It was a room of sanity. She felt she didn’t belong there.

White walls and white flooring. Square, mahogany table where she was sitting. No windows or doors. A singular painting hanging from one wall. She couldn’t remember what it was, so she turns. Sunset. Her gaze averted to its previous position, staring into a distance with a look empty of emotion. Right then, it struck her. The silence. She noticed that her hands were cupped loosely around her knees. It felt lethargic to shift her position, movement sounded scary, as though ripples of motion would hit the room like a storm. With a cautious instinct, her right foot tapped the floor, once. It was concrete from what she could tell. Suddenly, her eyes looked up.

My mind was a chaotic mess. There were all these images that seemed to appear out of nowhere, posting themselves to my memory, as with each passing moment, I saw them with greater clarity. I closed my eyes, yet I could still see my surroundings, although it was just a faint trail, like an impression on sand. When I tried to remember, these were the images that I retrieved. Nothing else. It became painfully clear to me that there was nothing beyond these white walls that existed in my memory.

Her eyes opened forcefully. She was startled by the sound of an incipient voice, coming from a place somewhere behind. She turned, expecting a person to be standing there, but she saw no one. It continued to speak. She tuned in to listen. Welcome, it seemed to say. She hadn’t heard the other words. And then, a stretch of silence lasted. Maybe she imagined it? She was saved from thinking she had been hallucinating, for the voice spoke again.

“In order to proceed,” it was the voice of a woman, “you will first have to complete a test. The test will now open in front of you.” It was only slightly disconcerting to have the silence disturbed. She felt like she had been intruded upon. She followed the instruction nevertheless.

In front of her was only the solid whiteness of the wall. That was when she heard three rhythmic beeps and saw a glare of lighting emitted from the table. At the edge of the side she was at, a rectangle was displayed. Technology. It was a screen. At the top of the rectangle, there was written Simulation Test, Portal 1. A blue button blinked in the middle of the screen, perpetually shrinking and enlarging. A strange sensation clouded her chest. She had no experience of anything else, yet she had a feeling that this was unusual. It grew as the voice spoke again.

“In order to begin, please press the blue button.”

I couldn’t understand. Nothing makes sense.

“Please press the button,” she repeated. She took one last glance at the source of the voice, reached out a finger to tap the glowing spot of blue. The dynamics of the screen shifted. It grew blank, white as the room. Then, words appeared.

“You will now be taken through a test.” The screen flickered again, as though complying to the whims of the voice. Three dots arranged in the form of a triangle materialized on the screen. “You will be shown a series of pictures,” the woman said, robotically. “Please voice your interpretation for each picture, choosing from the options given.” In the next instant, an image appeared. A crease formed on her forehead.

Before anything else, before answering the question, she needed to make sense of it all. Where was she? And why? Why was she being made to take a test? And most important of all, why was she asking these questions?

Her gaze averted to the screen. A crease formed on her forehead, her brows knitted together. Filling the screen was the sketch of what seemed like a city, drawn from a bird’s eye view. Her eyes skimmed the small box of listed options next to it. That was what interested her.

The fog disappeared from the perspectival haze of the picture, the contours of the city becoming clear in my mind, of the buildings next to each other, only half-drawn, of the backdrop of someplace far away whose name starts with a P. The voice interrupted the course of my thoughts, as though it had read my mind. “Please voice your interpretation.” For a brief moment, I was curious about what would happen if I never followed through with her orders. However, I was too curious to not choose an answer. Maybe even a little scared. Every second warning felt edged with a hint of threatening impatience.

She was sure it was only her delusion. Still, she hurried to speak, “Outlines of a city.”

The image on the screen responded, sliding over to the next picture as if operated by an invisible finger. She looked. Blinked.

Now, it hinted the signs of a Memory of the outside. Nested within the outline of the image were what seemed like streaks of a thin brush on a blank sheet of paper. I couldn’t find a pattern. As much as I tried to determine its meaning by myself, I looked over at the options. There was a clock ticking backward in the corner of my mind. It ran out.

A stark moment of realization happened against the background of her toil. “People at the beach,” was her final conclusion.

(The figures of people disappeared, replaced by something else, but my attention was yet on the previous image. I felt as though there was someone I recognized. My eyes looked down at the screen. Once traces remained of the thought I just had— people, places, shadows. I didn’t pry into myself, I didn’t want to.)

A thought occurred to her. Why were there options? Why didn’t they let the subject decide what the image was, without priming them? It was as if they were expecting a specific answer. But that wouldn’t…

The next image. Red matched against white; two curved shapes, painted red, stretched outwards, like a bow. Instinctively, she put a finger against her lips. Like she was trying to feel the texture of the perfect image drawn. “Parted lips.”

Satisfied, the test moved on.

I wondered, how much longer? I was surprised when I looked at the screen. The strangeness of it all came suddenly, with an overwhelming force. The screen embedded into the table, the voice speaking from oblivion, the beautiful cage I was locked it. And it wasn’t just the four walls of the room, it felt harder to escape the walls of my memories. I tried to remember: where was I yesterday? A year ago? An hour ago? I realized I had no other memories, as though they were somehow erased. When I looked at the image, there was a single word that came to my mind. “Love.”

Flash of horror. The shape of a hand— in red— a handprint— a bloody handprint— print of someone’s hand that was drenched in blood. Blood. Something twisted in my chest.

“Handprint,” I whispered. Nothing changed, which forced me to look at the list. I knew what I wanted to say, but I was too afraid to say it. I felt a subtle shift in the atmosphere of the room. It felt heavy, burdened.

The bridge of time was falling apart, so she finally muttered, “Murder.”

Synchronized with the blink of the screen, the voice spoke again. Further instructions. She didn’t want to know. The test revealed parts of the world she feared, and she felt like she wasn’t ready to whatever was to come. But what came next was a pure surprise.

“The test is now complete.” Pause. There was silence in the room, the only source of voice now silenced. It was a silence that was quickly filling with tension and anxiety, emanating from her own self. Like rays radiating from her body. She hated the silence because it was the kind to make her notice. Notice the thoughts in her mind and the sensations of her body and the emotions - they were excessive. She felt as though all that she was was a whirlwind of emotions, as though different liquids were pouring through creaks in a wall, mixing together. Time. What was the time? There were no clocks. For some reason, it felt unusual to be in a room with no clocks. “You are now,” Oh! She was back, “requested to proceed to the adjacent room.” There was no adjacent room.

Promptly, the white wall next to the painting split apart in slow motion, contradicting her thought. It drew into itself, creating an entryway. She sat unmoving though, uncertain and afraid of what the rest of her life would entail.

Now, I tried remembering. Whatever is happening seems like the defining moment, the distinction made between the before and the after, between the forgotten past and the future yet to come. The wall that separated the blankness and the chaos. 


“Please proceed to the adjacent room,” the voice said, once again.

I didn’t want to go. My mind latched to the premonitions it formulated, and it felt to me as though something was drawing closer, as though a string pulled tautly was about to break.

A beep resounded in the room, charging the foreboding feeling she developed. “Please proceed to the adjacent room.” She was paralyzed. A beep resounded in the room. It jolted her, it was the ugly sound of threat. That was when it happened.

Water. For a long second, it only felt like a flash of a vision, like the strike of a past memory against the chorus of her mind, but it wasn’t— for she saw with fearful eyes the colorless liquid seeping in, first slowly from the corners, then they came with a rush, beat of broken drums, as though emphasizing the intensity of the situation and the demand. She thrust backward, a prompt gesture, the chair toppled to the floor, and she took a few steps to brace herself. The solidness of the spray melted as it hit the floor, water was beneath her feet. She needed an escape, her heart was pounding in her chest and blood was pounding in the veins of her wrists, and she looked around. The doors were open. Panic sealed her doubts and sent her rushing forwards, out of the terrifying room.

Her eyes were shut. Panting, and nothing else. Hand against the wall, her knees fell to the floor. Shoulders heaving up and down, like the evening tides of the ocean, and hair falling forwards around her face. She was crouched in agony. She was scared, the fear kicked in as soon as she saw the traces, but didn’t know why. All she knew that was she wanted to stay alive.

She opened her eyes. The heavy, haunted feeling died down. She shifted her position, sitting down and pressing her back against the wall. It felt cold. It felt comforting. Her eyes swept perfunctory glances across the room, absorbing the view. Table at one end. Vase, curved in the center, standing on it. Opposite, a bed, and next to it, the window. That drew in her attention.

The world outside was unknown to her, consciously at least. That prospect of knowledge gave her a startling feeling of excitement. She pushed against the wall to stand up and walked to the window. This room felt less fabricated than the previous one, like a place where she had been, with the bed, the flowers, the sunlight and the shadows. She placed her hands on the window sill and peered outside. The scene she saw was tinged with an awe-inciting aesthetic.

The window was locked and she could not find a way to open it. Sweat stuck to her body, after everything that happened, and she felt the cling of her woolen sweatshirt and black jeans to her body, her feet too were tingling with suffocation. Her boots were black and reached to her ankles. She bent down to unzip them, then stepped out onto the metallic floor. Its coldness was refreshing. She looked back the view outside the window. The building she was in was just one of the four that were perpendicular to each other. All of them were painted the same color - a faded creamy type tinted with the dust of age. The realness of it was calming.  What was truly striking was how elaborately the surroundings were decorated, with greenery of different shades - dark-green colored climbers hung from the window she was at, reaching down to clasp its hand with another. Directly below her, the bottom of the wall was adorned with an enlarged arrangement of flowers - a wreath of sorts. There was a concrete space enclosed between the four walls, topped with no ceiling. A multitude of leaves was strewn across the floor, as though their tree had shed all of its weight. Sunlight that came from some opening cast its shadow to the left. Her hand reached out to shield her eyes from its rays. She stepped back hastily. The back of her knees hit the edge of the bed, she let herself fall on it. Silence fell too.

I realized I was in a psychiatric ward. I felt a strange sense of frightening awe as I noticed everything collapses into this one moment of stillness. I stroked my arm, warmth running along its length. My fingers massaged the back of my shoulders and I felt subtly relaxed, closed my eyes.

Somewhere down below, someone set the floor afire.