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One

The absurdity of the whole thing was the only encouragement propelling me through the barren hallways.
The absurd hope I had placed in my ability to run far, far away, the absurd need to live, to breathe free from this liminal hedge maze of corporate corridors where time had frozen and I was stuck between day and night, an eternal third interval for the imprisoned and anomalous to suffer through.
I don't have time to wait to become saner than I am now before putting one foot in front of the other, but simultaneously I have all of the time in the world, stretched like a young universe's silly putty and then promptly thrown in the garbage by his little cousin, existential dread.
My words run on and on and on like a drunken idiot stumbling into a cab home, but my cab driver put a gun to my head, blindfolded me, and told me that I could leave when I was no longer traumatized; I felt like my mission was impossible.
Once I heard a voice in the halls. It was muffled, as though I didn't deserve a clear, discernible voice. I didn't deserve to be addressed directly. The world had already decided on it and all I could hope for is that people might clue me in on their presence like a brief surprise, a little teasing of a lost synapse.
"Pity him" was all I heard.
There was truth in those words. "pity him". I liked that I was at least pitied instead of hated. I didn't even need to be liked, or an enjoyable presence. I thought I must be close to an exit when I heard it. "pity him". I even loved the sound of those words. Some wonderful collection of presses and releases, no agitating clicks.
I heard an exit in that voice. I thought I did. I had yet to find it, but I was so scared to leave the general vicinity of the location I heard those words uttered in that it made me convicted that there was an exit there, otherwise I would be foolish to stick around for so long.
Voices were the only very interesting things. I heard cars sometimes, but they scared me, like a toddler coming out of a movie theatre; everything assaulted my senses and made me have this stupid feeling of the welling up of tears. It was so stupid, stupid because it made me feel like that vulnerable toddler and I knew that I was back in that state and it wasn't something that I could hide anymore and I wasn't proud and I wasn't clean and I wasn't dirty and I felt like I was dead because the world would lose me and move on and keep spinnning and forget about me. It was easy for me to spiral in the halls. I went down small ones constantly; insanity was either being shy or cutting me some serious slack before shoving me into the deep end. The "meaningful" moments I did end up having were quite shallow in retrospect.
The rooms were the same. None of the surfaces I had come in contact with were comfortable. If I wanted to, I could probably end my life if I smashed my head against the concrete walls with enough force. I examined the rooms as though one of them might eventually be different- four plain white concrete walls. A white concrete ceiling. White concrete floor. And myself. The edges and corners were perfectly cut, as if sliced by the hand of God. The walls didn't have a single blemish; After running my hands over every surface for what one could only guess was over an hour, I felt a sense of defeat in knowing that everything was the same. My eyes drifted around the room again. Wall one, wall two, wall three, wall four. It was a perfect square, quite unnerving. I counted the walls again. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2....
This was my life for as long as I could remember. I knew there had been a before, and maybe this had happened many times, but it was useless to try and remember this before; it was sliced out of my mind like a lost strip of film.
I remember well how I felt when awakening in this place for the first time.
I hoped that there would maybe be something waiting for me when I got up. Maybe I would be able to tell where I was. I didn't feel as though I could recollect any place I had been, but maybe it would come back to me once I had a broader view of the area. This dream has since been crushed, as previously mentioned. Hope wasn't going to get me very far if I was still lying on the ground though. I eventually got up. The only injury I felt was a small bruise on my right shoulder, probably from rolling over earlier. I would have pondered my predicament for longer if I had the mental capacity. My only explanation is that i've simply never felt compelled to, like the place had an air of ancestral familiarity that had magically stuck with me through all of my lives and wakings and sleepings. I got up and started walking, pretending that there was an exit. I didn't mind all of the walking. It gave me a reason to live.
I didn't come across many familiar structures more than twice. Some rooms appeared behind hall doors, some transitioned from hall to hall, some were dead ends... the dead ends made me hopeful. They gave me an inkling of confirmation that maybe this place was finite, that those final walls and edges were somewhere. I indulged in this idea until it became a full on conviction. I knew it was stupid, but I needed something to believe in. I also didn't have any time to waste.
Why did I always say that? "I don't have time to waste". It wasn't even a bit true. But I know now that I needed false hope.
I walked. I walked from room to room, hallway to hallway, dead end to dead end. I looked. I listened. I doubted it would do me any good.