Plight

         I awoke with a jolt; sleep still hung over me like a black cloud hangs over a day that would otherwise be sunny and nice, but the cloud decides to make its existence known. Whispers of dreams still bounced around in my head, momentarily blurring the line between fiction and reality. I glance over at the clock. 3:10. Or so it says. Time can be a dirty liar sometimes, and a dirty thief. If time is moving the way it’s supposed to, I was asleep no more than 2 hours. Tonight’s going to be another sleepless night, it seems.
         Discontent, I stumble out of bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. I check in on the children… wait… there are no children. Must’ve been a dream I had. At least there are dreams now… maybe that means this insomnia spell is finally coming to an end.
         A flash of heat lightning illuminates my surroundings, making me jump. For that brief instant of the full color spectrum, I know all. And I know there’s a coffee maker in my kitchen. I flick the light on. It sparks, and then all is dark again. No matter… the freezer light will do, I suppose.
         As the coffee is brewing, I spy something in the corner of the room out of the corner of my eye; a light of some sort, self-illuminated. It casts a pale rose shadow on the ground around it, and I have to shield my eyes because it’s burning so brightly.
         Since it is a foreign object and I have no idea how dangerous it could be, I decide it’d be a good idea to investigate. It is emitting a high-pitched noise almost outside my range of hearing. The frequency is close to that of a television set when you turn it on, except this is piercing. My forehead felt like it was going to split in half if the noise droned on any longer.
         As I inch closer and closer to the object, the noise gets louder and louder. What I thought was unbearable one step seems like a whisper the next. Surely nothing on Earth is capable of such a deafening and emphatic noise!
         With great effort, and after what seemed like miles of walking (while in reality it was only about 5 paces), I confronted the object directly. I couldn’t look directly at it any more than I would be able to look at the sun if I were standing next to it. I reached out my hand to touch it instead, inching it closer, and closer, and closer.
         Then everything went black.
• • •
         I had never blacked out before, but I knew that this wasn’t what blacking out felt like. It felt… wrong. Like when you become self-aware in a dream, and realize you’re dreaming. My head is swimming, my ears are ringing, and I literally can’t see a thing.
         Under ordinary circumstances, this just may have been the scariest thing that had ever happened to me, but I felt oddly… calm. I didn’t even need to console myself. I tried my voice, but no sound escaped. Typical. My body also refused to move.
         Lights, I thought, and suddenly lights there were. The room is no larger than an interrogation room at a police station, and the general appearance of the room wasn’t too far off from that either. The walls and ceiling were all white, and the floor was a strange off-white that reflected the overhead lights right into my eyes. To my left sits a wooden table, and a manila envelope lies on top. The envelope bears the message “James Cooper.” My name. I haven't gone by James ever since 10th grade, when I moved to a new school, and one of its main child rulers was named James. He forced all other James's to go by something else, to avoid an accidental connection to his holiness. From then on I became “Jimmy Cooper.” It had a nice ring to it.
         “Hello!” calls out a voice from seemingly nowhere, until I notice a speaker overhead. “We’re so…”
         …pleased you could…
         “…pleased you could make it.”
         “Where…?” Found my voice I guess.
         “Please exit to your left.”
         There’s a door in here after all. Somehow I hadn’t noticed it before. My body, suddenly able to move again, gravitates over to the door. I open the door and walk inside.
         I look around, and had to blink to make sure I wasn’t just imagining things. Inside the room were thousands – no, millions – of books! The room must have been larger than the biggest library, and the shelves stretched up as high as a house. On the far wall was a large wooden door, proudly bearing a “1.”
         What now?
         Might as well…
         “Might as well go through the door,” said the voice.
         If only the back of the room weren’t so far away…
         But it isn’t. It’s only a few steps in front of me. How I got this far into the room is beyond me. The door is probably locked anyway. I notice a strange symbol on the door, but I don’t recognize it. There’s no doorknob. Taking a stab in the dark, I touch the symbol. It glows yellow, then the door swings open. I enter the room.
         The door slams shut behind me, leaving me in complete darkness. I feel along the wall for a light switch, find one, and flick it to its “on” position. The room is revealed to be a seemingly endless expanse of grey. The ceiling and walls are invisible to me, because there is a dense fog, a cloud on the ground, coming from some unknown source.
         As a child, I had always imagined what it would be like to be inside of a cloud. I would sit on top of it, and the cloud would take me where I wanted to go. I would be the coolest kid in school, because afterwards I would just hitch a ride on my buddy, the cloud. Now that I’m actually inside of a cloud, I can tell the child in me that there really isn’t anything special about it, besides, maybe, its enigmatic absence of texture.
         In what I hoped would be about the center of the room (if it isn’t the center by now, who knows how large the room could be) one solitary chair sits. It is such a lonely and depressing sight that I suddenly had an urge to leave immediately. I hurriedly make my way towards the back end of the room, where I hoped to find my exit from this morbid place of desolation.
         When I finally get to the back of the room, I find just what I was expecting: a door bearing the number 2, with another foreign symbol. I reach out to the symbol and touch it, expecting the door to swing open again, but it won’t budge. I put all my weight onto the door, but it still stands strong.
         “Let me out!” I plead, panic beginning to consume me. “Get me out of this lonely isolated room!”
         The symbol on the door begins to light up, and this time turns red. The door lowers into the ground, and I step through.
         Or maybe “fall through” would have been more correct. As soon as I step in, the floor gives way, and I’m sliding down a chute in complete darkness. If I knew where I was going, it probably would have been fun. But as for me, being in the state of uncertainty and confusion that I am, I’m terrified. At least it’s smooth.
         After what felt like hours, I tumble out into the open. I can’t really say how long I was actually in there, since I have pretty much lost all concept of time due to my insomnia spell. Besides, that, I had no watch with me, and there sure as hell wasn’t a clock anywhere nearby. I turn around and look at the room.
         This room, like the others, is immense. The perimeter of the room is so large that I can only see the far side because of the walls, which are self-illuminated. Everything in the room is glowing red, and there are stalagmites and stalactites coming out of the ground and ceiling, respectively. In the middle of the room is a moat of sorts, filled with lava and surrounded by a wall of fire. This moat spans from wall to wall. The ground seems solid enough, but you never know when the ground is going to crumble away, leaving you to fall into a pit of imminent death.
         I take one cautious step forward, half expecting this to happen, but I feel a mixture of relief and regret once I know it’s safe. I’m beginning to think I may not make it out of this room. I carefully maneuver myself around the room, examining each end, seeing if there was some way around the middle. The moat is about 12 feet across… too far to risk jumping. I make my way to the corner of the room to try and devise a plan. There has to be some way out of here… if only I had power to shoot ice out of my hands… that would be convenient. I lean up against a stalagmite, then climb up on top of it and sit down, taking a panoramic view of the entire place from a good vantage point. I stand up, and have to duck to avoid hitting a stalactite from the ceiling.
         Suddenly I had an idea. I ran over to the center of the room again, but this time climbed up the nearest stalagmite, and grabbed onto a stalactite and shimmied up. I’ve always been good at gymnastic-type things, so I had no doubt that I could swing to another one from the one I was already holding onto. I made the jump easily, then carefully moved myself across the obstacle, then landed safely on the ground on the other side. I try my footing again, then, finding it safe, proceed forward. I would hate, in my state of excitement after crossing the lava pit, to recklessly lead myself to death on something that could have been avoided so easily.
         I finally get to the door. I can't help but smile at the beauty of the number 3 that is engraved into it. I look around for the usual foreign symbol, but there is no sign of it. My stomach immediately begins to clench up, then drops down to my knees, as my eyes report back, unable to find my ticket out of the room. Tears begin to well up in my eyes, and out of frustration, I kick the nearest stalagmite. It glows green, and the door opens. My frustration instantly melts away, and is replaced by relief. This time I am careful to look where I'm going before I step through. Fortunately, it was just flat ground, then a sharp turn. I couldn't see too far into the room, but I knew that there wasn't going to be a rough landing.
         I step through the door and into the hallway, prepping myself as much as I can on the way for what's to come. I had already experienced a little more than I thought was capable of a human mind to handle, and I'm not sure how much worse it's going to get. The door behind me closes, as expected. As soon as it's shut, the heat goes away, leaving me shivering in the corner. What makes it worse is that the intense heat from the previous room was such a foil to this, making this absence of heat is that much more augmented. I'll try my best to get through this room quickly. I turn the corner to look at the room and give it my usual once-over, and what I see literally makes my jaw drop and stops me dead in my tracks, speechless.
         The room is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. The imagery in the room could not possibly be properly represented with mere words, but I'll try my best. The entire place seems to be made of ice, and everything gleams as if touched by the hand of God himself. There are groups of trees off on the sides of the room, and they all have frozen water on their branches, making it sparkle in such a way that I have to look away to keep from crying. All of a sudden my will to leave is gone. I just want to stay in this room forever. Forget how cold it is; I’ll get used to it. This room is the only thing that matters anymore.
         I take a cautious step forward to make sure it’s safe. It seems so, so I walk forward a bit more, taking in my surroundings for all they’re worth.
         Once my whole body is inside of the room, all the ice melts away, and the room is actually revealed to be a barren wasteland. The floor that was just polished like the yellow brick road to Emerald City melts away to dust. All the trees wither and conform to the mood of the rest of the room, becoming dead and useless.
         “Nooooooooo!” I call out to no one in particular. “Please let it come back! Please restore this room… whoever can hear me, answer me! I’m sick of this! I want out!”
         Perhaps in response to my pleading, the door at the back of the room opens. I dash over to it, and run through to the next room, apathetically.
         More determined than ever to get out now, I look around the room, already planning my escape. The whole aura of the room disheartens me. It is as if somebody poured all the sorrow of their soul into this one contained space. With each step I become more and more discouraged, and when I reach about the center, I sit down under a weeping willow. The shade of the room is a pale blue, giving one the feeling of underwater submersion, and also of utter hopelessness and depression. How long have I been here, anyway? An hour? Two hours? A day? Two days? I couldn’t say for certain. I guess I could learn to accept this new situation…
         “Get up!” came the strange voice from nowhere again.
         “Who… are you…?”
         “I guess you could call me your sense of reasoning.”
         “What…?”
         “Go on, go through the door. It’ll all make sense.”
         As if driven by some unseen force, I make myself do what was requested of me. My body gets up and moves itself toward the door, which has opened. I notice that this door is wooden, like a normal office door, and on it is written “0/5.” Unsure about its meaning, I walk inside.
         This room is revealed to be the exact same as the room I woke up in. If I'm not mistaken, this probably is the room I woke up in. The interrogation room. There is a window to my left. I look through it. The window goes through to a house, and a person is asleep on the couch. With a closer examination, I realize that I'm looking in on myself, in my own house. In my hands is a book. Dealing With Grief and Loss, the title proclaims.
         All of a sudden I'm falling again, and I tumble through the floor and back into my own body. It jerks awake. Groggily, I peer down at the page I left off at. The bookmark is a photograph of Linda, the recently deceased love of my life. May you have a rewarding afterlife for all the secular pain you had to bear. I glance down at the writing. The first line of the page is highlighted. It reads, "everybody deals with grief in his or her own way." I smile, and go to sleep.