In this cold, dark room I have spent what feels like an eternity, though it may have just been a few days. It’s impossible to tell.

Creeping inch by inch and touching every surface, I have learned the room like the back of my hand. The floor is concrete, rough and unforgiving and cold. The walls have wooden boards, held in place by thousands of tiny, driven nails. The air is stagnant, and when I take a deep breath, I can taste the dust which hangs in the air, unaffected by any gusts or drafts. It feels like the sound doesn’t even move. Everything is still.

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On the far end of the room, which I consider the far end from my orientation but may be the front or the side, there is a staircase. Ten steps, also wooden boards. The boards are split and warped and cold and it feels like they’ve been there for a long time. Running my hands across sends a new spray of dust into the placid air, like a car speeding through a desert. My weight on them produces a slight creaking which dissipates immediately as if absorbed by the walls of this place.

At the top of the stairs there is a door. This door is of average size, metal with a metal handle, and cold. From touching it I can tell it has not been painted, it is rough and covered in dust like everything else in this room. Tapping on it produces nothing, as it is well insulated and must be very thick. It is insulated enough to keep every bit of light out and thick and dense enough for me to know forcing it is not an option. It is locked, and does not give even a millimeter when the knob is tried.

I know this room as if I have been here for years, yet I can’t be sure if I’ve been here for days or hours. The darkness is impermeable, and without sun or wind or people or anything, time seems to me merely an illusion. What I spend here is just one long, dark, cold, and motionless moment that seems to stretch further back than I can remember and far enough into the future that I have lost hope, though I do not know my place on that time line. Everything is both the past and the future here, and the present is clouded with dust and confusion. I have no idea when I arrived, a faint idea of what is happening now, and not a clue what the next second will be. It’s like arriving into a dream, no recollection of the events leading up to it, only what is happening now, and unsure of how long I will be staying.

 

Sometimes I hear a voice, faint, coming from the other side of the door. It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it no matter how hard I try. It is intermittent and even with my ear pressed to the cold metal of the door I can not make out what is being said. Sometimes it sounds casual, as if maybe talking about the weather or getting ready to leave for work, other times it sounds urgent. I can never tell if it is near or merely reverberating from a far off spot, travelling through ducts and ending up outside the door. Calling out to it produces no response.

 

I know this room, closing my eyes I can picture it’s dimensions and volume in my mind’s eye. I can walk through it carelessly, knowing I will not stub my toe on a wall or trip on a raised crag of concrete or a step. Though I really do not know it at all, only the size and shape of it. Within that, I only know darkness and dust and a voice. I wonder silently how someone can so intimately know something, and know nothing at the same time. How can something be so certain and measurable and yet still a question mark as well?

Suddenly, the knob turns and the door swings open. An avalanche of light pours in and envelopes everything, crashing into the walls and rolling across the floor like a flood swallowing up every inch of my room. I can feel the warmth of it, only due to it’s previous absence as a marker. I can almost hear it crashing and bouncing off of the walls violently and swiftly, my senses are overloaded. I am blind. From the top of the stairs, the known-yet-unknown voice calls out:

”It’s time to come out of here.”

It booms like the voice of a god, where there was no noise before, as if it’s sound created sound and my ears were taking it in for the first time. Now I am more sure than ever that I know that voice, though everything is still dusty and clouded and I am still blind.

I walk towards the stairs, squeezing my eyes closed against the sudden pain of light washing over everything and giving it form. I try to sneak peeks and each one sends a thousand needles into my head, but such a relief at the same time. Bittersweet. My foot steps pound and echo and every shift and step seems to have the volume dial twisted to the maximum. It’s as if all of my senses just had their channels turned on for the first time, like being born. I climb a step.

The stairs creak and it pierces the environment like a spear, rippling the air around me, my eardrums fight to not explode. My eyes are raining down from the lids being smashed together so hard, a shield from the intense pain of seeing for what feels like the first time. I climb another step.

The dust begins to clear as if a vacuum had suddenly open and ripped it all out of the air, though I can still taste it in my mouth. Each breath feels cleaner and more productive, my lungs finally pumping unimpeded, feeding pure blood to my heart which beats a million miles an hour. I feel as if my veins are going to burst from the pressure, my whole body pulses and shudders. It tastes sweet, like water to a man dying of thirst.

”Almost there, come on.” The voice again.

I climb another step.

I can feel the heat emanating from the door way in glorious waves, sending shivers throughout my entire length as it begins to re acclimate. It feels as if I had previously only ever known cold. I feel like I’ve walked from the arctic to the Sahara in only a few strides. As if I was ascending from the black floor of the ocean towards the sun at light speed. I take another step up.

Suddenly everything is still again.

I draw a deep breath from the warm, light air. It fills me and in that moment I feel I am cured. I turn my head back towards my room, no longer blind I open my eyes.

In the light, finally seeing for the first time, it looks nothing like what I pictured. I was looking down at something foreign. The colors, the size, the height, the floor, the walls, all wrong. How can one know something so intimately, yet know nothing at the same time? A shock sets across my body and a chill freezes my spine. In that moment I become aware that I do know who that voice belongs to.

Summoning all of my new senses and what courage the energy I have left can muster, I turn my head forward, up toward the top of the stairs where the thick metal door floats on it hinges towards the source of the voice of my captor. My body is immediately vibrating in such a frequency that it feels as though the air is being evaporated from around me. I try to take a breath and instantly choke on the nothing that comes rushing in. My eyes fully focus, now at home in sudden light of my room and I see the person on the other side of the doorway.

It is me.

I scream.