Day Seven

10/11/85

Terrence sighed and sat over the carpet. He touched it and felt it kind of wet, as he imagined. Is useless, he thought.

Maybe, the best he could do was stay there and wait until somebody found him, a worker or a janitor. It was really late. He glanced at his calculator-watch: It was 00:25.

"Wonderful", he said. "Just what I needed... Oh, fuck this!"

He stood and walked some more. Why give it up now? As he passed corridors, he tried to pay special attention to the details, since he had the uncomfortable sensation of walking the same corridors from before. But it was hard or even impossible. No all the wallpaper had the exactly same pattern, but there were too little a difference between them. He had to be really close to noticed it, since the yellowish background was the same. His eyes got tired at some point, but he discovered that some of the walls where darker than others, and some didn't have grey patterns over it. He stopped at the point where two different patterns of grey dots encountered. The first had tiny little dots in diagonal sequences, while its neighbor had crosses of five dots, like in a dice.

"Yes", he said. "There is a way of going out, without walking in circles".

Motivated by this new discovery, he slowly walked right ahead like before. He remembered the golden rule of maze's escaping: Always follow the left wall, and he did. Before his eyes, he felt some of the corridors were familiar, and others were new. He got inside those which were "new". He lost track of time doing this, and in all that time he felt the stages of successful, or panic, when he believed he stepped on the same place, and a false relief after finding another wall, maybe darker, maybe lighter, or without any pattern of grey dots. He didn't want to be negative, so he kept walking, feeling every new turn will put him in front of a door or a window. When he turned on the left, on walls and patterns that, he would swear over his mother, were new areas he has just discovered seconds ago, his right foot kicked the orange soda bottle he had bought in the office's vending machine.

At first, he felt confusion. Later, anger and frustration. He said a lot of nasty words, some he didn't say in years, some he never knew were inside him; he kicked the soda bottle and some of the liquid went out of the bottle in form of orange foam. Terrence punched the walls and screamed.

Terrence sat again, tired, and looked at his shoes.

There was no other thing to do more than wait there. In the best scenario, somebody may have heard him. But he didn't feel like waiting at all.

He looked at the time. It was 1:03 A.M.. Hell, he was tired. He closed his eyes, but a pain in his guts didn't let him rest. He searched for a half-bag of potatoes chips on his briefcase. He ate them all, one by one, happy that he still had something to put on his mouth. He took a sip of soda and burped. He looked at the time again.

"Oh, my God" he said. "How much time shall I wait here?"

He was so tired, and decided to lay full body over the carpet. The sour smell was annoying, but he could take it. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but the lights were too strong; even with closed eyes he could perceive them. He took some paper, and used the briefcase as an uncomfortable pillow.

He rested awake for a couple of hours. A lot of ideas came to his mind, ones more senseless than the rest. Maybe, he thought, everything was some sort of a terrible experiment, or maybe he was trapped in hell. The problem with the second theory was that there wasn't much reason for him to be in hell. He even kept paying for his son's school and food bills, even when he was living miles away.

Terrence felt a disgusting taste on his mouth and his throat was dry.
It was 3:20 A.M.. He hoped that the first employee would come around five or six, so he didn't have to wait for long. But he was tired of waiting.

He stood, grabbed his briefcase and walked again, hands on the right wall. He walked slowly, looking at every wall, trying to notice something new, like a sign or a map. He kept walking near the right wall, until he found a long corridor, around eight meters straight, without apertures on either side. Some of the patterns on those walls were more complex, and some walls were just yellow without patters, and were a little wet. He jumped and tried to punch one of panels of the roof. He moved it a little bit, so he tried again, moving the panel out of place.

"Help, I'm in here!" Terrence shouted at the pith black, but nothing happens.

About to scream again, he heard a familiar sound. It was the same old melody from before, but most clear, coming from somewhere behind the yellow wall. When he closed his eyes, he could hear that it sounded like jazz music from the 30's, played from a phonograph.

"Hello!" he shouted again, looking around.

The melody kept playing, but nobody answered Terrence's call. At some point, he felt it as sick prank, made for really sick people.

"Yes, so fucking funny, eh? I'm gettin' nuts in here..."

He looks up; on the roof, the panel was back to place.

"What?"

Did he put it back, when trying to hear the melody?

"Hey! What the hell is this?" Terrence asked angry, but he wasn't sure somebody was even behind all this.

He jumped and pushed the roof's panel again, and peeped inside the darkness. There were cables and enough room, he thought, to escape. He needed something to step on, since the roof was too high. He jumped and tried to grab the metal structure in between the white panels, but he was afraid of falling down, with part of the roof. After two attempts, he grabbed the roof, but he couldn't stay there enough time to push himself up; not that he had force to do it, either.

"Hey, you, stay quiet" said a low voice behind Terrence.

Freaked out, Terrence turned to the voice. There was a police officer pointing a little revolver at him, and he looked nervous. Terrence raised his hands over his head.

"W... what?"

"Shut up!" the officer muttered angrily.

Some part of the office's uniform had what looked like dried blood stains. He wasn't wearing a police hat.

The officer looked around, paying attention to the fainted melody. For that moment, he seemed to ignore Terrence.

"What's happening?" asked Terrence.

"Sshhhh..."

After a moment, the melody slowly became inaudible. The officer put an ear on a wall.

"It's gone..." he said. "Who are you?"


"Mmm, my name is Terrence. I just... got here."

"Me too" said the officer, and lowered his gun.

"Oh, no. I thought that you... That means that... What is this place?"

"What's that?" said the officer, pointing to the orange soda.

"Soda?"

"Really? Can I see it?"

"Mmm..., yes."

Confused, not knowing how to react, Terrence gave the bottle to the officer. He took a long look at the object, opened it, smelled the orange liquid and tasted it. Terrence noticed the officer was quite pale, skinny and smelled bad. He had a black dragon tattooed on his neck, covered by the shirt's collar. After giving a long sip, he glanced at Terrence and reached the bottle back to him.

"Did you like it?" asked Terrence, smiling.

"Have something to eat?"

"No. No, sorry", lied Terrence.