Hall of Infinite Doors
You open the backpack's single, simple buckle and upturn it over the room's white-sheeted bed. A few loose items tumble out immediately, but the larger bulk is stuffed so soundly inside that it requires a few shakes before unfolding downward. Most of what comes out is clothes - two black t-shirts with faded, ten-year-old band names on the front, a pair of lace-up silk pants with frayed cuffs, a massive beach towel with a huge bottle of beer printed on the front and grains of sand still caught in the fibers. Your room, formerly smelling of ammonia and acrylic paint, now fills with the salty open smell of the ocean, and the clothes are still slightly damp where you touch them.
There are other things there, too: a brass nail-clipper and hairbrush, twin parts of a larger set; a waterlogged compact, gooey with soaked make-up around the edges; a plastic bottle half-full of tawny perfume; a sand-clogged cell-phone that twitters and beeps impotently when you try to turn it on. Of more immediate interest to you, there are also two books, though both have been soaked through with water and retain a white salt crust on their stippled covers. One is a collection of poems and stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The other is without a title, but it stirs you deep when you see it, as if something is bumping against the black glass of your consciousness but you can't see through to identify it. When you open it, the thin lined pages are smeared and unreadable.
You had hoped to find some sort of clue here, something to identify yourself with, but you've found only disappointment. Everything is either mundane or somehow occluded, like they should be familiar but you don't know exactly how. You have a sense that there's something among this disheveled pile that's critically important - but you have no idea what. You have no idea how to even begin to tell which it is.
Defeated, you begin packing everything back into your backpack, shoving the clothes uninterestedly into the empty cavity and tossing the rest on top. As you're putting away the compact, you stop as an idea hits you. Cracking the fleshy seal, you open it up and find to your immediate delight that it has a mirror. Clearing away the smeared streaks of melted powder, you hold it up to regard yourself - maybe once you see your face, you'll be able to remember!
You have to hold the little mirror at arm's length to see your face in full. You're white, with a delicate jaw and wide brown eyes. Your hair is straight, mouse-brown, and cut extremely short - only a boy's inch of thin fuzz covers your oblong skull. You're very pale - dark, sunken bags show clear under your eyes, and your cheekbones are indented, twin lines of razor shadow. You look as if you haven't slept for weeks - though the last thing you can remember is being brought into the hospital.
And that's it. That's all. No epiphany, no headaches, no sudden onrush of self - just a face, unfamiliar, with the eerie pressure of knowing you should recognize it. You're about to put the compact away when you notice a black lump of something behind your right ear. You don't feel anything there... folding the ear over and angling the mirror to see, you find a single word tattooed there in black backwards letters - written in such a way as to be readable in the inverse language of the reflected world.
The word is "Silence".
As soon as you see it, you hear the thumping of the lock on your door being undone. You let go your ear and snap shut your compact, turning around just in time to see the heavy door swing open, revealing two people framed there: a short, smiling Hispanic woman and, behind her, the darker, taller bulk of a man in a suit.
There are other things there, too: a brass nail-clipper and hairbrush, twin parts of a larger set; a waterlogged compact, gooey with soaked make-up around the edges; a plastic bottle half-full of tawny perfume; a sand-clogged cell-phone that twitters and beeps impotently when you try to turn it on. Of more immediate interest to you, there are also two books, though both have been soaked through with water and retain a white salt crust on their stippled covers. One is a collection of poems and stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The other is without a title, but it stirs you deep when you see it, as if something is bumping against the black glass of your consciousness but you can't see through to identify it. When you open it, the thin lined pages are smeared and unreadable.
You had hoped to find some sort of clue here, something to identify yourself with, but you've found only disappointment. Everything is either mundane or somehow occluded, like they should be familiar but you don't know exactly how. You have a sense that there's something among this disheveled pile that's critically important - but you have no idea what. You have no idea how to even begin to tell which it is.
Defeated, you begin packing everything back into your backpack, shoving the clothes uninterestedly into the empty cavity and tossing the rest on top. As you're putting away the compact, you stop as an idea hits you. Cracking the fleshy seal, you open it up and find to your immediate delight that it has a mirror. Clearing away the smeared streaks of melted powder, you hold it up to regard yourself - maybe once you see your face, you'll be able to remember!
You have to hold the little mirror at arm's length to see your face in full. You're white, with a delicate jaw and wide brown eyes. Your hair is straight, mouse-brown, and cut extremely short - only a boy's inch of thin fuzz covers your oblong skull. You're very pale - dark, sunken bags show clear under your eyes, and your cheekbones are indented, twin lines of razor shadow. You look as if you haven't slept for weeks - though the last thing you can remember is being brought into the hospital.
And that's it. That's all. No epiphany, no headaches, no sudden onrush of self - just a face, unfamiliar, with the eerie pressure of knowing you should recognize it. You're about to put the compact away when you notice a black lump of something behind your right ear. You don't feel anything there... folding the ear over and angling the mirror to see, you find a single word tattooed there in black backwards letters - written in such a way as to be readable in the inverse language of the reflected world.
The word is "Silence".
As soon as you see it, you hear the thumping of the lock on your door being undone. You let go your ear and snap shut your compact, turning around just in time to see the heavy door swing open, revealing two people framed there: a short, smiling Hispanic woman and, behind her, the darker, taller bulk of a man in a suit.