The Room

Dark. Cold. Alone. I lifted my head trying to make sense of the blurred outlines I saw before me. Where was I? Damn it, Who was I? I felt the warm glow of memory, but it faded as I approached.

Lifting myself up, and wrapping the thin coat around me I looked around. Grey light dripped from the octagonal skylight above me, making the room look as cold as it felt…

I hadn’t completely lost my memory, I remembered scattered things, the plot of a short story by Brian Aldiss, I couldn’t remember if it was my favorite one or even if it was a good one. I remembered only blurred pages in a blurred book; the only thing distinguishable was the author’s name. I remembered an image of the sun hitting a mountain, I don’t remember faces or personalities, or anything that could help me learn something about myself. I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head and touched the spot with my palm. I looked at it, it was red with blood. I studied my body for any other injuries, or any sign of who I was, and found nothing. I then decided to look around the room, perhaps I would find a picture, or an address… I found nothing. The room was bare, except for a metal chair and a table of the same material. There was a door, but I feared what might lay behind it. I looked up, through the skylight, and saw nothing, a dull gray sky, the sun not even visible through the smog and clouds. I had to go through the door, no, I had to find my identity. The door was made of the same metal as the chair and the table. Its doorknob was silver and ominous, I didn’t like looking at it, it reminded me of a knife. A knife? A new memory…

I remembered a knife cutting through the air , a sharp, silver knife moving ever so close to me…. I clung to the details of that memory, that image. I remembered the handle being black, I remembered the blade. I could not recall anything of the hand that held this weapon, this blade. I did not know whether it moved quickly, or slowly, perhaps it did not move at all, perhaps I was the one moving. At this, my head began to ache. There were so many possibilities. I did not know which was real or which was just my imagination. "If only I knew one thing, I thought, if only I knew if this memory were recent, if the knife had caused the cut on my head…

My eyes hurt, my vision, although improving, was non sensual. Things changed colors before my eyes. The table was no longer silver, it was brown; the chair no longer gray, it was purple… I shut my eyes, hoping that when I opened them everything would be clear. My head was throbbing. I opened my eyes and found my eyesight had improved. Things were still a little blurry but they stayed the same nondescript gray as they had been before. My memory had not returned. Why couldn’t I remember? The knife. I had to try to remember more about the knife. No, the door. I had to open the door. Find out what was behind it. I walked over to the gray thing and looked indeterminately at the handle. What lay behind it? I needed to open it. To open the door I had to touch the handle. The cold gray handle. The handle that told me nothing about what lay behind it. I searched my mind for an answer, searched for something that might let me procrastinate a little longer. I could find nothing. I had to go.