Room

I’m sorry... It’s difficult for me to continue. I promise I tried. No one will be there for me. No one will be there for you. Life will go on regardless. I wish I tried harder, next time I WILL try harder.

“Whispers... Ringing?”

Lukas jolts awake in a panic, realizing the afterschool bell had just rang. He rubs his eyes and begins to adjust to his surroundings. The room is a dimly lit computer lab that was turned into a business class after the previous media teacher had left to peruse freelancing in a big city up north. Business books lay stacked on a rack in the corner beside a cabinet containing the forgotten cameras and hard drives. Troves of projects and memories by graduates and upperclassmen alike. A library of thoughts, feelings, and ideas that no one will come to know. A dying art, slain by the administration that had also brought such an opportunity to it’s students. After the teacher left, the school has since forgotten the idea of a media class, so they just leave the equipment to collect dust within the confines of their small dark cabinets. The surrounding walls are littered with desks all containing a row of computers and one printer standing at the forefront. The teachers desk lays softly and lonely with papers and books scattered all over with the computer’s screen a blank void. The chairs around him are all pulled out as if the students were fighting their way out. Lukas can hear the muffled voices of people roaming the halls getting ready to leave to their vehicles; either going home or getting ready to start their commute to their afterschool jobs. Lukas has no such job, nor is he necessarily eager to hurry home. Lukas grabs his mechanical pencil off the desk, crumples his paper containing his business class notes, and pulls down his hood. He stands up and makes his way out the door throwing his paper away, not bothering to even close the door or turn off the lights.

Lukas rubs his eyes as he walks slowly down the hallway. He spots many of his peers conversing with their friends and getting ready to leave out the door. Lukas is somewhat of a cliché loner type. He has friends, although he never really hangs out with them. He never participates in any sports or after school activities and isn’t really anything special. He’s neither good or bad at what he does. Lukas could pick up a bat and never hit a homerun but only strikeout a handful of times. Similarly, he got a 22 on the ACT and is a C/D average student. A jack of all trades, a master of none. He makes it to the main doors only for a stinging realization to hit him in the gut; his business book. Lukas never really uses it, but he knows the teacher will get mad if he forgets it again. Lukas’ teacher had been picking his book up from under his chair for the past week now and has threatened him with a failing grade if he doesn’t start remembering to take his book home. He begrudgingly turns around and begins to make his way back, rationalizing in his head whether or not he could just potentially come and get it before first period. The halls have cleared; all the students who usually loiter around for a bit have dispersed and now it’s mainly staff who stay to their rooms to finish their work.

Lukas enters the room only to see the room with it’s lights off and all the chairs pushed in except for his own. “Damn Janitor works quick I guess.” He walks over to his chair and scoops up the book. He turns and makes his way out the door and right as he hits the door his vision is blurred with a blinding white light. Lukas loses consciousness.

...... . . . . . . . Try . . . . . . . . . Harder . . . . . . .

Awake. He’s awake. Lukas looks around. The room is somehow darker than usual and the chairs are upside down on top of the desks. “Did someone clean up in here?” Nostalgia washes over his mind. He isn’t really sure though. He’s been here, but he’s never seen this room. Why? Lukas turns to the door and attempts to open it. Locked. It’s locked. But why? “If someone cleaned up, why didn’t they wake me?” A splitting pain reverberates throughout his head. His eyes feel as if they were stone, slowly cracking open to reveal their bloody, molten core. He drops. Hands on his head as if he was trying to keep himself together. His spine feels like a boney centipede slowly tearing its way out of it’s fleshy encasing, trying to free itself. His blood feels still and his ribcage tightens around his organs, strangling them of any life. His body refuses to follow orders. insubordination. Hyperventilation. Agony. Lukas takes his thumbs and begins pressing them to his eyes hoping to kill himself and tear his soul out of his body so that whatever monster that grips his life force cannot feast upon him. He feels the two fleshy eyes slowly crush as blood fills his hands and throat. His spine rips from his body and begins to wiggle its way from him. His tongue rots away and his vocal cords snap as he silently screams his last breath. He’s awake. Lukas looks around. He’d been crying. Faint traces of a headache still echo freshly within his head. He doesn’t remember, he just feels it. Lukas pulls himself upward and begins to look around the room. Everything is shrouded in a blanket of shadows. Lukas slowly begins to circle the room in search of something, anything. The computers are unresponsive and the power cords are missing. The desks are barren, only housing the chairs that lay unmoving and unmarked on top. He eventually makes his way to the teacher’s desk where papers and a calendar marked with dates lay untouched. The computer remains off no matter what Lukas does. Lukas searches the drawers and cabinets only to find nothing but cameras and random pieces of hardware. Lukas sits in the computer chair in complete defeat. Nothing. Lukas looks around the room only to realize that the projector screen has been pulled down over the whiteboard. A quiet rhythmic thump plays in Lukas’ head. He feels his body stiffen and a small tingle fill his nerves.

Lukas stands

Lukas walks toward the screen

Lukas slowly pulls down on the projector screen

Lukas stares

Lukas stares

Lukas

Feels

......

Nothing.

White again.

. . . . . . . . . . Finish . . . . . . . It . .... . . . . .

Awake again. But how? Why? What do you want from me? Lukas sits up in his chair and adjusts his eyes. The lights are back on? Was it a dream? The chairs are back where they were originally with books scattered about the room. “Why me...” He stands up and grabs his book from under his chair and begins to make his way towards the door. Once there he tries the handle. Locked. Lukas peeks out the window of the door and sees nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not empty hallways. But nothing at all. Darkness. A blank empty canvas. A void where nothing exists but whatever Lukas can imagine. He doesn’t even feel like leaving anymore. He doesn’t know what to do. Lukas starts looking around for something that could help him escape this hellish nightmare. “No, even hell has demons. This is worse than hell. This is nothing.” Lukas’ body feels heavy, his breath is cut shorter than usual, and his vision his beginning to blur. He somewhat understands his feelings, although not fully. He recognizes the room now. The business room. He doesn’t understand why exactly the realization had slithered from his mind before, but now he understands his surroundings. Lukas begins tidying the room. Maybe to distract himself. Maybe to get him to think. Maybe to make things feel normal. He began by straightening the desks and pushing in the chairs. He threw away balled up pieces of paper as well as straightened all the computers and keyboards. Lukas then turned his attention to the front of the room. The whiteboard was filled with random black lines that stretched out like creeping tendrils from an epicenter rooted in darkness. Lukas wiped down the board and began putting things in order. He then began to put the books back on the rack. The image of the drawing was burned into his mind and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He grabbed the last book from the back corner of the room. As he laid his hand on the sleek, undamaged cover a sense of fear engulfed his body. A slow, quiet creak echoed throughout the room like darkness filling an open field as the sun sets.

Lukas turns.

A cabinet near the teachers desk lays open as if inviting Lukas to gaze upon it’s contents. Lukas slowly and steadily walks towards the cabinet. His eyes shooting around the room as if to watch his surroundings carefully. Lukas finally makes it to the cabinet only to find some hard drives and random hardware used for the old media class. A sliver of something slightly shiny catches Lukas’ eye. A small key. Lukas reaches out and takes the small key into his hands. It’s cold. He turns to the door and begins to make his way over. He slowly slides the key into the lock.

Waiting.

Waiting.

He turns the key.

The door unlocks and Lukas gently turns the handle and pushes on the door. It slowly swings open and Lukas is left with the horrifying image that is nothing. The most common and terrifying fear mankind collectively shares is the unknown. And here Lukas is staring down an infinite eye of nothing. A window into what could very well be the monster known as the void. Lukas, an infinitesimal piece in a much larger picture, is faced with the realization of nothing. Before he even realized it, he was falling. His body was covered in the cold embrace of the void. His mind was beginning to shut down. His body was slowly deteriorating as he fell farther and farther into darkness.

He had lost his arms.

Then his legs.

Then his torso.

Then his eyes.

Before long, he had lost his mind.

Nothing again

Then the blinding light returned

. . .... Keep . .... . . . . . . . . . . Trying . . . ... .

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