The classic white room scene
I gotta upload this before I forget. I forgot to do it last time I was here at the library. I'm afraid I'm still not writing very much but at least I'm doing about 1k per day. Which is nothing to sneeze at.
I’m not quite sure what happened next. I wasn’t fully conscious for most of it, I’m sure. All I do remember is going back and forth between varying degrees of cold, feeling trapped, and blacking out again. I don’t know how long it went on but it seemed like forever before I came out of it. At that point all I could see was white...
Mara blinked.
The white was still there.
She opened and closed her eyes experimentally. The whiteness blinked in and out obediently so Mara was certain that she must be awake now. She felt disoriented, not sure how long she had been out. She reached her hands up to her face to rub her eyes and was grateful to find that her hands were still there at the end of her arms. Mara sighed, half in relief, half sleepily.
There was a sound at her right elbow that made her turn her head. It sounded sad, like someone crying softly. It was at this point that Mara realized she was laying on the floor. Another person was sitting on the floor next to her. It was a woman. A woman with her face in her hands, curled up like a child in a corner. She was a splash of color in the white, dressed in a bright red gown that was bunched around her feet. Mara slowly sat herself up off the floor. She could make out the woman’s matted curly hair around her face now.
“The other lady’s awake,” a voice said off to her left side. Mara turned from the crying lady in red. The dimensions of the place she was in were clearer now. It was an all white room. There wasn’t a spot or a blemish on any of the walls, the ceiling, or the floor. It looked rather like a perfect cube of a room too, each side of it a square. Mara and the crying lady were not the only ones in it. Against the far wall was the one who had spoken. He looked to be in his late teens, long and lanky. He was dressed in a black skintight outfit with a blue and white stripe running through it: a wet suit. He was sitting with his back to the wall and wasn’t even looking at Mara. His attention, or almost a lack thereof, was on the cellphone in his hands on which he was pressing buttons in a sequence with his thumbs. His attitude seemed to be of one very bored by his circumstances so he was playing video games on his phone till something else came along.
The second man was the one that the teenage boy had remarked to. He was a bit older, almost in his 30’s, and dressed in a once-pressed business suit. The crispness had gone out of the suit awhile back and his tie was undone and hanging limply on his neck. He was pacing the floor back and forth along the left side wall like a caged animal. He stopped to glance at Mara to see if she was awake. Mara could see the lines of stress all over his face. He frowned at the teenager sitting against the wall.
“That’s still not helpful,” he told him as he turned away to lean against one of the walls. “If you’re going to talk, at least try to be helpful.”
The teenager didn’t even look up from his tetris game, mouthing a ‘well, excuse me’ in mild annoyance.
“What...what happened?” Mara asked, very confused. “Where am I?”
The teenage boy looked up from his game with a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “Dark side of the moon, my friend.”
“Would you please stop with all the crazy talk,” the other man said, a bit louder than was needed. “For the last time we are not on the moon.”
“The moon?” Mara questioned, slowly getting up by pushing off of the perfectly white floor. “What makes you say that?”
The teenager gave the other man a look that said he wasn’t going to open his mouth and get into trouble again. So the business man answered for him. “What he meant was he thinks we’ve been kidnapped by aliens.” He snorted, “Which is not true. This is all just for show. It’s a government project we’ve stumbled into, I’ve heard of this sort of thing happening before.”
The teen smirked and said under his breath, “Yeah, just keep telling yourself that.” If the business man heard it, he ignored it and walked over to Mara.
“William Llewellyn, Harker and Sons business out of Japan,” he said with an outstretched hand. There was a hint of a British accent in his greeting. Mara shook his hand, not sure what else to do. “Um, Mara...Mara Tate. I’m from Colorado.”
“Morris ‘Rider’ Smith, surfer extraordinaire, California,” the teenager said without looking up.
Mara was still worried about the crying woman who was still sitting on the floor. She bent down and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “And you, ma’am?” The woman actually stopped and lowered her hands slightly. Mara could see she was very beautiful with dark eyes and chiseled features underneath all of her tears. “What is your name?”
“We’ve tried, but she just won’t talk to us.” Llewellyn had gone back to his pacing next to the wall, as if it was helping him to think.
The long red dress had frill all of the way down the side of it. She had a crushed rose in her lap, forgotten in her sadness. Almost like a dancer forgotten and alone. On a hunch, Mara got down on one knee and asked, “Como se nombre?” while pointing at the lady to indicate her.
Her hands dropped from her face at that and her eyes lit up with recognition. “Maria,” she said, another tear rolling down her cheek. It was like the stick that broke the dam as she suddenly burst into a torrent of Spanish words and grabbed Mara in a tight hug. Mara felt so bad for her but she let her keep talking even though she didn’t know much Spanish beyond “What is your name?”.
Llewellyn looked over with a scowl still on his face. “Did you have to set her off again? She hasn’t stopped since she woke up.”
“Sorry, I was just trying to help,” Mara said, wondering how she was going to disentangle herself out of the hug without being rude. “She sounds about as scared as I feel anyway.”
“We don’t have anything to be worried about, once we talk to someone in charge.”
It was then that Mara realized that each of the four walls were perfectly white, just like the floor and the ceiling. There wasn’t any cracks or spots and...there weren’t any doors. “There isn’t any way out of here?”
“Not that we could find,” said the teenage boy named Rider without losing pace with the falling tetris pieces. “And believe me, Donald Trump here has been over every inch of wall himself.”
Llewellyn turned from his pacing and glared at the young surfer. “At least I’ve been trying to figure out a way out of here, all you can do is stare at that infernal cellphone. I wish you would take at least a cursory interest in our situation here.”
“Hey, man, I see no reason to get all worked up here. Nothing’s happened in the past 15 minutes or more so until something does, I’m not gonna go tripping around looking for openings that ain’t there. They’ll come talk to us when they’re good and ready, so just chill, man.”
Llewellyn threw his hands up as he turned away from Rider and walked to the other side of the room. “You see what I’ve been having to deal with,” he pointed out to Mara.
Mara kept her mouth shut, she didn’t want to get mixed up in this fight. Apparently, being shut up in a small room was getting to the business man. He kept adjusting his collar as if feeling warm. Which was silly because it wasn’t warm in the room at all. It was actually quite chilly. “Brrrrrr,” Mara said with a shiver. Maria actually was starting to be less hysterical. “Si, si, muy freo,” she nodded.
“Has it always been this cold in here?” Mara asked Rider. He shrugged noncommittally. “I spose,” he said.
“Yeah, it has,” Llewellyn said, a bit calmer. “It’s really the only thing good about this place. I have enough problem with small spaces but usually I’m sweating like a fountain by now.” He wiped his brow with a sleeve at the sweat that wasn’t there. “Seems someone likes to keep it well air conditioned around here.”
(fair warning, I like the name Llewellyn alot so since I'm not planning on keeping the character around, he might get a name change so I can keep a Llewellyn around longer :))
EDIT: Here's a bit more from the library
Mara hugged her arms around herself as she was only dressed in the short sleeve shirt and jeans she had been in when she had been going through the woods. She wondered fleetingly if her dad had seen what happened.
Suddenly, the Spanish lady Maria cried out in fear with a piercing scream that was cut off mid-cry as her fear had paralyzed her voice. The other three turned quickly to see what had set her off. Mara couldn’t believe her eyes.
Somehow, a hidden door had opened while they had been talking. It left a perfect rectangular hole in the wall with no sign of what had opened to make the hole. Nothing could really be seen beyond the doorway but that wasn’t what Maria had screamed at.
It was the figure standing in the doorway. It was...an alien.
Mara blinked a couple of times. It really was an alien right there in front of them all. She’d read enough sci-fi books and comics to know what an alien was supposed to look like. And yet it wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen before.
He was blue. No, not entirely. On first glance, his skin was blue but if you looked closer, it was more of a gray with blue tint to it. His body was much more slender than a human’s, right down to his slender fingers. His feet could not be seen as they were covered with a sort of darker covering. His clothes were close fitting and smooth, like his skin. A simple belt or sash was around his waist with no buckle or tie that showed how it was staying on.
The head was round and bald, like all of those classic aliens you read about in the tabloid papers in the supermarket. It was just as blue-grey as the rest of his skin. There were no ears and no nose that could be seen from this distance. The mouth was a small line on the almost non-existent chin.
But it was the eyes that had struck them all speechless. They were round, white as two pearls and just as smooth. They were set back into their sockets in the face and seemed to look out at nothing at all. There was no pupils at all. It was as if this creature was blindly looking at something he couldn’t see anyway.
He was standing right inside of the doorway with his hands by his sides, taking a neutral stance. He hadn’t moved, not even for Maria’s sudden scream.
I’m not quite sure what happened next. I wasn’t fully conscious for most of it, I’m sure. All I do remember is going back and forth between varying degrees of cold, feeling trapped, and blacking out again. I don’t know how long it went on but it seemed like forever before I came out of it. At that point all I could see was white...
Mara blinked.
The white was still there.
She opened and closed her eyes experimentally. The whiteness blinked in and out obediently so Mara was certain that she must be awake now. She felt disoriented, not sure how long she had been out. She reached her hands up to her face to rub her eyes and was grateful to find that her hands were still there at the end of her arms. Mara sighed, half in relief, half sleepily.
There was a sound at her right elbow that made her turn her head. It sounded sad, like someone crying softly. It was at this point that Mara realized she was laying on the floor. Another person was sitting on the floor next to her. It was a woman. A woman with her face in her hands, curled up like a child in a corner. She was a splash of color in the white, dressed in a bright red gown that was bunched around her feet. Mara slowly sat herself up off the floor. She could make out the woman’s matted curly hair around her face now.
“The other lady’s awake,” a voice said off to her left side. Mara turned from the crying lady in red. The dimensions of the place she was in were clearer now. It was an all white room. There wasn’t a spot or a blemish on any of the walls, the ceiling, or the floor. It looked rather like a perfect cube of a room too, each side of it a square. Mara and the crying lady were not the only ones in it. Against the far wall was the one who had spoken. He looked to be in his late teens, long and lanky. He was dressed in a black skintight outfit with a blue and white stripe running through it: a wet suit. He was sitting with his back to the wall and wasn’t even looking at Mara. His attention, or almost a lack thereof, was on the cellphone in his hands on which he was pressing buttons in a sequence with his thumbs. His attitude seemed to be of one very bored by his circumstances so he was playing video games on his phone till something else came along.
The second man was the one that the teenage boy had remarked to. He was a bit older, almost in his 30’s, and dressed in a once-pressed business suit. The crispness had gone out of the suit awhile back and his tie was undone and hanging limply on his neck. He was pacing the floor back and forth along the left side wall like a caged animal. He stopped to glance at Mara to see if she was awake. Mara could see the lines of stress all over his face. He frowned at the teenager sitting against the wall.
“That’s still not helpful,” he told him as he turned away to lean against one of the walls. “If you’re going to talk, at least try to be helpful.”
The teenager didn’t even look up from his tetris game, mouthing a ‘well, excuse me’ in mild annoyance.
“What...what happened?” Mara asked, very confused. “Where am I?”
The teenage boy looked up from his game with a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “Dark side of the moon, my friend.”
“Would you please stop with all the crazy talk,” the other man said, a bit louder than was needed. “For the last time we are not on the moon.”
“The moon?” Mara questioned, slowly getting up by pushing off of the perfectly white floor. “What makes you say that?”
The teenager gave the other man a look that said he wasn’t going to open his mouth and get into trouble again. So the business man answered for him. “What he meant was he thinks we’ve been kidnapped by aliens.” He snorted, “Which is not true. This is all just for show. It’s a government project we’ve stumbled into, I’ve heard of this sort of thing happening before.”
The teen smirked and said under his breath, “Yeah, just keep telling yourself that.” If the business man heard it, he ignored it and walked over to Mara.
“William Llewellyn, Harker and Sons business out of Japan,” he said with an outstretched hand. There was a hint of a British accent in his greeting. Mara shook his hand, not sure what else to do. “Um, Mara...Mara Tate. I’m from Colorado.”
“Morris ‘Rider’ Smith, surfer extraordinaire, California,” the teenager said without looking up.
Mara was still worried about the crying woman who was still sitting on the floor. She bent down and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “And you, ma’am?” The woman actually stopped and lowered her hands slightly. Mara could see she was very beautiful with dark eyes and chiseled features underneath all of her tears. “What is your name?”
“We’ve tried, but she just won’t talk to us.” Llewellyn had gone back to his pacing next to the wall, as if it was helping him to think.
The long red dress had frill all of the way down the side of it. She had a crushed rose in her lap, forgotten in her sadness. Almost like a dancer forgotten and alone. On a hunch, Mara got down on one knee and asked, “Como se nombre?” while pointing at the lady to indicate her.
Her hands dropped from her face at that and her eyes lit up with recognition. “Maria,” she said, another tear rolling down her cheek. It was like the stick that broke the dam as she suddenly burst into a torrent of Spanish words and grabbed Mara in a tight hug. Mara felt so bad for her but she let her keep talking even though she didn’t know much Spanish beyond “What is your name?”.
Llewellyn looked over with a scowl still on his face. “Did you have to set her off again? She hasn’t stopped since she woke up.”
“Sorry, I was just trying to help,” Mara said, wondering how she was going to disentangle herself out of the hug without being rude. “She sounds about as scared as I feel anyway.”
“We don’t have anything to be worried about, once we talk to someone in charge.”
It was then that Mara realized that each of the four walls were perfectly white, just like the floor and the ceiling. There wasn’t any cracks or spots and...there weren’t any doors. “There isn’t any way out of here?”
“Not that we could find,” said the teenage boy named Rider without losing pace with the falling tetris pieces. “And believe me, Donald Trump here has been over every inch of wall himself.”
Llewellyn turned from his pacing and glared at the young surfer. “At least I’ve been trying to figure out a way out of here, all you can do is stare at that infernal cellphone. I wish you would take at least a cursory interest in our situation here.”
“Hey, man, I see no reason to get all worked up here. Nothing’s happened in the past 15 minutes or more so until something does, I’m not gonna go tripping around looking for openings that ain’t there. They’ll come talk to us when they’re good and ready, so just chill, man.”
Llewellyn threw his hands up as he turned away from Rider and walked to the other side of the room. “You see what I’ve been having to deal with,” he pointed out to Mara.
Mara kept her mouth shut, she didn’t want to get mixed up in this fight. Apparently, being shut up in a small room was getting to the business man. He kept adjusting his collar as if feeling warm. Which was silly because it wasn’t warm in the room at all. It was actually quite chilly. “Brrrrrr,” Mara said with a shiver. Maria actually was starting to be less hysterical. “Si, si, muy freo,” she nodded.
“Has it always been this cold in here?” Mara asked Rider. He shrugged noncommittally. “I spose,” he said.
“Yeah, it has,” Llewellyn said, a bit calmer. “It’s really the only thing good about this place. I have enough problem with small spaces but usually I’m sweating like a fountain by now.” He wiped his brow with a sleeve at the sweat that wasn’t there. “Seems someone likes to keep it well air conditioned around here.”
(fair warning, I like the name Llewellyn alot so since I'm not planning on keeping the character around, he might get a name change so I can keep a Llewellyn around longer :))
EDIT: Here's a bit more from the library
Mara hugged her arms around herself as she was only dressed in the short sleeve shirt and jeans she had been in when she had been going through the woods. She wondered fleetingly if her dad had seen what happened.
Suddenly, the Spanish lady Maria cried out in fear with a piercing scream that was cut off mid-cry as her fear had paralyzed her voice. The other three turned quickly to see what had set her off. Mara couldn’t believe her eyes.
Somehow, a hidden door had opened while they had been talking. It left a perfect rectangular hole in the wall with no sign of what had opened to make the hole. Nothing could really be seen beyond the doorway but that wasn’t what Maria had screamed at.
It was the figure standing in the doorway. It was...an alien.
Mara blinked a couple of times. It really was an alien right there in front of them all. She’d read enough sci-fi books and comics to know what an alien was supposed to look like. And yet it wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen before.
He was blue. No, not entirely. On first glance, his skin was blue but if you looked closer, it was more of a gray with blue tint to it. His body was much more slender than a human’s, right down to his slender fingers. His feet could not be seen as they were covered with a sort of darker covering. His clothes were close fitting and smooth, like his skin. A simple belt or sash was around his waist with no buckle or tie that showed how it was staying on.
The head was round and bald, like all of those classic aliens you read about in the tabloid papers in the supermarket. It was just as blue-grey as the rest of his skin. There were no ears and no nose that could be seen from this distance. The mouth was a small line on the almost non-existent chin.
But it was the eyes that had struck them all speechless. They were round, white as two pearls and just as smooth. They were set back into their sockets in the face and seemed to look out at nothing at all. There was no pupils at all. It was as if this creature was blindly looking at something he couldn’t see anyway.
He was standing right inside of the doorway with his hands by his sides, taking a neutral stance. He hadn’t moved, not even for Maria’s sudden scream.