Man in a Dark Room
by Chris Kobayashi
We say the pen is mightier than the sword — the pencil being the greatest weapon of all. The sheer dimension of a pencil is feeble in comparison to the mighty blade. The pencil: a small twig with a graphite insert and a fragment of rubber attached to one end. The sword: a precision-cut blade of steel sharpened to inflict the most lethal of blows to flesh and bone. Nonetheless, the pencil proves much deadlier, especially in the case of a confused young man who awakens to find himself in a most unusual situation.
* * *
Adam, a man in the infancy of his adulthood, is lying naked on the floor of a dark room. As he gains consciousness, Adam is not sure whether or not his eyes are open. He tries to pry open his eyes with his fingers, grasping for the loose skin of his eyelids, but he is still confronted with the image of the deep abyss of darkness.
Drowning in darkness, Adam swings his head left and right to pick up any variations of light with the retinas of his eyes, but there is only gloom. This is a pure darkness, a darkness he has never seen, yet it remains a darkness that he knows.
Feeling the floor resting below him, Adam braces himself as his legs lift his slim figure to a standing position. His right wrist feels broken, but with a few rotations and stretches the pain is tolerable.
In hopes of gaining a sense of place, Adam reaches forward into black space with his hands and slowly drags his feet on the hard ground, to prevent himself from tripping or falling. He bumps into what feels like a chair. Slowly he feels the curved, smooth edges and sits.
How did I get here? How long have I been here? As he sits, the coolness of the chair reminds him that he is not wearing any pants. His thin legs shiver as a chilly breeze passes.
Hello? He tries to speak, but the words come out as whimperings of muffled sounds and grunts. Is anyone there?
The blinding darkness begins to give Adam a headache as if one side of his head is heavier than the other. He has no understanding of what was before, no understanding of what is now, and no knowledge of what will be. As he feels his hand, he notices only three slim fingers.
Three fingers? Where are my fingers? What’s happened to me? He strokes the base of his fingers up towards the tip and notices he has no fingernails. No blood though. I must be okay, but why do I feel so thin?
Reaching several inches forward, his left hand is unexpectedly intercepted by another smooth object. It feels like a table. Adam comprehends. Yes, it is a table. A chair and a table. Perhaps I’m in some sort of living room. He runs both hands along the sharp edge of the table, a thin cliff overlooking a bottomless canyon.
As he stands in a slouched position, the edge of the table rubs against his thighs. After placing his palms on the surface of the table, slowly he moves his palms forward like two sharks swimming in a sea of glass and shadows. The surface is cool and slippery, smooth and vast.
There must be more in this place. Maybe a cabinet or a cupboard full of food. A wall. Yes, a wall. Maybe if I find a wall, I can feel along it until I find a door or window or something.
Adam begins to take long steps in the original direction he was heading, as if avoiding strategically placed land mines buried in the wooden floor. The gliding of his feet echoes like sandpaper on a coarse piece of wood. As he protects his face with his right hand like a shield, his left hand acts like a spear, poking and feeling the blank space ahead of him. After taking three slow, large steps forward, he bumps into something that he can only characterize as flat and solid.
It’s a wall. I just need to find a doorknob, or maybe a light switch.
Frantically, he moves his hands across the wall in front of him to find some deviation from the flatness, but cannot find anything that resembles a knob or switch. As he begins to panic, he thinks, Why haven’t my eyes adjusted to the darkness? I’ve been in this dark room for at least thirty minutes. My eyes should have dilated and adjusted to the low level of light. I must be blind. He pauses. Am I blind?
In the midst of his state of panic, he pounds the wall with his fists, hoping that someone will hear him. But still he cannot speak. Suddenly, a sharp whip slashes the bottom of his face, opening his mouth so he can speak. “Help! Help!” He raises his voice, the unfamiliar pitch deafens his ears. “My name is Adam. I don’t know where I am, but please help me. Help me!”
After a few minutes with no response to his pleas, Adam leans against the wall; his head rests in a position tilting up and towards the right. He lets out a short sigh as he sinks lower onto the floor, sitting against the wall with his knees still bent.
Maybe I’m insane, he thinks. That’s it. Insanity. I’m insane and this is some sort of imaginary psychotic dream or state of mind. He rubs his knees only to find a couple of tiny, bony bumps connecting his thighs to his shins. Or maybe this is all an illusion. Some sort of mind game that has taken over my mind and body. A cold thought seeps into Adam’s mind. Maybe I’m dead.
He begins to sob and whimper. “Help. Is somebody there? Help. Help. Is anybody there? My name is Adam and I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. Help.”
A loud noise rumbles in the distance like the footsteps of a large army.
What’s that noise? he thinks, as he stands to his feet.
The room begins to shake and Adam falls to the floor, catching himself slightly with his right arm. He covers his head and kneels tightly on the ground like a scared little child. The quaking of the room grows louder and more violent. The furniture in the room shakes and dances to the beat of distance vibrations. The sound of a shattering vase shrieks from the other side of the room.
He begins to scream for help. “Help! For the love of God, please help me. My name is Adam. I don’t know how I got here, but I need help. Help! My name is Adam. I don’t know where I am. Please help me.” He quickly loses his breath and feels dizzy.
Although the room feels as if it is spinning, Adam suspects that he is the one spiraling while the room remains stationary. His lungs violently expand and contract to get air in and out of his tense body. His spine tingles with fear and excitement. He whispers under the chaotic noise, “Someone must know I am here.”
Suddenly, the movement of the room stops and Adam feels a warm shine on his skin as if the sun is twenty feet away from him, burning and directing heat into his skin. The atmosphere of the room, what felt like the violent rocking of the rough seas a few minutes ago, has meekly changed to the calm of a warm beach with frail waves gliding up and down the shore. He feels the rays of warmth enter the pores in his skin, toasting his cheeks and forehead. However, he still cannot see what is causing the warm feeling on his skin.
Adam waves his three-fingered hand in front of his face to see if the silhouette of his paw creates a distinct distortion in his vision, but there is no variation in his sight. In what feels like standing before God on Judgment Day, Adam stands there in stillness, not moving a single muscle in his body, waiting for the source of the light to speak.
With the swiftness of a diving hawk, two fierce blows puncture the front of Adam’s face, like two fiery spears piercing his skin and charring the inside of his skull. The cracking sound of broken bone resonates throughout the room. The attacks are quick and precise, but Adam manages not to fall, although he stumbles a few feet back. He firmly plants himself to the ground, taking the punishment.
As he rubs the two piercing wounds on his face with his feeble hands, his vision becomes clearer and more vivid. He looks around the room and sees the table that he had bumped into, which is espresso in color. The walls of the room are decorated with picture frames, each containing a picture of a landscape, and the flat, wooden object he frantically felt with his hands is indeed a dark brown door with detailed engravings crafted in the grain of the wood.
Amazed at all of the colors and shapes around him, Adam finally feels a sense of peace he has never felt before. Out of the corner of his eye, Adam sees the source of light above him. He raises his right hand to shade the light as he squints desperately between his fingers to see where the light is coming from.
As his eyes adjust to the light, his pupils contract, and a chill runs through his body. Above him, he sees a giant pair of eyes glaring down at him. Breezes of warm air rush against his face and body, nearly knocking him over. He feels the sudden urge to run and he quickly jolts towards the door, but the knob will not turn. He pulls with all of his weight, but the door still does not budge.
“The door isn’t real,” he says. “Come on. Let me out. My name is Adam. Help! Let me out.” He grabs a chair and smashes it against the door, turning his head away so as to not get splinters of wood in his face. Like a mountain, the door does not break. Instead, Adam is left holding two broken pieces of wood, while the rest of the chair fragments rest rigidly on the floor.
Adam runs and hides throughout the room like a frightened cat in a dark alley. He dashes for one corner of the room, panting, desperate to catch his breath, before he scurries to hide under the espresso table. “Go away,” he says. “You have the wrong guy. My name is Adam. You have the wrong guy. Help!”
Wearing a look of concern of his face, like a second-hand suit, Adam springs from underneath the table to a nearby recliner. Meticulously, he feels his face with his stick-like fingers and says, “My face has a lot of crooked flaws in it. It’s bumpy and uneven. My head is not round. It’s jagged. My chin is — well, I don’t have a chin. Why is it so uneven?” His eyes slowly journey down his arms and across his elbows until they find rest at his hands. “Why am I so ugly and disfigured?”
From the bright light above appears, like a meteor, a wide, pink object that moves closer and closer towards Adam’s face. The object is attached to a long cylinder of wood with a small deposit of graphite in its core. From behind the chair, he continues to stare at his hands with a look of disappointment and melancholy. Frozen, he cannot move and stands as still as a statue for a moment. Out of the corner of his eye he cannot clearly see what is coming towards him from above.
Instinctively, he stands and leaps, his arms leading the way, towards the oak dresser in the far corner of the room. In midair, the large pink object contacts his lower body, sending a jolt of agony through the fibers of his being. The feelings in his legs are gone; he skids on the ground in a falling motion, like an airplane in an emergency landing.
He turns his head and peers over his left shoulder to look back at his legs. There is nothing there. His eyes get large and he begins to crawl towards the couch, inch by inch. His weak arms struggle to pull him forward on the slickness of the floor.
“You’re not going to get me,” he says with a whisper of determination in his tone. “You can try, but you are not going to get me.” But Adam’s luck has run out. He is suddenly stopped by the large pink object, unmoving under the weight of the burden.
The heaviness of the eraser clamps his body in a position of concrete solidity. It begins to rub itself into Adam’s body and slowly makes its way towards his head. The rubbery feeling on his body is mixed with the terrifying motion of the grating of his black skin. Adam looks down in horror as his frame is wiped away until all that is left is his head.
Adam’s head is left tilted slightly at a 45 degree angle on the ground. With a look of discontent, quietly, he whispers, “Why? Why do I look the way I do? I thought I was perfect.”
With a few more clean swipes, the large pink object brushes the white paper until the disfigured oval and two small dots are no longer there.
Copyright © 2010 by Chris Kobayashi
