Room With a View

Had I not been dope sick at the time I might have been able to remember the location of the door. I wish every day I could remember just one of those first moments here clearly, but I can’t. During that time, it was all I could do to stay sane, let alone wonder why I was here or how I would get out. No, that time was about survival. I had to endure, until finally after the long hours had stretched into days and days into eons, was I finally able to leave the modest comfort of the sweat stained mattress. My mind was free once more. No longer were my thoughts dominated by prayers of comfort to end the writhing and the retching, the shaking and the sweating. I don’t remember exactly the moment the withdrawals had passed, but I remember being smothered by an exhaustion that I had never known before. I no longer wanted the drugs. I only wanted sleep. 

When I awoke from the heaviness of that dreamless sleep, the realization of my situation had finally dawned upon me. I was in a room. A room unlike any room I had ever been. I had no idea where I was, and for that matter I still don’t. Being lost was not the problem nor is it a new experience for me to wake up in a strange place, it's that I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how to leave. 

Still too weak to stand, I surveyed the room for the first time through bleary eyes. It's the same now as it was then. Four bare concrete walls with a ceiling and floor to match surround me on all sides. There are no windows, no doors, and nothing else that could indicate how one could find themselves inside of this place. The room is large enough to house one man, but not enough to be considered spacious by any means. Although almost half of the floor space is taken up by a linen less mattress which rests upon a bare metal frame, a chamber pot in the farthest corner and a small desk of yellowed wood with a chair to match, both of which sit under the only light in the room. The light fixture itself, a small single bulb fluorescent mounted near the ceiling, is the only thing to give me a sense of time in this cell of sorts. Once a day, though I have no way of knowing what constitutes a day here, the light turns off and after a seemingly similar period of time, it turns back on. That makes up the whole of the furnishings, save for the mirror. I wouldn’t mention the mirror at all but I fear this account would seem incomplete otherwise. 

I don’t dislike the mirror. No, not at all. I hate it with every fiber of my being. It stands nearly two feet wide and reaches from floor to ceiling in the middle of the wall directly across from my bed. To say it pulls the room together would be gravely understating the dominance the mirror holds over the entirety of the space. It's absurd really. It's nothing special. In fact, I’ve seen a million other mirrors just like it, none of them any different than this one, but I hate it all the same. I’ve tried to understand why I hate it. It's just a mirror after all. I’ve thought about it during the grueling “daylight” hours, when thinking is the only thing there is to do. I’ve thought about it when the light suddenly shuts off and I’m supposed to somehow force myself fall asleep. I’ve thought and I’ve thought, and yet I am no closer to a definite answer as to why I hate it so much as I am to finding a reason for why I am here. 

The best answer I can come up with is that I hate it for the how it makes me feel. Sappy I know. I certainly wouldn’t be writing this if I ever thought anyone would be reading these pages. But what else am I supposed to write on these pages? Isn’t that why they left it here for me? To write out my thoughts, my emotions? This notebook showed up only a few days ago but in short time we’ve spent together it has become my only friend. It’s become my only defense from the mirror’s ceaseless gaze. How it came here I don’t know. It appeared in the same way as my daily rations. One morning, I awoke to the glaring light flicking back into existence and there it was. Sitting stoically on the desk, next to an inconspicuous ball point pen, was this small black notebook. 

I tell you; it is the only blessing I’ve received since being here. The pen and paper have been better than any counselor spoke to or group I’ve been a part of. I can tell it anything and it accepts it all. It never doubts me. It never judges me, and most of all it doesn’t speak a word. Not like the mirror. Yes, the mirror speaks and when the notebook isn’t in reach it threatens to drown out my clarity with vile words of its own. The mirror aims to breakdown what the notebook builds up. It knows how to get to me, how to reach inside my head and drag up all those emotions I’d rather forget.  

I dare not write any of that down though. No, I’d run out of pages if I went into all the feelings that thing has drug out of me. If I run out of pages to write on, I may as well be dead. I can’t let that happen. If it does, I think it might win. I think that’s what it wants. It only wants for there to be it and me staring blankly at one another from lights on, to lights out. But I won’t let it win. I won’t let it have that power over me. Even though I want to write it all down, to get these feelings out onto the page I know I mustn't, but I don’t need to fill pages and pages to express it all. No,I know how best to describe everything it has pulled out of me. Fear. Pure unbridled fear. In truth, the thing scares me beyond anything I have ever seen. I swear to God himself, that If I didn’t fear the mirror as I do, I would have smashed it long ago, but I can’t.  

How could I? How could I possibly destroy the only thing that gives me hope that I’m still alive? As much as I hate the thing, it’s the only hope I have for leaving this place. I think it’s my only way out. I’ve looked high and low, under the bed and behind the desk, and I’ve never been able to find the door they brought me in through. There can be only one place left, you guessed it, behind the mirror. But I refuse to get close to it. The very thought of being near that thing makes my skin crawl and my bowels quake. As is, I don’t know that I will ever be able to overcome my fear of the mirror. They must’ve known that when they brought me here. They must’ve known that the most perfect watch dog they could ever employed to keep me here would be my own reflection.  

That’s the cause of the fear. Shiny glass and cheap wood aren’t the stuff of nightmares. It's my own face that I find difficult to bear. Even now, my hand trembles at the thought of my reflection and I’m not even looking at the damn thing. In all honesty, it's not my face that scares me. It's what they have done to it. Let me be clear, I don’t think they have done anything to my actual face and body. It’s the reflection they’ve tampered with. They’ve made it mockery, a mask to taunt me through some sort of trickery. How? I don’t know. Maybe its studio magic or computer effects, I’m not sure, but there is no possible way that that is how I look.  

The grey thinning hair. The sunbeaten face. The broken and missing teeth. None of it can be real. None of it! None of it was there when I was brought here. Especially the burn scars that cover nearly every inch of my bare chest, neck and arms. I’ve never been burned. Not that I can remember. Surely, I would have to remember something as horrible as all that. Wouldn’t I? Something that awful would have fixed itself firmly in my memory. It would be something I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would never forget. Yet, the mirror makes me wonder if, somehow, I actually have forgotten the incident after all. What’s worse, in recent days, it's even started to make me see the scars of old burns bubbling up on my once smooth skin. I see them now, even when I’m not looking at my reflection. I don’t want to believe it has that kind of power over me, but the more time I spend with it, I become less and less sure. 

I hope it's just the isolation making me talk this way, but I have my doubts. God knows I would give anything to talk to another person right now, but I don’t think it’s the loneliness playing tricks on me. I don’t want to believe that this is all been conjured in my mind. I’ve done things to find out. I’ve tried an experiment or two. I thought “What if it’s the food and water they leave?”. Perhaps it is tainted somehow. I’ve done acid and others, but nothing has been as subtle as this, nor as long lasting. It would have to be something more powerful. I decided to abstain from food and drink. After two long days of hunger and thirst I still saw no change. My reflection didn’t change to the regular old me. If anything, I think I looked even worse. 

 I thought that maybe there was something in the air, something they add to the A/C to keep me doped up, and seeing things the way they wanted me to see it. I searched high and low in the room for air vents, but I couldn’t find a thing.  

I thought they might be doing something to me in my sleep. So, I waited up for three days to catch them. In the dark I waited with my thoughts. Thoughts of how when they finally came in from the secret door behind the mirror, I would use it as my chance to escape. I would bolt headlong through the door and find my way out of wherever this is, but they never came. Or at least that I never saw. But they had to have come! The food and water were refreshed every day, but I never saw them. I swear to God I didn’t fall asleep either. Needless to say, in the darkness of the room, the lack of sleep made my condition turn for the worse. 

Though I never saw “them”, whoever “they” and “them” are, I did see something in the dark. Something I wish I had never seen. They are lies. More of the mirror’s destructive lies. The first night I saw it sent me over the edge. I became a shouting, sobbing mess. Each night after had the same result. Even now, six days past and with plenty of sleep, I still wake up in the dark at some indiscernible hour and I see them in the mirror. How I see them I don’t know. Maybe its hallucination, or perhaps projection, but I see them. Marci and David, my wife and son. It’s clearly them in the mirror, awash in daylight, and always involved in simple mundane things. I know it’s them I see, but has to be another trick. Just as with me they look older, much older.  

Marci’s face is worry worn and David seems to stand a good six foot two. None that can be real. I’m telling you it cannot be! The David I see is a teenager, if not a man fully grown. It's simply impossible. He is only seven at most! I know I missed a birthday or two when the drugs had me, but I didn’t miss enough for him to grow this old! And Marci! She looks as if she’s been carrying the world on her shoulders. She looks in her late fifties not early forties. All the same she still looks better than me. “It cannot be!” I remember screaming that first night until I was hoarse. Until my mouth tasted of blood and my throat ached horribly. When I couldn’t scream any longer, I whispered the words in the dark. It cannot be. They couldn’t have aged this much. I hadn’t seen them all that long ago. I can prove it when I leave here. I have to see them again. It is the first thing I will do when I leave here. I will find them. I will show them that I am better and prove this was all a bad dream. I need to see them as they were, no as they are! I need to see them in the flesh not in the glow of the mirror. I need them to see me. I need to prove to them I have changed. 

I can’t stay here any longer. Its long past due that I left. They know that. I’ve told them that. I’ve spoken the words to the mirror. I’ve said “I need to leave now!”. I’ve even held up the words on precious scraps of notebook paper but to no avail. Either “they” can’t see through the mirror or they don’t care what I have to say. Either way it's up to me to get out of here. I need to remember how they brought me in if I am to escape. I can’t though. I can’t remember the days, weeks, or even months before they brought me here, let alone the moment they brought me in racked with withdrawals and out of my mind for the drugs. I only want to remember. I want to remember with all of my soul, but it won’t come. It never comes. I’ve never wanted anything so bad in my entire life, but the more I try to remember the further away it seems. 

It seems useless to try. The memory of my entry into this room, no this cell, has been obscured beyond recognition. It's as if my mind won’t form the thoughts in to pictures. When I touch upon something, a possible clue in my mind, it retreats quickly into areas I cannot reach. My every waking memory of that time is cloaked in an impenetrable fog and just like ships lost upon the sea, the best I can do is to cry out in hopes that I am found before I meet with my eventual destruction. 

I can no longer hope to memory. I know now how I must leave. The way scares me but I haven’t got a choice. I must go through the mirror. If it will not budge then I must break it. If it will not break then I must tear it off the wall, and if there’s nothing behind it... No, I cannot let that thought take hold. There must be a doorway behind it. There has to be a way in and out of this room. How else could I have gotten in here. How else could the food have gotten in. The very air I breathe! Or this notebook. This notebook that has space enough for only a few tightly spaced words. This is it then. I must end it like this. My mind is made up. I will destroy the mirror right this very second! I’m going home now, or not at all.