Confined Company

Who knew that a room full of people could be so quiet? Sitting there in the middle of it he felt so alone. Not even his thoughts could find him. So he searched for them. One led to another, and another, following a trail. The Hansel and Gretel bait. He had a quick premonition, a dark one. His mind’s teleprompter read: Leave those thoughtful bread crumbs alone. They’re toxic daily bread.

Nevertheless, curiosity ignored the warning and he took the bait as food for thought. It led him right back to where he started, the middle of the room. And although he felt alone, he wasn’t. There was company, and not the business type. There were three others in the small, dim, dirty room. Well he thinks there are three.

The quietness is no longer asleep. It sirs, it grows restless. It misbehaves and finds noise. It builds in the distance and he thinks, can quietness be seen? Can quietness be heard? 

The sounds advance closer, a quiet storm brewing, approaching like an eerie war chant. Drum-stick beating his ear drums. It becomes nerve-wracking. He’s on the verge of panic until a guest, an intruder, one of the company, says: “Shh, be still.”

There’s something soothing in the voice but it sounds out-of-order, like Christmas carols in August. 

He shuts up, he listens, and with an avid ear he hears soft whispers become hard voices. His attention is pulled to the left-hand corner of the room. A figure. No, a gargoyle. No. No, no, a shadow crouches there, surprising him like a blind date. A water-snake slides through his intestines as the shadow gives him the feeling of being stalked and watched. 

The voice that hushed him a moment ago sits calmly in the right-hand corner, peacefully, like a yogi. Or a wise wizard, or. He doesn’t know. He thinks Shaman. But not an ordinary man. 

He senses he’s caught between something, a force. He is the center of it. A tug of war is going on inside of something deep within him. It gives his soul goose=bumps. He’s frightened. The quietness is screaming at him, like two opposing teams – one rooting, one chanting, or booing. He hears both. Or all. Like having one ear bud in one ear and a phone in the other. 

To the right he hears…he hears prayers. They sound hurried. They sound urgent to him. 

To his left he hears…he hears chaos. A cluster of hissing. And whispering. 

He feels as if a plot is being formed against him. The room becomes uncomfortably hot. His thoughts change without signaling. Dark. Light. Peace. Fight. 

He thinks of right ways to do the wrong things. His thoughts are sinfully righteous. He feels as if his strings are being pulled. He didn’t know he had strings. Now he knows, and he know they’re being pulled in different directions. Persuaded to go a certain way. The way of his will. He’s being discussed and bargained for between these two entities. They’re catering to his mind, designing his imagination. Pulling apart the seams of his spirit and stitching it back together with the ingredients that dreams and nightmares are made of. Somehow he understands a presence of good and evil. He’s being fed a goulash of hope and doubt, paradise and parasites. 

This is purgatory, he thinks. 

And he thinks his thoughts are no longer his. They’re too many, multiple-choice voices with warning and advice. War cries. Spiritual tokens. Negotiations. He’s on the auctioning block. They argue over him but he must decide which side benefits him. 

Patience runs and hides. Daggers are drawn. Unheard words are felt. Danger commences its dance and a battle begins. Both beings spring from their corners. They rush towards him in the center of the room. The noise. The torment. The unknown. The fear. 

He screams as he awakes in a puddle of terrified perspiration. 

“Yeah, Bunkie. That’s how it went down the other night. Day 36 in the hole and I’ll never forget it. I haven’t slept right since.”

His Bunkie watches him skeptically, sitting in the middle of the room. “But what happened? Who wins the fight?”  

He looks at him with a graceful devilish grin and says, “The one you feed, man, the one you feed is the one that wins.” 

Suddenly he’s snapped out of his daze by a guard at the door. 

“Inmate, get your ass up off the floor.  Pack your stuff. We’re letting you back out on the pound early.”

 He gets up and scans the empty eight-by-ten room, where the walls suck in secrets and witnesses “Faustian” bargains being made, some for freedom, some for fame.

The door opens, the box closes and with that he finds a lost thought in his casket of dreams. 

Who knew that a room full of people could be so quiet. In the middle of it he felt so alone, not even his thoughts could find him.