"The Room"

December 3, 2018; Sci-Fi Short Story

The room was bright, soft white light pouring from shiny metallic fixtures. In the mirror, the light framed Ingrid’s long black hair like a halo, turning the inky sheet a deep purple shade. The light, of course, was simulated, it was not actually early morning outside. She did not know what time it was outside, nor what outside even looked like. All ingrid knew was that it was bright in her Room. Her Room, which held all she could need. The walls were flat, as were the ceiling and floor, all a bright white color. They matched the rest of the room, cold and white. Ingrid sat upon a frigid metal stool at what she believes is called a vanity, a desk-like structure with an illuminated mirror. Her clothing, also white, resembled a hospital gown. The dress hung in an awkward rectangular shape that distorted her figure, though she was so bony and frail that there was little to see underneath. There were no windows, there were now doors. Just the Room. Her food appeared from tiles in the walls, as did whatever laundry she requested be done. It was just Ingrid and her Room.

The cold, both literally and figuratively, did not stop her from dreaming. Sketchbooks lined symmetrical white shelves. The messy, worn pages stood out dramatically against their boring backdrop. The pages were filled with painting after painting. Self portraits, people she could only meet in dreams, little birds and creatures she had never seen nor heard. The world filled the papers, as it couldn’t do so to the rest of the Room. Colored paint seeped all the way to the corners of the pages, covering all of the white that it could.

Ingrid flipped the page she had been looking, a painting of a colony of colorful fungi. Next was a portrait, a bust of a man she had seen in many of her dreams. The portrait’s eyes were looking to the side, smiling fondly at something only he could see. Crinkles formed in the tan skin by his eyes, made up of adoration for what he was gazing at. His smile revealed rows of pearly white teeth, but also a pair of matching dimples upon either cheek. Ingrid ran slender fingertips along the sharp jawline of the painting, sighing. She could not identify the heavy feeling in her chest, pressing up against her heart and lungs are ribs. The feeling made it hard to breathe, as she kept looking at the paper man. His dark chestnut hair fell in soft curls across his forehead.

Ingrid had never met the man, could not tell you his name if her life depended on it, but she missed him. Or, she assumed she missed him. She supposed that maybe she craved to meet anyone else, and he was simply who her brain had entertained her with. After all, she’d never met another person. What were other people like? What did voices sound like? Ingrid had tried talking to herself, even going so far as to sing, but years and years of not using her vocal chords had left them weak and scratchy, and she had given up. What did other people feel like? Look like? Would they like her?

For once, Ingrid had a wish that the Room couldn’t placate, one that it couldn’t fulfill. Her lips pulled down into a small frown, both sad and confused. If she had everything she could ever need, want, at her fingertips, why did she feel so empty? Why did more make her feel less?