began to draw closer, I felt a weight boring down on me, restricting my breath, suffocating me. This was where I belonged. In the darkness of this room, in the once gleaming, sparkling place, now my fate. This room is where I stay.
This Room
