Somewhere

White tile floor with white plastered walls and florescent lighting; just like the hall. Not terribly interesting to look at. He assumed it was like the other rooms too, but he couldn't be sure, he couldn't really see into any of them. All the doors along the hall had windows in them, but they were useless, obscure windows and all he could see were vague shapes. People, he assumed. Nobody responded when he pounded on the doors and shouted vainly at the thick glass. All the doors where locked. That seemed to be the one really truly unique feature of this room: the door was unlocked. That, and it was at the very end of the hallway. James wasn't sure if he should be pleased to have finally gotten a door open... it wasn't that interesting.

He looked around the room. Bare, except for what looked like a clock on the far wall and a little chair. It didn't seem quite right, so he went over to examine it, letting the door click shut behind him. It was a clock-face, all right, but it had no hands... just a blackish mist hanging over it, and a soft breeze seemed to be coming off it. Not about to touch that, James thought. He looked around again. There chair was a simple little oak thing sitting in the far corner, and above the door there was a sign which he hadn't seen coming in because of its perch. He regarded it for a moment. "James Kharl." It was like a plaque, with his name chiseled into it, and an odd blank line under it. There was nothing else in the room.

Name above the door notwithstanding, James thought, this sucks. So not worth it. He made to open the door, but it stuck. Carefully he turned the handle and pulled back harder, but it was no good -- the door had obviously locked and he saw no way to unlock it from the inside. A sense of genuine panic rose in his and he frantically attacked the door, violently trying to wrench it open, but it was no good. He pulled on the door until he was out of breath, and then stumbled back to the other wall and fell onto the chair. He looked over to the half-complete plaque above the door and the clock-without-hands above his head, and the whole room suddenly felt a little too unearthly.

"Help!" he cried out at the top of his lungs. "For the love of God, somebody please get me out of here!"

He waited, but there was no sound, no response, nothing but the sound of his own labored breath.

"Mr. Kharl, please wait."

He leapt out of the chair with a fervor and energy he hadn't felt since watching Steven King's It at age seven. The sound had been generic and asexual, monotone, and James could pick out no particular direction for its emanation.

"What?" he asked, loudly, but without yelling. "Why?"

But he was met only with silence. Sighing, he slid back into the chair. He knew that he didn't have a rational reason to be any less afraid, but the fact that someone heard him did calm his nerves a little, and he was reassured that, eventually... something would happen. Better than being stuck in this tiny room until he starved to death.

Slowly, a high-pitched whine wormed into James's consciousness. It seemed to be coming from the clock, he thought, so he got up to examine the odd, timeless timepiece once again.