Day Seven

10/12/85

Terrence was still laying on the floor. The orange bottle was near, empty.

He felt his mouth dry as a desert. He had no idea of how much time he spent laying there. He couldn't do much, though. For some reason, the lights were so bright, and the noise they made! He didn't notice it before, but the humming of the bulbs was so annoying, and even if Terrence covered his ears, he could still hear the eco on his mind.

He imagined that the thing that killed Gary, if it was real, was lurking somewhere, no so far, for its next meal. But that was okay; he hoped it was real and that it would find him; the sooner, the better.

Terrence imagined that being lost in some big desert wouldn't be much worse fate than be in that horrible yellow corridor. At least it would be hot in the desert, while the place he was in started to get cold out of nowhere.

He made a mental list of all the things he would do if he ever returned home: First at all, eat. No a freeze pizza, no a microwave onion chicken soup, no fucking chop suey, but real food, like beef with mushrooms or some well served pasta, with lots of tomato sauce. Then, he would take a long hot bath, and after write on his diary how terrible were his last two days or so, he would sleep forever. Fuck the office; his mind needed rest. But he felt he was going to die there, lonely and forgotten, and nobody would ever find him or even search for him. Not even Lionel.

"I was..., I'm a good daddy" he said with closed eyes. "Lionel, don't you love me? Don't you miss me?"

But he was really about to die? Like that? He would like to do something to keep searching, but he couldn't even move. His head was burning in pain, and that annoying melody was playing in the background, while he felt weak and tired. The melody!

Terrence looked at the end of the corridor. There was somebody standing there, but he couldn't see her well enough.

Terrence tried to say something, but no sound came from his dry mouth.

The strange melody he heard before meeting Gary was sounding clear, like if the man standing there, at his feet, was playing it somehow. But maybe the sound wasn't real. Maybe, Terrence was dying or he was getting crazy.

Terrence closed his eyes and tried to swallow his last drop of saliva. When he opened the eyes, a dark silhouette of man was near on his side, looking down at him. He couldn't see his face, because his sight was a little blurry, and that head against the terrible lights was just an obscure shape. Terrence was in an alert state, hearing that monotonous melody that could came from Hell itself, but the lights weren't falling over him that time, and the disgusting melody, as sad and boring as it was, made him forget the insistent humming of the light-bulbs, and even his hunger. Relieved from his pain, he fell to sleep, and the risk of never wake up again was a happy possibility.

* * *

When Terrence woke up, he felt a little better. He was still hungry and weak, but sleeping gave him new forces and he decided to try to do something, even if little. He stood and grabbed his belongings. He scraped the wallpaper of a wall with his pocket-knife. Then he drew the scraped shape on his notebook, and wrote the number 0 next to it. He walked some steps, and scraped another wall, making sure of making a different shape, which he drew on his notebook, next to the number 1. He continued to do this until he reached the number 13. Then, he fell on his knees, tired and trembling. It was too much work.

When he woke up, he found himself in a bathtub. He looked around. The bathroom was dark and cold. He found hard to leave the hot water, but he did. The rest of the apartment was dark. Terrence was freezing, and he put himself on a big brown coat that smelled funny, but he still could feel the cold. He got into bed and covered him with both sheets, but it was not enough. He stood up and searched for the stove. It was hard to see in the dark, but he could found it and turn it on. The hot air was really light, even when he put his hand over it. He noticed the windows were full opened. He tried to close them, but he couldn't find the windows' doors anywhere.

Out in the night, all the other windows were dark, all but one: The next building's window, in front of his. He heard the laughs, and after a moment a young girl came to the window, through yellowish-green curtains. She was young, with some wrinkles on her pink chicks. She was the girl on the train. She was naked and the wind played with her brown hair. She was smoking and even if Terrence apartment was dark, it seemed she could see him, because she smiled at him.

Somebody knocked at his door.

Terrence wondered who it could be that late at night. He looked through the peep hole and opened the door. There was nobody in there. He went out into the hallway. It was even colder than his apartment, so he hugged himself and walked.

"Hello?" he said at the empty hallway.

He walked a long way, until he realized something horrible: probably, it had no end. He recognized the yellow wallpaper, the humming.

"Oh, no!"

He tried to return to his apartment, but he couldn't find it; there were so many doors and all looked exactly the same. Why?, he thought, why I had to come out? He knocked one door, but nobody answered. He knocked door by door with the same result.

Then, he heard the melody, coming from the end of the corridor. And it sounded clear, as its source was near.

Terrence panicked. He ran, but the sound was getting near. He pulled out his pocket-knife and opened a hole on the brown carpet, discovering a secret door on the wooden floor. He opened the door and entered in the inferior darkness through a stair. The cellar was drowned on muddy water that, he though, was the source of the horrible smell that came from the carpet. Thirsty as he was, he drank a little of that water and it tasted good, almost like normal water. He forgot about the cold, and there wasn't any horrific jazz melody anymore.