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The Empty Room Deal

'You must be truly desperate to have come here.' You didn't hear the man in black suit saying it but it was kind of written on his face, you thought. It was enough to have the words take shape in your mind, therefore enough to make you question your choice. But then again, it wasn't any other way, was it? You needed the money.

'It's surely not as dangerous as other less paid jobs...' you thought reassuringly.

Five minutes have passed. The room you were asked to stay in was really empty. Although there was no chair the floor was soft and clean. Although there was no light bulb and no switch, there was light radiating from the ceiling as if it was smoked glass. Although you couldn't focus your eyes on anything in particular, the door you came through was visible; an impersonal white door to fit everything else in the room. A blinding white. A dull white. A color screaming. A color silent and impassible to you. 

Ten minutes have passed. The lack of sound was lonely. Although in the silence you could perceive a slight air movement, the whisper of a tame breeze: the room was somehow ventilated but you couldn't see any terminal of an AC installation. It was somehow calming. But the silence was still too lonely. 

Twenty minutes have passed. You think you can do this. It's just sitting in a room doing nothing. The floor, the walls, the ceiling. The subtle breeze, the infiltrating light. Your mind decides to replay songs for you to keep you entertained and you find yourself humming. You amuse yourself with the thought this room just became an elevator and the music you have in your head is actually just the kind to be elevator music. 

Thirty minutes have passed. Your back began to feel stiff so you lay down on the soft floor. It feels nice to the touch and there's no dust on it. You make an imaginary angel in the snow shape moving your arms and legs on its velvety surface. It's pleasant. You close your eyes, the floor forgets its impersonal white and turns a lush green miming grass. You probably can imagine the slight humid touch of dew in it, the smell of fresh green, mayhap even a fleeting chirp of a bird in the distance. 

Forty minutes have passed. You glance at the ceiling and the blinding white becomes a summer haze. You close your eyes and the ceiling becomes a cloudless night sky with glittering stars. You get the slight feeling that you're falling upwards, towards the void of space. For the first time since you entered the room you wonder again why something like this is worth 100k dollars an hour and why would they pay you so much for doing nothing at all. For the first time since you entered the room you wonder what's the catch; the more dangerous a job was in this world the higher it was paid. So what makes this so dangerous to raise up to that value of payment?

Fifty minutes have passed. You really cannot muster a coherent thought. The whole payment deal and the possible danger attached to the deal begins to obsess you. The last ten minutes suddenly turn into spikes of anxiety and you'd pray for even one damn object to be in the room so you could concentrate your thoughts on it. Existential questions flood you, the room feels like it's full of water and you're drowning in its silence. You can't seem to make your mind shut down and maybe sleep off the last ten minutes. 

Five minutes left. You've began already to question your sanity and your sense of time has distorted. It seems an eternity since the moment you entered the room and the door was closed behind you. You can't remember the face of the person that showed you in or how his attire looked like, aside that it was a suit. You never felt claustrophobic but suddenly the room feels too stuffy to stay there anymore. You never have fear of heights but the white of the room tricks you into feeling like being in free fall. 

The door unlocks and a man in a black suit announced you monotonously that one hour has passed and asks you if you'd like to extract and cash out or keep on staying in the empty room.

You raise up unsteadily and you're dizzy for a moment that seems long, too long. You manage to mouth the words and he shows you outside and towards the cash out point. 

Out the building, you look warily back towards its silhouette against the sky, cash on card, card in pocket and a strange sense of emptiness in your mind. 

You can't stop obsessing over 'what was the danger?'. It slowly eats at your sanity like a wyrm at the roots of the tree of life: was your sanity worth the money?

Prompt chosen by Ionela B: "The more dangerous a job is, the more it pays. You just took a job offer to stand in an empty room and do nothing for 100k dollars an hour."