A short warm moment

A short warm moment is all it took her. It seemed anything but short, but then it was.

The moment she wakes up she hears the soft sound of a door shutting. She lies on the floor of a tiny room, right at one of its four corners. She is stark naked and aching all over. The room is empty save for herself. It is devoid of all furniture, it contains nothing, the walls and the floor and ceiling are featureless. Every surface is painted a creamy white. She takes in all of this information because the chamber is lit, the source of light a puzzle. The only feature breaking the weary whiteness of the room is a brown wooden door in the far corner of the unoccupied space, diagonally across from where she lies. No doubt this is the door she has just heard close.

With a silent complain from her stiff joints she stands up and walks heavily towards the door. It opens with no effort to reveal another room. She steps inside. It is a room similar to the one she was in. She looks around this second space only to find the same featureless walls and floor and ceiling. It would seem the same room she has just left if it wasn't for a slight change in the aspect ratio. The length and width of the room are distinctly larger. The height of the ceiling seems however unchanged. As before, diagonally across from where she stands another wooden door lies in wait to be opened.

After each door she opens she finds yet another featureless room, slightly longer and wider than the previous one, displaying an ever remoter door across an ever vaster expense of white floor. The monotony of each replicate empty space is extraordinary. She is trapped in a Russian-doll existence. Time, stretching like a liquid with no shape or form, has lost its meaning. She is confronted with a new notion of time for which she has no understanding. Walking across those white deserts gradually demands a greater effort. Opening door after door she steps into the corner of a new room, only to find nothing, only to feel a monotone limpid white floor under her bare feet and the same lifeless ceiling over her head, only to wearily observe the two perpendicular rays formed by the intersection of walls and floor extending ever increasingly away from her and disappearing far in the distance.

She moves across a material floor, away from solid walls, yet the space those surfaces bound is a pure infinite void. Step after step in an aimless repetition.

And then, unannounced, the monotony becomes gradually over. Well beyond the moment of desperation when the space to cross seemed implausibly large her eyes hint a tiny spot of brown colour in the distance. She expects another door. The blur on the horizon grows distinctly clearer and bigger to reveal a multitude of human bodies. She joins in, merges with the crowd and elbows her way towards the corner. A large, rectangular hole in the wall opens to a pitch-black domain, a second scene which signals the end of her incomprehensible journey. When it hits her it is much too late. Dragged down by the mass of bodies she makes an ultimate effort to step back. It is weak and pointless, she knows she has long been defeated. As the system sloughs off her she utters a final cry and sets out for a long cold rest.