This is the first installment:
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1
Here, she is naked.
This wasn’t always the case. When she had first built the place, she had slung rags about her. Once, she wore a toga, and sandals of the highest quality leather. Organic chemistry byproducts, at least from a clothing standpoint, are not allowed in the room. Artificial dyes are a no-no, plastics of any kind are prohibited. No cars, and especially no drugs.
Everything here is natural, so why shouldn't she be?
Nobody can see into this room but her, anyways. It is locked away by imagination, by dream, shielded from view of others by virtue of being hers and no one else’s. It exists because she has continued to utilize it over the years, has continued to carve its essence deep into her psyche. She didn’t find it. She made it. It is hers.
She takes stock.
Here, her name is Sarah. This is because she had used a character named Sarah in one of her books, one which seemed to take far too long to complete and probably still isn't even close to finished. Here, she is the embodiment of a woman in her early twenties, a perfectly constructed figure of human anatomy in the most desirable form of which she can conceive.
It is who she believes she is.
In life, she is thirty three years old, slightly overweight in the stomach, the back of the arms, breasts, thighs and buttocks.
All the right places, she tells people. Guys like fat. It means vulnerability.
She is pregnant, has been for about five months if she has timed her last period correctly, and it has been a long time since she has been in this room. She misses it, and knows that the energies will be good for the baby, whatever sex the child may turn out to be.
Father is absent and for the better, hard as it is for her to admit that to herself . Now she doesn’t worry, anymore, and she can dedicate all of her energy to nurturing her womb, birthing her child and being the best parent she can be, if only from a distance.
Katherine has Asperger’s Syndrome (like me!).
She jokes about this with what little company she does keep. She views having been diagnosed at the ripe old age of seven an accomplishment for some reason, even though she secretly hates herself for it.
She jokes about this with what little company she does keep. She views having been diagnosed at the ripe old age of seven an accomplishment for some reason, even though she secretly hates herself for it.
The trophy sits atop the door frame at what she deems to be the beginning of her “Safe Space.”
Presently, she pulls her eyes from it, struggling as though it has more of a physical hold upon her than an emotional one.
She steals a glance to her left down the long white corridor with white doors lining either side. To her right is a plain white wall. She has never been to the other end of the corridor. She thinks it may go on forever, which scares her.
Besides, the only door she needs right now is the door with the trophy, along whose entire height, twice her own, boards have been staggered crudely, held in place with railroad stakes instead of nails.
In the original model there were no boards, just a door with her name written across the top, but she had felt the need to seal it off when things had started to...well, turn over wouldn’t exactly be the right term. More like tip over.
Presently the door swells and shrinks. She still hasn’t trained her heart to prefer one size over the other. The door knob never changes size, though. It fits in her palm and is always within her reach.
The plate upon which the door knob is mounted hangs loose, and falling in through the crease above the plate is a warm orange glow, the likes of which Sarah has never seen before. It's hard to explain. It's more of a residue or a seance than a glow, but it is a glow just the same. Deep orange, like a red sunset after a thunderstorm.
She has felt this glow before but she hasn't seen it until now. It fills her with love and ecstacy.
The door knob, she thought, I tried to break in.
She tries the door, and for the first time in the eight years she has had it, the door is locked against her.
“Huh?”
She catches herself speaking aloud and reminds herself not to. Distractions from physical reality alter the experience. They always have.
She tries it again.
Locked.
She draws a deep breath and relaxes into a thoughtful sigh, her hands on her hips, looking up at the enormous door before her. The trophy peers over her line of sight, just far enough for her to catch a silhouette cast against its profile.
Sigh, sigh, sigh....
It’s an echo, her sigh of resolve, toward which she now turns, bouncing door by door down the long corridor. The echoes do little to quell her fears that the corridor might not have an end of which to speak. The sound never comes back. It bounces off in one direction, Out There, to be gobbled greedily by whatever force lies in wait beyond the limits of Sarah’s courage.
“Screw you,” she utters, deliberately fortifying, then cracking, the barrier between the two dimensions, perhaps more aware of her piercing gaze than the nothingness on the other end, if there is an end. Presently, the corridor disappears, to be replaced by the door with the trophy.
Sarah hears heavy chains coming alive on the other side of the door, locks unlocking, latches unlatching, until with a creek, the door with the trophy lurches open just far enough for Sarah to lay a grip on it with no more than a finger.
Now we’re talkin,’ she thinks, comedically using her superhuman pinky strength to swing the door open with enough force to watch it bury itself in the wall to her right. A bulb, which had lit the corridor, falls to the floor behind her and shatters. Sarah turns around to see the shattered glass lighted with that same orange glow she had seen falling through the crease from the loose plate upon her arrival. The corridor is dark save the shattered remains of the bulb.
She giggles. The glow sends her into a high that never touches physical reality.
She wants more.
The door is open now. I have all the time in the Universe, screw Out There.
She sits down, her back to the door frame and watches the shards of glass take up a life of their own and begin to rotate in unison, a perfect rendition of the solar system she's so afraid of.
She can't look away, even now, now that she's decided she hates the way this whole trip is turning out. Twice trapped in eternity and she hasn't even stepped foot in the room yet.
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