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JH Sounds

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    WCT - [COMPETITION OVERHAUL - NEED IDEAS] The Writing Competition Thread

    in Competitions

    Posted

    I might expand this slightly before the deadline, but I'll put it here now.

    In Wait

    He stood surrounded by four bare walls. The solid white boundaries of the place disoriented him, and his internal sense of gravity occasionally faded. He would have collapsed, but his instincts caused his knees to straighten instead of buckle.

    The man thought back to the events that led him to the room. There had been some urgency, a moment of compulsion; he needed to be here, he felt at the time. He set a goal for himself, and it involved being in this space. Now that he stood in it, the motivation for being in the room became vague. As time went on, many thoughts and questions would develop.

    When he had initially entered the place, it seemed quite silent. After a few moments he heard a distinct humming, which grew to a dull buzz. He came to the conclusion that the sound was generated by his own body; a blood vessel in his ear, perhaps. It was slow, somewhat in time with his heartbeat, and steady enough to be part of him. The man marveled at how quiet the room was for him to be able to hear such a thing. As he counted the beats, however, this simple sense of joy gave way to a chill of realization.

    One hundred beats had passed; then five hundred; and then nearly a thousand. Such a long time to be kept waiting, especially since the goal had slipped from his mind as a result of the wait. The soft thumping was a constant reminder of the situation, as if he was forced to stare at a watch. Time would not, and could not, fly. His mind was unable to wander, and the stress of being conscious of the passing moments became too much to bear.

    After a moment, however, his mindset changed. The beating of his heart was not something to detest, but a reminder that he was alive. He was a living, breathing human being, one with goals and ambitions, one who set out to do things. The man was not put into the room against his will, he recalled, though the exact circumstances behind entering it had been forgotten. This was not a place designed for torture or pain of any sort.

    It was, perhaps, a sort of exercise. He had a task, or was given one, and accomplishing it was a matter of getting to the room and awaiting a result. The place itself was constructed specifically for waiting, and many others must have been in here before him. Possibly others were standing by, expecting to be let in after he left. Or maybe others were in adjacent rooms, thinking the same thoughts. Hundreds of white-walled spaces, each containing a person wondering how he or she got there.

    The man came across another thought. The notion of being placed in a certain predicament and waiting – this was universal. The literal place was irrelevant; it could be in an elevator, or waiting for popcorn at the microwave, or keeping an eye on a changing traffic light. To him it seemed that the why was the only important thing. If he had been on an elevator, the goal would have been to reach the proper floor. If he was waiting for food, the goal would be simple nourishment. The man was, however, in a room with no sense of space and dimension. He stood in a place where his mind would have to work constantly to attain any sense of progression. This suggested an answer.

    The reason he could not remember the events that led him to this place was simple, he realized. That was the entire point. He wanted to forget the duties and responsibilities that life had given him, and he wanted to move forward, possibly accumulating new ones. Between letting go of the past and continuing with the future, he wanted that feeling of unknowing. That last bit of strain in his mind, that why, finally ceased. He could no longer remember what he had accomplished, or what he set out to do, and he was elated. The cleansing was remarkable to him.

    At that point a small rectangle appeared ahead. He smiled. It was a doorway, and he walked out.

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