Entombment of a Machine

I open my eyes and stare at a pearly white ceiling, not my own. Wiping the confusion from my eyes, I stand up. The room is whiter than white, the walls seem to be pulsating with some kind of atmosphere of their own, as though they are breathing. It is only after I adjust to how strange the walls are that I realise that I am alone. Completely alone. The room is bare - there are no windows, no furniture, and no essence. Where am I?

I stand up, and walk around, following the walls around until I am standing roughly where I think I started from. It is difficult to tell how large the room is, as the whiteness subdues anything else that may otherwise be noticeable. Spatial awareness is not something I seem to possess in here.  The longer I look at the walls, the more they seem to stretch away from me, down an endless corridor. A corridor made of white. The word ‘science’ jumps out in my mind. White. Associated with cleanliness, pureness, starkness. Like how I would imagine a research centre to look. I sit down on the cold, hard floor, that reflects the colourlessness of the ceiling. Waiting. Someone will come and get me. I will be out of here in no time.

Some time later, who knows how long, I stand up again. I realise that the walls are perfectly straight and smooth. No gaps. No breaks. No doors.

I’m shouting, screaming, pounding my fists upon the gleaming walls. I cannot hear the sounds of life that I so desperately need. The fear inside of me is intense. I am trapped. No; I am entombed. Is this somebody’s idea of a game? Who trapped me in here? What do they want?

I am screaming at nobody. The walls don’t care. They stand before me, intimidating, taunting. I do not know what to think, or what to do. There is nothing to do. I remember horror movies that I have seen … none of them have good outcomes. This experience is so beyond believability it completely defeats Dali’s simple surrealism. Surrealism, a form of art that derives from the subconscious mind, with no intention of logical understanding. Understanding is completely beyond me in this place. I am left solely with my conscious thoughts.

So has death taken me? Have I died? I have always believed that death brings nothingness. This room is not nothing. I have never been religious. If I had been a Believer, so to speak, would I be in this room right now? They say that God is all-forgiving. Would I be allowed out of here if I turn my beliefs to Him?

Yet as often as I kneel and pray to Him, I still see nothing but white.

*

The longer I am here, the more I wonder at the nature of this place. Is it really a room? Does it serve a purpose? How long am I meant to be here? How long have I been here? It is a bizarre place. Perhaps an understatement. Never before have I felt this way. I cannot sleep - yet I am constantly exhausted. I am always hungry, and have nothing to eat - yet I am not starving. How long does it take to starve? Have I been here long enough to starve? I seem perfectly healthy on the outside… My entire perception of reality - life, death, time - has been altered.

I spend my time contemplating. What else is there to do? I am trapped here, with only my mind. Human instincts have all but deserted me. I feel devoid of everything that ever made me a man - a man that ate, and slept, and had a home shared by a cat that mostly ignored my presence; that enjoyed visiting the pub on Saturday nights; a man that girls had once stolen sly glances at. All of this belongs to another time, another reality. I think I might have a been here for a few months…but my sense of time is completely warped, so it could be hours, or weeks, perhaps even centuries.

Is this the afterlife? Are you alive in the afterlife? I definitely don’t feel alive, but I certainly don’t feel dead either. Yet, how can one be alive, and not need to eat, or sleep? But then, if I am not dead, is it possible to die? Suicide is not something I have ever considered. It is, in my mind, selfish. Yet I think that liberation could be found in death in this boring, never-ending, white place.

How does one kill oneself in a bare room?

I recall - back in my other life - lying on the sofa, sprawled across the cushions, my eyes staring fixedly on my plasma screen TV, full of pomp and purpose, watching idiotic, demented souls leaping from the roofs of buildings into the midst of gawping crowds, attached to ropes that could break at any given moment, always surviving, and always laughing, ready the next round.

They don’t seem so idiotic now. They were taking life to the edge, testing the human body to the maximum, living through the adrenaline.

In contrast, I remember when I used to casually thumb through the pages of The Times, or when browsing the internet, and stumbled across a story about some distressed, depressed, selfish man or women who had swallowed a bottle of toilet cleaner, and been discovered lying in a heap of their own vomit. I usually lost interest after the bold text faded into the standard size ten Times New Roman font.

Why did those people not cherish their lives more?

Why did I not cherish my life more?

I try holding my breath. I simply black out, waking up sharply once my hard head collides with the hard floor.

I try throwing my head against the wall…but to no avail. I just refuse to die. A feeling that seems to be oozing into my increasingly dented and damaged body, is pain. I never knew proper pain until coming to this hell. I feel ashamed of myself for thinking that something as minute as a couple of stitches in my cheek when I was fourteen years old was pain. Nothing is pain compared to this.

I tried so hard to end the pain. So many sick methods. But I could never get beyond that barrier. Eventually I gave up, after so many broken bones. I screamed until my voice broke and died…and then I screamed in silence.

*

My wife always said that boredom couldn’t kill a man. I now disagree. I laugh at how I dubbed myself bored back in my other life; sitting in this room for so many years does nothing to stimulate the mind. After however many years and countless irreparable broken bones, I finally feel the need to commit suicide, properly this time. What other choice do I have? It feels like the only available option.

Or perhaps it is simply the need for a challenge, a goal…something to strive for, to reach. Something to do. But I tried so many times before, with no success. How would I do it?

Then it dawned upon me. My fingernails had grown very long now…

It is absolute agony - far, far worse than anything I could ever imagine a human might feel. This is beyond sickness, beyond torture. I can feel my blood transferring from my encumbered flesh onto the no longer meticulously white floor. I struggle to open my eyes. I can see a streak of red curdle across the whiteness… a river of hope? I am tired now. This is a new thing - different. It was an odd thing, to feel something besides boredom. I close my eyes and embrace this new emotion.

Slowly, I prise my tired eyes open. They lock onto the white ceiling. Shit. It didn’t work.

I begin to scream my silent scream. My knotted, broken hands grasp my throat, ignoring the swollen angry scar. Desperation. I cry a tearless cry. There is no freedom, no escape. Eternal suffering. The silence of my cries have never been so deafening.

*

I have no idea how many thousands of years I have been entombed here. I have accepted this. I trace my fingers over various scars and bruises. Broken bones are the trophies of my suffering. I can’t really stand up anymore - my legs have been shattered too many times. Here, who needs to stand? Long ago I gave up pacing the room, searching for a hidden escape. Sitting suits me fine. I like to stare at my remaining fingers, considering which ways to bend and snap them, to make them die. I sometimes hope that if I do this enough, all of my body will do the same. I cringe, spit dripping from between the empty spaces where my teeth once were. Pain no longer holds the subtle thrill that it once did. My mind has become my worst enemy; my thoughts are minions of mayhem. However, the voices in my head still maintain the intelligence of my past; they write poetry, and conquer their demons. Those voices needed my care and attention to keep them talking to me. To stop them from leaving me in complete silence.

My movements are now limited to blinks and twitches. It was better that way. I had no purpose, nothing to do, and nothing to worry about. Without a purpose, the mind withers, everything becomes nothing, and sanity becomes unattainable. Spending an incomparable amount of time in an abyss of pure nothingness causes all instinct to rot away. All behaviours fall into disuse, eventually to be lost forever. In that way, I am becoming nothing more than a piece of blank slate.

Tenses do not exist here. The present is something that belongs to the ‘real’ world, not here. My future could have been something of my past…my past could be a dream of the future: the present does not live here.

What is the ‘real’ world? Is this what human existence really is? Is my previous life something from a dream? It certainly feels like it. They give us a glimpse of paradise, only for it to be snatched away and replaced by hell.

Truly, this is hell. I lie here, devoid of all movement. My lidless eye sockets stare fixatedly at the same spot for what could well have been billions of millennia. To relieve myself from this blank picture, I close my eyes.

*

My eyes are open. I look out of the window.

What?!

A window!

I see my neighbourhood. Is this a dream? No - I didn’t dream anymore. Standing up - I can stand! - I walk across a thick, soft carpet, to a mirror hanging from cream-coloured walls. I feel normal! It is my face staring back at me, me. Myself. I. I am back. I am real. I am me! I exist!

I collapse into a chair; the sensation of being truly alive is beyond anything I felt was possible. Nothing has been possible for so long, and now I am alive. What has happened? All the lost and suppressed emotions and feelings rise into a whirlwind of colourful animation. I caress my fingers, my hands, my arms. My unbroken body. This is me, swimming through an ocean of emotion.

Why am I sat in this chair? Life has been returned to me! Suddenly, I cannot sit still.

The sunlight is punching me in the face, but it is the most sensational feeling in the world. I start running through the crisp chill that the morning is offering me. Of the morning! It is revitalising my previously sense-deprived body. My breath is streaming out in front of me, in little puffs of white cloud. It is a visible slice of the life that is swelling within me.

Food! Food is the most glorious thing ever. Boxes upon boxes of cereal, bar after bar of chocolate! The munching of crisps, the slurping of coca cola, the crunch of  a fresh, juicy, green apple. I never knew it was possible to eat this much! To someone who might happen to walk in, I might look dead now, sprawled amongst these treasures that my body has craved all these centuries; my body pressed against the soft, white carpet.

But I am more alive than I have ever been.

I practically float upstairs. I dive onto the bed, bouncing on it several times - a reminiscent of childhood. I begin to laugh, my mind already planning tomorrow: food, TV, radio, singing, dancing, reading, talking to people! All at the same time! There just wasn’t time to waste! I need to completely drown my senses in as much life as possible. I feel like a cactus in Death Valley getting caught up in a tsunami - it was almost too much at once.

Almost.

It was the best sleep I had ever had. I wake up, stretching my arms leisurely.

But something feels wrong. My arms feel stiff and sore. Broken.

I yawn, but my lips crack and bleed, the edges of my mouth tearing.

My eyes, once open, stare fixedly at a pearly white ceiling.