The Pastel Room

Soft night rain hit the windowsill. The droplets rolled into each other as they slipped down the glass, the steak of water trailing behind the only reaming testament of their existence. A finite moment in a larger forgotten day.

Over and over they fell, striking the window with a soft ‘plop,’ ‘plop,’ ‘plop.’ It wasn’t quite a heavy rain, and it wasn’t quite a drizzle. It was that rain that came precisely on evenings in June.

 The raindrops fell and she waited, watching. She no longer knew how much time had passed, minutes, hours, days...years. In some ways it felt much longer, time had slowed down, stretched until an end that could not be seen. Other times it felt like perhaps only four days, four days of waiting — of watching — of knowing.

The window was attached to a room. It was not the nice kind of room, the kind radiating with love, warmth, and stories that were infused in the walls. The kind of stories that spoke of the people who inhabited the space between the walls. The kind of room that made you inhale deeply, the warm scent of fresh bread and coffee that lingered. No.

This room was the type of room that did the bare minimum and offered even less. The dusty lightbulb in the single lamp cast a dull glow, creating shadows in places there shouldn't be any. The walls had an on-sale shade of pastel pink paint slapped on them, quick and effective. Without much investigation, it could be seen that the corners and wall right above the trim were not touched by the paintbrush, forgotten in haste, or uncaring. The carpet was old, the yarn thick and crusty. No one went barefoot here. It was depressing.

The walls did speak, but there was no love there. Mostly they spoke pain and loss and forgotten lives. This was the type of room where people came to die. It was a place where people were left when no one wanted them anymore. This room became their grave, their lingering breath disturbing only a fraction of dust that had collected over the years. Here, they were abandoned because they in their decline of life and had become a burden to those still young.

Mostly they didn’t mind. Some did, but most didn't. They knew it was hard to take care of them. They knew that they were the result of a sacrifice that they had no part in. But they knew the drill.

"They had taken up enough space for long enough."

"It was time to move on, make space and let the next guy in."

Or so that is what they understood. The pamphlets didn't say that of course. They never did. They were cleverly crafted, their glossy pictures of white teethed strangers reminding you to feel comfortable. How can anyone feel that comfortable with teeth so perfect?

It would be nice to receive a friendly hug every once in and while, perhaps the glint of a joyful smile, or a reminder of a different time. There's that word again, time. It means less and less the longer it is around. It is no longer measurable. It has become meaningless, simply a void. Stare into the void some time and it will wink back. Or maybe it was the walls. No one could really tell anymore. Once the lampshade erupted in a song, but it was off-key and stopped as soon as anyone looked. Instead, they never look. It’s too painful to look. Instead, it's better to let everything happen just in the corners of their eyes.

Sometimes there were other moments of joy or laughter. But those hardly came. They came less than the chocolate that was divvied in small carefully controlled pieces on Thursday. But they did come. They were light, quick, and stifled almost as soon as starting. One couldn’t laugh for long before the oppressive pastel paint reminded you that laughter was not appropriate here. Not much was appropriate. How could it be? When your very blood had betrayed you and forgotten about you what was there to laugh about? Slipping on banana peels was funny, however. Occasionally a banana would accidentally be ‘dropped’ and someone would slip on it. They were always fine. That’s the difference between comedy and tragedy. In one scenario, the person slipping on the banana peel dies, in the other, they get back up, shrug, and give everyone a good laugh.

Here, it was rarely a comedy. It was a tragedy. But don’t tell anyone. They aren’t supposed to know. It's all a charade of make-believe. The masks are cracked through, the thin lines of age and wear covered them. But the game continued. It could never end, not really. Sure, they would all applaud, wipe the tears away from their faces with their silk handkerchiefs. They would pat each other on the backs and tell stories of the good old days, the days before they left them here.

They weren’t happy either. If they were allowed, they would keep them with them. No one wanted to forget them. But they didn’t have time to remember you see. They were too busy trying to make it. They frankly didn’t even have time for that. See, we’ve come back around time again. It is a slippery word that really has no meaning. It is both limited and finite and is only defined when there is no more of it. Everyone here knew that. But they only learned that after they arrived. Now that time could not be defined, they understood.

And so they waited. They were always waiting. There was nothing else to it. If they waited long enough the rain would go away, only to be replaced by sun, but that too eventually left. Nothing was permanent, not even them. At some point, they would no longer be waiting. They would still be forgotten, much like the droplets of rain on the window just now; the only remaining testament to their existence within the room with the pastel walls.