Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Black Box

- Black Box -

They must have shot me with stun round because I'm not dead. I wake up with a terrible headache like someone is at work digging a trench through my head. A slow and steady lumbersome agony, quietly wrecking its path along. All I can feel is this nauseous pain. I can barely see and my eyes burn. I am suddenly afraid I had lost my vision somehow. That I am now blind, and alive - potentially a most horrid fate. But after a while, I realize that in fact, there's nothing to see.

I am in a dark room - a black room - with absolutely no source of light. No cracks or holes that I can make out. Utterly no light whatsoever. Nothing is permeating the interior. The air is dead and cold. It is clearly an airtight location too.

I reach out a hand and press it against the floor that I'm sitting on and feel my immediate vicinity. It seems to be smooth cold metal I am touching. The ground is spotless, clean, no objects or even dust. It must be well wiped every day. The touch of it against my skin sends shivers through my body. I follow the metal wall I had been sitting against upwards behind me, trailing my fingers along, and not too long after, I hit the top. I can barely extend my arm straight up. There is a metal ceiling right over me, barely any higher than sitting height. I would not be able to stand here. Perhaps instead of a room, I am in a box.

There's no telling where I am or how I had gotten here - whether there is an entrance or exit or a lid of some sort. I can't feel any hinges. Outside of this black box, there are no sounds and no movement. For example, I might hear the sound of an engine or feel intermittent jolts if I had been placed in some transport vehicle driving across the country to some mountain prison facility. Or the sounds of voices or trees or perhaps machinery. But there's nothing. It must be a sound proof crate as well. I wonder how thick these walls would have to be.

In this total darkness and silence, as I sit, for an incomprehensible amount of time, everything starts to gradually fade away. The entire world and existence itself. I couldn't see my own body or hear anything but my own thoughts and heartbeat.

My heartbeat seems to grow louder and louder, this engine within chugging on and on. It vibrates through my bones and eardrums. Then I begin to pick up tiny sounds of my organs. It's strange to hear. These little gurgles or crackles that go on inside, ever so silently that I had never noticed before. The rushing of my blood, the churning of my intestines, the popping of a tendon. The minute inner workings of a clock. Its own little world. How strange that human beings never stop to think about how complex and intricate their bodies are. If we look inside, it would be gazing into an alien world in a snowglobe. Except for doctors, it would appear entirely foreign. The fact that we live or function at all is already an extraordinary feat - a miracle.

As I listen to the sound of silence, I hear the actual song in my head. It sounds far off and distant like quiet chants of a church on a hill in some English countryside. It drifts with the wind. The sun there shines down radiantly, on green green grass. Colours exist and almost hurt my eyes. But it's so far away, I can tell it's just an attempt at painting a picture of something useless in the darkness. Just like the song I hear. I attempt to hum the tune. After a bit, I give up because my throat feels dry. I've always loved the song, but there's no comfort or wisdom in it now. The longer I listen to the tune in my head - though the harmonies are superb - it starts to sound like an eerie drone of a mechanical insect. Haunting summer memories of a past life. Along with Simon and Garfunkel, my organs murmur, as though they're having a conversation. I listen to them, my thoughts dimming.

Soon, I can't tell if I am actually awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious. Since there's no visible ground beneath me, I feel like I'm floating, or swimming through space. A part of a black hole in the universe, sucking in all material, converging into one tight space. And then it all becomes nothing.