I woke up, suddenly. My head aches. Where…where am I? My eyes are blurry and all I hear is ringing. I look around I’m in a room, a plain room, with multiple doors. I stand up, all I see is static. I blink. The ringing has reduced to an annoying background noise. Confused, I look around and search in my pockets. Nothing. I walk, my feet dragging against the floor as I take in my situation. I try to remember what happened before, Where I was, Who I was. All blanks, just a vague wisp of memories disappearing like vapor. I remember some things. My name, what was my name? I think hard. It clicks. “Bernard…” . I realize I’ve been pacing around the room. I decide to focus on finding help. I walk, this time with a goal. I walk in the first door. Another room, similar to the one before but with two doors instead of three. The ringing gets significantly louder. I choose the second door, once again it slowly reduces to a hum. As I walk things come back to me, specifically people. I have a wife, Charlotte is her name. I don’t remember anything about her I just know somewhere in the depths of my mind I knew we were in love. And.. and a daughter. May..? No, that isn’t right. At this moment I can’t conjure up her name. All I know is that she’s a toddler. I keep on walking, all the rooms I pass almost the same as the last, but I keep on walking. An hour passes. I return to a room similar to the one I started in. I start running backwards. Frantically looking for something, someone. Even a chair and a side table would comfort me. But nothing. Only rooms with a moist carpet and a vague yellow glow. I scream. Not a scream of fright or anguish. But a scream of pure frustration. Mind you it wasn’t a large scream, the type of scream you’d confine to your pillow to not disturb your parents. But still, it was of pure annoyance and failure. I Continue to run, about five minutes pass and I only see new rooms. I sit down. What was her name Damn’t. I know. I know it somewhere. Inside of me I know. I tighten my hands and release my tension. Almost as if my fists were water to the fire. I sigh. I became so deep in thought I was staring at the corner of the room. Categorizing and labeling my few memories. I remember Christmas. Her first Christmas. I was dressed as Santa Claus. Their blurred faces unable to be thought up by my feeble memory. Suddenly something came back to me. A pink bib. With purple embroidery sewn onto the edges and a big blob of embroidery in the center, with lots of hearts. And in the corner.. A name. Hers? Maybe. But I held on to the name as if my life depended on it. A rung in the ladder. Melanie, a sweet child. I look up. Startled out of thought. Something flashed. The corner of my vision playing tricks on me I suppose. I became tired. What time was it. I searched on the walls for a clock but remembered where I was. I found a slightly dryer spot on the carpet and I lie down. My eyes becoming heavy. I fall asleep.
I hear Creaks. I hear small things chittering. And worst of all. Ringing. Ear piercing Ringing. It gets so loud my ears painfully start to throb. As if begging me to make it stop. I try to fall back into slumber but I just can’t. I feel something warm come out of my ear. Blood. I sit up. My head becomes heavy. I try to stand up but I cannot. But my ears continue ringing. And the lights keep on flickering. And the carpet below me became moist.I stand up. I dizzily make my way to another room. My head and ears throbbing with pain. I can feel my heart in my throat. If I were to throw up I feel like my heart would come out as well. I stumble.Trying to find balance. I walk through about ten rooms before I find peace. No more noise. But wait. I look around. This layout is familiar. Instead of an office, or an apartment this is. This is too familiar. An eerie feeling of deja-vu sets in. I notice that the noisy lights have been replaced by a small light that looks like it belongs in a small house in a more suburban area. I- I recognize that light. I walk into one of the rooms. What.. what is this. A room, just like the others but with a window boarded from the outside. This is too familiar. I walk through the door to my right. Memories. That Christmas, it was here in this empty room. Our Family dinners, our lives. I remember. Antique dining tables and a bright school bus yellow couch. Oh how Charlotte made fun of me for that. I chuckle. Our chess set. Wait. I turn into another room. A desolate and incomplete room like all the others. But with a singular cradle. I blink, it’s gone. I kneel. I remember. We, we were happy for the most part. My eyes get a little a teary but I just can’t cry. I don’t know these people well enough to cry. They seem like distant memories of people I barely knew. But yet I understand how close I was to them. It seems like another lifetime. Another universe where I didn’t end up here. It doesn’t seem true. I fall asleep in that room. Trying to remember. Just trying.
When I wake up I’m in a different room. Certainly not the one I fell asleep in. Everything from yesterday and the day before feels like a dream you just can’t quite remember. Bits and pieces reappear in my mind. The ringing persists. I walk, steadily but with speed in one direction. As my legs and feet start aching I persist. The longer I continue walking the louder the ringing gets. As if it doesn’t want me to move any further. God make it stop. I walk, slowing my pace. The ringing continues, hastily growing louder and louder. My ears burn. I hear the ringing echo in my ears. Oh God does it hurt. I ouch on determined. My entire body throbbing with pain. What feels like an eternity passes. I’ve passed through at least more than 70 rooms. The ringing growing so loud I can no longer feel my ears. I become extremely dizzy, like the feeling of being on top of a sky scraper. It becomes an agonizing pain. And the silence. Everything starts becoming blurry. I stumble into a room. How long have I been walking. I- I don’t know. What time is it. Where am I. Have I escaped? I enter a room with no other doors but the one I just came through. The first of its kind I’ve seen so far. A dead end. And with a table and chairs in the center. I rub my eyes. They are still there. I sit down in the chair. The first time in three days I’ve sat down in a chair. I lay my head down in the table. I cry. Tears of frustration, and acceptance, and fright. I’m going to die here. I fall asleep. Crying into my elbows. Hoping I’ll wake up back home, with Charlotte next to me.
I wake up suddenly. The lights turned off. I stare, shocked. I hear nothing. Finally peace. But then suddenly the noises start again. Not the ones I know but others. Sounds of machinery and screams. I back into the corner of the room in horror. I here people talking. Finally people! But they speak in hushed whispers. As if hiding from some beast. I hug my knees and bury my face into my arms. The noises get louder. I walk towards the door but it’s so dark I can’t see anything, it looks as if the room has changed shape since last night. I touch every wall and yet cannot find the door. I return to my corner and cry. My entire body shaking. I’m so hungry. I’m so thirsty. I’m still so tired. I notice for the first time my feet are bruised and bloody. I take off my shoes. A sharp pain shoots up my leg through my body. I feel horrible. My mind races frantically. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. But I’m so scared. My body convulses. I vomit onto the carpet. An hour passes. Everything stops. The lights turn back on but yet no ringing occurs. My body refuses to stand up and walk to the door. I stay curled up in a ball. The last of the peoples screams echo in my head. Torturing me almost more than this wretched room. My body shakes. I have a piercing headache. I stand up. My joints start becoming hard to move. My wrists are severely swollen. I refuse to die in this god forsaken room. I walk out. I here someone call for me but when I turn around the room is gone. I walk, every step laboring my breathing. Thankfully the pain in my stomach has stopped. Replaced with a sandpaper dry throat that burns. Oh god does it burn. I keep on walking. I begin to sweat. Everything becomes so hot. I begin to cough. I feel suffocated. I lay down. The heat begins to choke me. It hurts. I wish it would just stop. And then the chills. I writhe with fever. I shiver. My body uncontrollably twitches as if it was maniacal. I crawl. I will not die here I swear it. And I crawl. My eyes becoming heavy after the fifth room. Everything fades into blackness.
I wake up. My body completely numb. I thought that was it. I thought I had died. I cry. Wishing for it all to end. I continue crawling. My joints so stiff I can no longer stand up. Once again I reach the dead end room. With nothing but a table and chairs. But wait. There’s something on the table. Water. I start crawling faster. I force my limp body to get on its knees and start running. My body aches. My knees start giving out. And I push up from the ground onto the chair. I gulp down the water. As it slides roughly down my throat. I swallow painfully. So glad I finally can drink water. I drink one of the pouches on the table. And behind it lays another. I continue drinking. It feels so good. It ends abruptly when the second canister finishes. Each of the bags look handmade.They are two leather pouches with a wooden cap. And engraved into the leather is the initials M.E.G. I crawl back onto the floor and shimmy into the corner I curled up in before. I stare. I stare. I stare. I stare. And I stare. A day passes, I continue staring. Making sense of it all as I zone out into the opposite corner of the room. Slowly losing my sanity. I try to remember what happened before, Where I was, Who I was. All blanks, just a vague wisp of memories disappearing like vapor. But this time no people come to mind. No names. The wisps of memories completely meaningless. Completely empty. Staring into the void. I become hungry. But a deep insatiable hunger. Nothing anyone has ever felt before. My body screams in agony yet I cannot utter a word. My own body becomes unknown to me. A stranger I have yet to meet. My mind screams louder than my body. Not with agony but with hunger. All I thing is hunger. All I feel is hunger. All I can utter from my mouth is hunger. My eyes grow wide. My body shakes. I curl up. Speaking nothing to myself. Meaningless say-things and rhymes. I speak. As if I were an old friend. My eyes whizz around the room. Paranoid. I can no longer think of even hunger. I no longer think. I begin seeing hallucinations. People with bloody face and monsters with endless ligaments. I hum. An ear-piercing hum to a tune no one knows. A tune of creation. A tune of death. A tune that if humans began to comprehend they would live to see another day. I… no. He is no longer him. He is we. He has become something no mortal can dream about. He is a monster beyond saving. Living purpose to torture other beings. A being with insatiable hunger. An Entity beyond recognition.