A Long Wait

I sat in the middle of the polished floor, where they left me. Four walls loomed around me, four mirrors stared back at me, each a window from the other side, where countless faces watched me; scrutinising my every movement. Two doors were set in opposite walls, and at the end of this examination just one would open, leading to my destiny.

No furniture was in the room but an old grandfather clock, standing in one corner; solitary like me. It counted down the three hours until either door opened, its heavy, echoing tik...tok... the only sound that broke the eerie silence. Even my breathing was subdued to a faint whisper, fear constricting my lungs.

I knew why I was there. Everyone who had ever been in that room knew why they were there. I knew something that The Clean Ones didn’t want to be known, and as a result had been picked off the streets, the empty, desolate streets where few could last in the pollution; that choking, pungent air that swirled in filthy eddies over the pools of muck and slime where the many unlucky ones had tried to make their homes.

I guess that made me a lucky one, sitting here with the chance of a better life. But as I sat there, the very air in the room seemed to force its way into my mind, exploring every nook and cranny, every strength and every fault, finding anything that could be an advantage to The Clean Ones. I could almost hear the voices of the watchers behind the mirrors, probing inside me, whispering together, demanding “Is she good enough?”

No-one who went into this room ever went back to where they came from. The naive mind would suppose that all who entered therefore went through to the clean world, but I knew that was not the case. One door would lead me there, but if the other chanced to open, it would mean my execution.

Six chimes issued by the grandfather clock told me I had one hour left to sit in this ominous room; I had been taken at four o’clock post meridian. One hour left to sit and wonder Will I live or will I die? There was nothing I could do to change my fate either way; my whole life’s deeds accounted for whichever door would open. The only thing I could do was to wait, neither in the polluted world nor the clean, in between the gateways to life and death.