The Room

I sat across his desk awaiting his return. The room felt small, but perhaps it only seemed so due to the over excess of things that filled it. Books were aimlessly scattered all over the carpet, some old, some missing covers, some as if haven't been touched or moved for years.

The walls were assorted with oil paintings, most of which portrayed architecture and others seemingly relevant to the middle ages: castles, cathedrals, knights, and others more romantic with gigantic portraits of landscapes, trees, and one of a river that seemed to distinguish it's purity from the surrounding huts that speckled numerously, and insignificantly along both of the ground below. Most were old and neglected of care, and perhaps posed significant monetary value if they had been preserved properly.

Unlit candles lie atop his desk adjoined with various writing utensils and cobwebs only visible from standing up in the dim incandescent light that only the single lamp, astray, in the far right corner of the room could provide. The other lamps in the room looked similar to the one working. They were all vertical rods of the same height. They were gold and tarnished. They served no apparent purpose other than to remind one of his own fate. The fate of all things: death and the inevitable progression of age and decay that precedes it.

There was a fireplace, I realized, directly behind his wooden chair just below the largest oil painting of a castle with an approaching storm. The fireplace, like much of what I saw in here, must not have been used in a very long time. A wooden fold-out wine rack stood, barely, holding various bottles of opened wine, some empty, and on top of it were a half-opened books covered in dust that seemed to unify everything the wine rack held into one more old dying article among the many like a grave yard for the living with their graves already dug waiting for that extra effortless push before crumpling and becoming one with the ground.

The creek of the door sounded behind me as it opened and shut with intent as if the room had no time nor energy to waste with it open. As the man entered the room it suddenly felt as though nothing else in the world existed. I've just been cut-off from everything that mattered. Everything outside of this room does not exist. Only that which is alive exists in this room.