The Waiting Room The room was unusually bright almost - PDF document

1 The Waiting Room The room was unusually bright, almost blindingly so. The Boy shielded his eyes as he stepped through the doorway , squinting into the light . A dull, muted pain pricked at his temples, warning ominously of the headache that was sure to follow. It was intensified by a low, eerie beeping noise that resonated from somewhere in the distance. Beep. Beep. Beep. The Boy gave his head a firm shake before peering past the doorframe. Everything in the room was bleach - white, from the hinged meta l folding chairs to the mortar between the glass block walls. Blurry figure s moved behind the translucent blocks ; colours, swirls, and different details that only intensified the throbbing in the Boy’s head. He averted his eyes, focusing instead on the res t of the room. A curved desk headed the room , behind which sat a young woman with a pair of cat - eye glasses perched on her nose. Files – also white – lined the shelves behind her, and every now and then, she would reach back and pluck a file from its spot , only to glance briefly at it before stuffing it back into the shelf. She has to be a reception i st, The Boy thought with a frown. But what am I doing in a receptionist’s office ? He looked around at the other occupants in the room. There were young ones and old ones, males and females, people of all different races and ethnicities, but the one thing that unified them was the whiteness of their clothing. The Boy glanced down at himself, thinking of how much he must have been standing out, only to find that he too was dressed in white, his feet 2 bare against the cold linoleum flooring. He couldn’t recall if he had been wearing white before – or where he had even been before, for that matter. In fact, he realized with a jolt, he couldn’t even remember his name. The Boy started toward the receptionist’s desk, and though his feet were just barely tapping against the linoleum , each step sounded like a bullet in the si lence of the room. He caught glimpse s of a few of the other occupants as he walked down the aisle. There was a bulky man in a dirty football uniform taking up one and a half seats in the far corner of the room. A woman with mousy brown hair was sitting near the front desk, clutching desperately at a bus ticket. A small boy wearin g white overalls was sitting a few seats down from her, hugging his knees and moaning softly to himself. The Boy tore his eyes away from the others as he reached the desk. The receptionist , however, didn’t look up from her files. He tapped his feet a few times, leaned against the counter, and even tried clearing his throat loudly, but she kept her gaze down. After a few moments of waiting, the Boy leaned over the counter. “Uh… I’m – I’m not sure why – ” “Take a seat.” The receptionist still hadn’t taken h er eyes off her files. “But I – ” The receptionist finall y looked up at him over the rim of her glasses, and he let out an audible gasp when he met her gaze. Her pupils were nowhere to be seen, her eyes like two milky orbs suspended in their sockets. She raised an eyebrow at him. “Take a seat.” The Boy backed away from the counter, stumbling over chair legs as he retreated down the aisle. His mind was dominated by a single, repetitive thought: he had to get out of there. But 3 when he finally reached the e nd of the room, his hands were obstructed by the unmistakable flatness and smoothness of a wall. The Boy ran his hands along the wall, his eyes wide in shock, and he even tried to rub at the plaster to reveal the doorway. But it had disappeared. He turned in circles where he stood, his eyes racing across the walls of the room, but the doorway was nowhere to be found. The Boy lowered himself into the nearest chair, gripping onto its metal legs for support. He was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating. Doors couldn’t just disappear. Suddenly, the Boy became aware that he wasn’t sitting alone. He raised his eyes to find an old man perched rather comfortably in the seat to his right. He was dressed in a shabby white suit, and he was smiling serenely at th e wall opposite them. The Boy opened his mouth to speak to the old man, but he stopped himself in fear of finding milky white orbs in place of his eyes. But after a few moments of agonizing silence, he thought his head was going to explode. He decided that he had no choice. “Excuse me,” said the Boy, keeping his voice low so that the receptionist couldn’t possibly hear. “Why – her eyes – ” “They’re white?” said the old man, the hint of a smile playing on his thin lips. His gaze didn’t leave the wall. “That’s because she sees all. It’s a difficult task, as you can imagine, and it takes its toll.” The Boy glanced up at the receptionist, who was still scanning through her files. He couldn’t help but wonder what there was to see in a plain white room. He turned back to the old man. “ Um – w here exactly are we?” 4 The Boy took a sharp intake of breath as the old man finally met his gaze. To his immense relief, the old man’s eyes were a warm shade of brown, but they were filled with a sort of astonishment tha t had the Boy wishing he hadn’t said anything at all. “Why, the Waiting Room, of course!” The Waiting Room. The Boy mouthed the words, feeling the familiar way they rolled off his tongue. It felt like a skill, mastered long ago, but forgotten until that p recise moment. And yet, the meaning behind the words was lost in him. “ What exactly is the Waiting Room?” The old man’s face broke into a small smile. “It is where we wait.” “Wait?” the Boy repeated , his eyes wide . “Wait for what?” “Well, you tell me,” the old man suggested, turning his frail body until he was facing the Boy. “What are you waiting for?” “I…” The Boy frowned. He couldn’t even remember his own name, let alone why he would be waiting in such a strange room . “I don’t know.” “That’s quite a lright. Not everyone knows.” The old man turned to face the wall again, that same serene smile playing on his thin lips. The Boy looked at the wall, and then back at the man. “Do you?” he blurted , before he could stop himself . The old man glanced quizzically at him, and he hastened to clarify. “Know what you’re waiting for.” The old man’s smile was so wide that his eyes crinkled at the corners, softening his otherwise gaunt face . “Yes,” he said simply. 5 The Boy stayed silent , waiting for the old m an to continue, but he did not. “Well – what are you waiting for?” “My wife. ” His eyes glassed over with a sort of excitement that took a decade off his face. “It’s been seventeen years since I last saw her, and now I’ll get to be with her again.” The Bo y’s eyebrows furrowed together. “Where is she?” There was a beat of silence. The old man frowned thoughtfully. And then – “ I’m not quite sure.” The Boy couldn’t help the sigh that escaped his lips. “Do you know when you’ll see her?” The old man shook hi s head. “No.” The Boy glanced sideways at him, and he felt as though he was seeing the old man for the first time . His face was old, wrinkled, and weary despite the fire ablaze in his eyes, and he was sitting with the stillness of someone who wasn’t plann ing on moving for a very long time. “How long have you been waiting?” asked the Boy. The old man looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought. The Boy leaned forward, waiting intently for his response. The old man took a deep breath. “A while.” The Boy slum ped back against his chair again. “W ell, w hat if you end up waiting forever?” The old man’s thin lips twisted into a knowing smile. “ Waiting isn’t necessarily a bad thing, now, is it? Tedious, yes, but not bad.” 6 The Boy opened his mouth to shoot back a w eary reply, and he would have gone through with it if the peculiar beeping sound hadn’t chosen that moment to become a little more prominent. Beep. Beep. Beep. He winced and shook his head again. The old man, however, didn’t seem to notice his strange be haviour. “Take Henry, for example,” he continued. He raised a n age spotted hand to gesture toward a middle - aged man sitting by the receptionist’s desk. The man was haggard - looking, sporting three days worth of stubble and wrinkled clothing. He was leaning his head into his hands, massaging his temples with his thumbs. The old man clucked his tongue and shook his head sympathetically. “He’s waiting for what just may be the biggest news he’ll ever receive. He may get it today. He may get it tomorrow. He may get it in a week, or a month, or a year. But it will arrive, no matter what.” The Boy glanced around at the rest of the Waiting Room. There was a young girl sitting a few chairs away from them, her chubby fingers clasped around the string of a pastel - pink balloon. A mother was rocking her baby near the back of the room, cooing quietly into the white blankets. A teenage boy sitting near the receptionist’s desk was leaning forward onto his knees, his eyes on the wall beside the desk. The Boy followed his gaze to the wall, and he was taken aback to find a door there . He hadn’t noticed it before, and despite the unre liability of his memory, he was certain it hadn’t been there before. It was a white door with a silver doorknob, looking too ordinary to be truly inconspicuous. The Boy’s eyes travelled down the door, and sure enough, its peculiarity was 7 instantly revealed . Multicoloured lights were flashing from the crack beneath the door, casting abstract patterns onto the tiled floor. The Boy pointed at the flashing lights. “What is that?” The old man didn’t follow his gaze, but fixed his eyes instead on the Boy. “You mi ght not want to look too hard. You wouldn’t want to spoil things for yourself.” But t he Boy looked away too late . A sudden flash of green light shot out from underneath the door, and a searing pain shot through his head . He squeezed his hands to the sides of his head , scrunching his face in agony, waiting for the moment to pass. Beep. Beep. Beep. He shook his head as firmly as he could, gr itting his teeth against the excruciating pain , and the sound faded. He glanced tentatively at the old man, who, once ag ain, didn’t seem to notice the lapse. In fact, he was looking somewhere in the opposite direction. “ How did you find out what you were waiting for?” asked the Boy, grimacing as the last pangs of pain passed through him. The old man tapped the side of his head with a thin finger. “I just opened my mind.” The Boy frowned. “… H ow?” “Open - mindedness isn’t something that can be taught, my boy,” said the o ld man with a chuckle. “We close the doors on things that upset us, things that frighten us. I can’t teach you to be unafraid.” “I’m not afraid,” said the Boy quickly. The old man raised his eyebrows in amusement, and the Boy continued with a no te of defensiveness. “I’m just… confused.” 8 “Fright and confusion can go han d in hand,” said the old man knowingl y. The corners of his mouth curved upward . “ But they are often mistaken for one another.” A sudden wail erupted from the back of the room. Both the Boy and the old man looked on as the mother , who seemed to have dozed off, began to rock her baby again . The baby’ s tiny pink fists were poking out of the blankets, shaking furiously in the air. The mother crooned softly into the blanketed bundle, and after a few more minutes of crying, the baby fell asleep once again. The Boy turned back to the old man, rubbing at t he back of his neck. “Say I did know what I was waiting for. Say I wasn’t sure if I really wanted it. Would I have a choice?” “You always have a choice.” The Boy sighed, and the old man chuckled at his reaction. “Ah, yes. The freedom of choice isn’t reall y freedom at all, is it?” Beep. Beep. Beep. The Boy glanced warily at the door in spite of himself. The multicoloured lights were still flash ing from the crack beneath the door, but he didn’t keep his gaze long enough to find out if the green light was sti ll there, blinking among the others. “Maybe I should wait a while longer,” said the Boy hesitantly. “Just to make sure that I’m doing the right thing.” The old man raised his wispy white eyebrows. “How long are you prepared to wait?” 9 A sudden chill ran up the Boy’s spine as a gust of air blew into the Waiting Room through the crack beneath the door. The shrill sound of wind pricked at his ears, muffling the beeping sound and filling the room within seconds. “You have already made your decision,” the old man called over the wind. “And decisions must not be second guessed in the Waiting Room.” The Boy’s eyes flitted to the crack beneath the door, where the lights were flashing brighter and faster than ever before. The wind was shrieking now, and unless his sen ses were deceiving him, the floor was beginning to shake ever so slightly. Beep. Beep. Beep. The old man clasped a hand around the Boy’s wrist. “Courage,” he said, nodding meaningfully at the Boy . And in that moment, the Boy forgot the freak winds and flas hing lights as he looked up to meet the old man’s gaze. His eyes crinkled at the corners as his lips stretched into a reassuring smile, and he nodded one last time before turning to face the wall again. Suddenly, the door flew wide open, filling the room w ith a blinding light. The empty chairs flew off the floor as a strong gust of wind blew in through the gaping door, but no one seemed to notice except for the Boy and the old man. The Boy cast a terrified look at the old man. His heart was pounding throug h his chest, and his knuckles were turning white against the arms of the chair. The old man tore his eyes away from the wall to flash one last toothy grin at the Boy. “Well, what are you waiting for?” 10 The Boy took a deep breath before pushing himself up of f the chair. He flexed his fingers as he walked toward the door, and despite the shrieking winds, his feet still sounded like bullets against the linoleum. Beep. Beep. Beep. The sound was louder than ever before. It poured into the Boy’s ears and swirled t hrough his head, pulsing through his veins alongside his blood. He let his eyelids grow heavy as he walked through the door, letting the darkness take over. And then, his eyes flashed open. Word Count: 2 , 479