I am alone.

I am alone.

I am alone in a white room. There is nothing here except me and the padded white walls, floor, and ceiling. My room is lit by hidden lights, and observed by unseen cameras. These last two things are not certain, of course, but I know the difference between the light in the room and the darkness behind my eyes, and I feel other people’s eyes on me all the time. Am I wrong? Am I simply paranoid? I don’t know. The only thing I do know is that I am alone.

Or… perhaps not. Perhaps I am not alone. At least, not entirely alone. In my room, of course, I am entirely alone. But otherwise, I’m not so sure. If there are other people watching me, then I mustn’t be entirely alone. But even if that is not true, there is also the matter of the trays of food appearing in my room seemingly out of nowhere. Someone has to put those there—and take them away—right?

And then there are the people who walk past my room. Every once in a while, I will hear footsteps through the wall: usually just one set, sometimes two, rarely three. Sometimes, I hear two sets of footsteps—one heavy and obvious, one light and unnoticeable unless you know what to listen for—pass my room in one direction, and a little while later, only the heavy footsteps return. In these instances, I strain my ears to hear the second set, but to no avail.

What are they doing outside of my soft, square, white world?

What are they doing to the people that leave and never return?

Will they one day take me, too, and lead me to another place, never to return?

I do not know the answers to these questions, and the uncertainty gnaws at my mind, threatening to destroy me. I look over all possibilities, all logical applications to my situation, and yet I find naught to help me ease my troubled state of mind.

And so I eat, and I sleep, and I think. I stare at the soft, white wall of my room, the only one through which I hear the footsteps, waiting until the time comes for me to be taken away, led on toward something new and unknown, something that I do not know whether to look forward to…

…or to fear.

I hear footsteps.

I lie on my back on the floor, listening. One pair: heavy and loud, heading toward my room in the same slow and measured pace as always. They approach from the right, which is the usual direction for approach, and I can’t help but wonder where they are coming from and where they are going to. Are they on their way to retrieve another person to take away?

I lie on the floor of my room, thinking and listening, when suddenly I hear another noise. This is a noise I have never heard before, and I look in the direction of the footsteps to see a door open in my room. I never knew there was a door there; until it opened, it looked just like the rest of the wall.

But now I know of its existence, because it is standing wide open, leading out to a new and undiscovered world.

I stand up, never taking my eyes off the doorway, for fear of it disappearing just as suddenly as it had come. Slowly, cautiously, I walk toward the doorway. As I reach it, I hesitate. What am I doing? I ask myself.

I am leaving, I answer.

Leaving? To where? I do not know anything about this new place, I reply incredulously.

No, I do not know, and I never will if I do not go there, I retort, and I step outside of my room and into the world beyond.

The floor is cold.

It is hard and cold, obviously made of something other than the warm, soft material that pads the floor and ceiling and walls of my room. Looking down, I see the reflection of my face in its shiny whiteness: pale skin; dark hair; eyes of a strange color that I cannot name. I have never seen my face before, and just to make sure that it is truly my face that I am seeing, I reach up to touch it with my hand. The reflection mimics me, and I know that what I am seeing is the truth.