The Unimportant

Part one

It is sweltering; tiny beads of sweat constantly drip from my forehead, down the bridge of my nose and then finally take the dive off. The air conditioning unit hasn’t blown cool air in what feels like several hours, but has continued to emit that deep monstrous hum as to give the illusion that it was pumping arctic winds. There are even brief moments where I truly felt that the machine was actually blowing heat into this congested little corridor. It wouldn’t surprise me seeing as how this model must be outdated by several decades.

I don’t think it would really make much of a difference, but I have no idea whether it’s day or night and there is no real way to tell, this hallway has no windows. The bleak gray walls are blank aside from a small black clock that hangs on the wall to my left. The best that I can tell the time reads 7:14, after periodically looking at it over the course of time I have been here, it never changes. After realizing this I have tried to restrain myself from ever looking over at it. Sometimes I find it hard to resist because of its incessant ticking. I have come to the conclusion that time and temperatures are irrelevant in this place; had they meant anything I probably would have withered away long ago.

I don’t know what I am waiting for, only that it is necessary and I have no other choice. As for things that I do know, I can recall the fact that I was late and had been sprinting to meet my fiancé before one of my classes at NYU. I vaguely remember the streetlight turning red and stepping out onto the cross walk. That is when everything went blank; no pain, no noise, just blackness. When I gained consciousness, I was standing in this line completely unaware of how I even came to be here, let alone standing up right. On an even more unsettling note the longer I stay here, the less I seem to remember about my life previous to the line. As I said I had been going to meet my fiancé … whose name I can no longer recall; as I am sure you can imagine it is a strange feeling to slowly lose a grip on everything you once knew and held close.

Even though I find it more and more difficult to remember many of their names, or what they look like I know that I miss my friends and especially my fiancé. As in any line there is a person standing in front of me and I assume there are countless more standing in front of him. Since his back has been to me the entirety of the time I have been here, I have never spoken to the man in front of me. Nevertheless I have given him a name, perhaps to try and satisfy that longing for friends; I have dubbed him Rodger. This is name that was rather familiar and not to long ago I had a legitimate reason for, but even that has slipped my weakening mind.

I have even made up a backup story about Rodger. He is middle aged; which I gathered from the balding patch on the back of his head. He has a wife and three kids before he was imprisoned here. After college, he and his wife were pretty successful until his wife was accidentally impregnated due to forgetting her birth control for several days; she eventually had to stop working. Now, several years later they have a total of three kids, two boys and a girl. Rodger is just managing to make ends meet, and still satisfy everyone’s needs. Judging by the way he is dressed, slim fit jeans and t-shirt with the letter NYU on the back, he was headed to the local sports bar, for his weekly “bro time” with his work buddies. Rodger, like myself had been crossing a street when suddenly he black-out and landed in line just ahead of me. There are even times when I think that I might have actually seen him walking onto the street in front of me before I got here.

Rodger has never lifted his head that I have seen, to tell the truth he doesn’t exactly do a whole lot of moving at all; perhaps every so often he shifts his weight or lets out a deep sigh but does not do much more. In reality, that is probably because he can’t. This is just one other disturbing detail of this place, I can’t move from my spot in this line. It is almost as if my feet were super glued to the ground while I was unconscious. Another odd limitation is that I can’t see too far past Rodger. Everything gets really blurry past a certain point, as if I was nearsighted which can’t be possible because I have had perfect eyesight my entire life, and I don’t think shitty vision would randomly start now.

It’s not completely impossible to move the rest of my body but even other movements seem slow and sluggish, as if trying to touch my own face would take more energy than anything that I have ever done. The best way to describe it would be that feeling that you get when you devour that piece of cheesecake after a healthy dinner, and can’t seem to pry yourself off the sofa. Of course when that was the case, it was usually a bad day battling my depression. A good nights sleep and One Prozac later, I almost always got over that feeling.

I often try to remember what I was like as a person before this. One thing I remember about myself was that I took a lot of pride in my appearance. I would take long runs through central park on a daily basis to keep fit. I think had even joined that new gym on the corner of Park Avenue and east 79th street. There was a reason for that specific gym, I remember passing the distinct blue and green “NOW OPEN” banner on my way to classes. It must not say much for my character that I can still remember where my gym is located, however I can’t remember what subject I had spent years studying at school. I will say one thing about this place, it really does show you exactly what your real priorities in life where and how stupid you are for believing they were important.

In case it hasn’t already become apparent I spend the majority of my time here thinking. It is honestly the only way to get by in a place like this. Trying to keep myself from going insane or brain dead has become my main priority. I have come to enjoy this one little game, where I start with a random number and multiply it by itself till I can’t get any farther. Ironically, the problem with that game is that now I have gone through so many of the numbers so many times that I CAN recall the sequence of many of them to a certain extent, essentially killing the whole game for me.
Another thing that my consistent thinking has done is provided documentation of everything I have experienced. I have gone over the things in this hallway so many times that like the math game, I can recall every detail of everything around me. I often try to close my eyes to give myself a break from reality and try to picture myself on a white beach or grassy meadow, but even when my eyes close I unconsciously start to visualize the hallway and eventually end up opening up my eyes again. I stopped fighting the memorization and cataloging of this place because for whatever reason I feel like this information could be important. Maybe I think that if I am ever able to escape I could run to the police and in detail, describe this place and they can help save every one else?

Going insane doesn’t help depression; despite my hardest efforts I have lost my mind and all but one memory is gone! “Hayley Adams … Hayley Adams … Hayley ... Adams” I have repeated over and over to make sure that there would be something left of me. All of this madness has made me just a shade of what I formerly was; my shimmering shoulder length blonde hair has grown past my lower back and has become unsightly and ragged The countless hours spent in the gym and long runs have gone to waste, my muscles have gone into atrophy and now sag from my bones. I don’t even bother to keep my eyes open any more, aside from a waste of energy it is completely pointless, this hallway, this line has become my world. Even with my eyes closed I see the image of this antechamber vividly, and now with my memories washed away there is nothing to fight this nightmare world with.

Since the atrophy has set in I have not been able to stop shaking. Almost like having the flu, I know it is hot but I can’t help from feeling cold. The feel of my body and emptiness of my mind has caused the depression to take over. Regardless of having my “friend” Rodger in front of me I feel so alone and recently more and more scared that this will never end. My lips quiver, “I want this to end, kill me please,” I mutter. I really don’t know how I battled this for so long? Mind over matter? Too bad that mind is gone. I cry…

MOTHER OF GOD! Where the hell did that come from? I immediately open my tear filled eyes for the first time in what seems like forever. Frantically looking around for what could have caused the shock. To my further discomfort nothing beside my state of awareness has changed. I think back, somehow knowing I have felt something close to this before. To my surprise something is there, a bright and complex memory stored long ago in the deep recesses of my mind. It was a few years ago; I was at a party with my fiancé who was at that time only my boyfriend of a few months. Someone had drunkenly decided on a brilliant idea. To pull out a tazer and offer to tazer other guests. Myself, impressively having totaled sixteen shots at that point was more then willing to be tazered. On the instant I was tazered I remember feeling the distinct twinge of pain course through my entire body, stiffening all my muscles at one causing me to jut out of the seat I had been stationed in. This wouldn’t have been nearly as bad had it not caused to me instantly expel all sixteen shots, onto the back of my boyfriend.

The distinct feel of electricity was what I must have just experienced. Only this time it was inexplicably more painful. Luckily for Rodger, I haven’t drank or eaten anything in what could be months so I didn’t vomit. Of course I can’t be sure, I doubt that the deranged drunk from the party is standing behind me tazing me all of a sudden. So my only question at this point is “if nothing has changed, then where did that pain come from?”

BUZZ! … There was no mistaking it this time. I was being electrocuted. Someone, somewhere was screwing with me now, and for what reason I couldn’t fathom. The first time the pain had been brief, this time was twice as long with twice the intensity. Now I am crying again, a steady stream of salty tears down my face, only now for a different reason.

SHOCK THREE; first there was an unbearable pain, I scream uncontrollably. Second a glorious white light, preceded by an overwhelming calm feeling. Lastly, blackness…