A Man Trapped In A Room | ERERI

Chapter Two

So I took the job, and because they wanted me to start right away, I had to quit the store with no notice. I felt bad about that, but I was excited about the new job too. It was a lot of money and seemed like easy enough work, if a bit boring.

I was nervous that there was something more to it, but I told myself that I would just have to see. No point in chickening out and wasting a good chance because I let my imagination go crazy.

I was given the location of the job itself, and when I went there, I was amazed that it really was just like the model room I had been shown only a few differences. There was a locker room you had to pass through to enter the surveillance room and there was a small bathroom attached to the real surveillance room also.

The real room had a small water cooler in the corner, but because I wasn't allowed to bring anything in with me, I had to eat before or after every one of my shifts. The biggest difference, of course, was that the monitors were turned on.

The right monitor was just a black and white terminal like you see in movies some times. I could type in my logs, but no internet to look at anything like that.

The left monitor... It was a video from a room. You would call it a bedroom I guess, because it had a bed in it, but it had lots of other stuff too. A T.V., a sofa and chairs, a couple of tables, and plenty of empty space in between.

The camera must be high up in a corner, because I could see pretty much everything except for the far sides of furniture. At first though, I didn't notice any of that stuff. All I saw was him. He looked to be about the same age as me and was very pretty. When I first saw him, he was laying on his side on the sofa. That was the part of the room farthest from the camera, but the picture was very clear and I could tell that he was sleeping.

I found myself slightly leaning into the monitor more so I could see him better, and then I thought about what I was doing and felt embarrassed. It's like I was spying on him, a Peeping Tom my mom used to call it. I didn't want to be that, but I didn't want to be silly either. I needed to think about it slow.

It was a good job and I wasn't doing anything illegal or wrong, right? I wasn't hurting anybody. The man looked fine and the room was nice.

He probably agreed to be there and it's all an experiment or something. I was just overreacting. So I sat down in the chair and began my work. It didn't take long before I understood more.

The man, I took to calling him Eren, wasn't there of his free will. I never saw him hurt, but it was clear that he never left that room except to go into what I think is the bathroom area that my camera couldn't see. Well, he never left the room on his own. Periodically, usually a couple of times a week during my shifts, men and women in strange-looking outfits would come in and take him from the room.

Sometimes he would struggle, but usually he would just go along with his head hung low. They would always bring him back, though the times when he wasn't brought back during my shift were always the worst for me.

I would worry about him until I got to work the next day and saw him in the room watching T.V. or painting. He never looked hurt or even that upset except for when they took him, and even when he fought, they were always gentle with him.

Still, I knew something was wrong.

__________

(13/11/2022)

-E_Jaeger12