GOLD WINNER 2016 FRIGHT FEST! What's done in the dark will come to light ... Those words are engraved on the door and offer the only clue as to why I'm trapped in this windowless room with ... a chair. The old dining chair and the overwhelming sense...
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I HAD STUMBLED IN, UNAWARE THERE WOULD BE NO WAY OUT. I press my back against the cold steel door and slide down over the hard smooth surface, past the missing knob, and sit on the cold concrete with my knees tucked under my chin. Etched into the door above me are the words:
What's done in the dark will come to light
A rickety wooden chair is the only object in the room. It drew my attention for hours. The old chair's creaks and groans came from my careful observation of its rugged assembly, worn wood, and my imagination. One of the four legs hovers an inch or so above the concrete floor and a long screw pokes out halfway from one of the joints. I refuse to sit in it. Its poor condition isn't what keeps me from testing the chair's ability to bear my weight, but memories of horrific scenes of cruelty from modern horror movies. Planting my ass on the seat may very well be the key to escaping the haunted stillness of the room. Or it could be an invitation to a gruesome game of torture, handed out by the person watching me.
Yes, someone is watching.
The sensation of being judged crawls over the tender skin of my neck and through the minuscule rows of tiny hairs on my arms like a serpent through withered corn.
My mind takes me back to the one experience I desperately want to forget; the emotional hell I was in before entering the room. I shudder at the very thought of the corn, the smell of rotten kernels, and the dried crinkly husks that the caterpillars made their hiding place. Who would want to be reminded of all their depressing failures, of their lowest of lows? That's what the cornfield does for me now. It's usually where I roam when I wish to mentally escape, but now it just reminds me of what I was trying to escape from.
It's where I was before I found myself here.
When my screaming, crying, pleading, and promising had failed to set me free, I turned my attention on the windowless room and its four white walls. I combed my surroundings for cameras, peepholes, hidden doors, or contraptions, looking for the entity observing from outside just beyond the concrete. The mere perception of their presence chills my bones.
