Not sure about this one. I'll wait and see what you think. Pick away

 Slowly rousing from my slumber, thoughts of far off lands and exotic strangers drifting further from my dreams, I smiled to myself. Not opening my eyes I stretched like a cat, straightening out the nights knots and then slump back into a haphazard state of ‘comfiness’. Very rarely did I wake before my alarm, I was determined to savour every minute of peace before that incessant beeping of the daily dreaded wake up call sent my blood pressure up. I knew once I was up and in the shower I would be okay; bounding about my day, bubbly and energetic as ever. It was just getting going that was the problem.

 What felt like hours later, eyes still closed, I scrunched them a little in confusion. Waking before my alarm was rare enough in itself but waking this much before my alarm, was unheard of. I could hear the birds chirping outside, cars starting, and children on their way to the breakfast club. So it must be at least 7.30am. My alarm goes off then. Bolting upright in panic I realised I must have forgotten to set it, and still blurry eyed I frantically extended my hands and groped for the clock on the table by my bed. My hands met nothing but air.

 Opening my eyes, now growing wider in bewilderment, the strangest sight met them. I appeared to not be in my bedroom where I went to sleep last night, but a room I have no recognition of ever setting eyes on before. Slipping cautiously out of the bed, my heart pumping fairly furiously, I peered around.
 
The room was rectangular in shape, fairly vast; about the size of a small city apartment but with no dividing walls. Every wall was painted stark white and is illuminated with a pale flickering fluorescent light. The only furniture in the room was the double bed (covered in my damson bedspread), a bookshelf displaying all my favourite novels, poetry collections and magazines, a wardrobe with it’s door open and in which resided, what seemed to be all my ‘around the house’ clothes, and a chair upholstered with a paisley pattern. The chair my grandmother gave me when I moved to my new flat, and which currently sat in my study. 

 Noticing a door over in the top right hand corner of the room I trotted over to it and opened it warily. A bathroom; a white bathroom; white walls; fluorescent flickering lights; no windows. I closed the door, this time credibly but softly, and began to bite my lips. There was no front door either. No windows. There was no way out. I was trapped.
 
Before long, I could taste blood.

 I wandered around the diameter of the room, my bare feet flip flopping on the tiled floor (also white) and tried to make sense of this phenomenon. This had to be a dream, this made no sense.

I guardedly made my way back over to the bed, looking over my shoulder and feeling as though someone is going to jump out and yell ‘surprise!’ at me and confirm it was either a dream (in which case Johnny Depp would jump out) or real, and a big joke (in which case it could be any number of people. Some of my friends were, simply put, idiots).

It didn’t quite occur to me that, in fact, there was nowhere for anybody to hide. 

 Making a swift decision that it was in fact a dream, I clambered back into bed and hid under the duvet, screwing my eyes tightly shut. When this didn’t seem to work, I crossed my eyes and thought about disappearing (a trick that never failed to work when I was little and was being chased by monsters). I opened my eyes and peered out from under the den; still nothing.

In my life, I had never been so perplexed. Everything about this felt real but nothing about it could be real. A musty smell hit my nostrils and nausea washed over me. My head began to thud. 

 I just lay there, staring up at the ceiling, which was so bright it commenced to blind me. Instinctively I kept glancing over at where my clock would be, but it wasn't there.

There was nothing in the room that alerted me to the time. It was as if I was stuck in a realm where time didn’t exist.

I must have lay there for hours, my skin becoming increasingly cold and clammy.

 What I can only assume were days, wore on. Light filled the box in the morning and awoke me, and faded slowly at night as I drifted off. The wardrobe would replenish itself with clean clothes, and food and water would appear at the foot of my bed three times a day. By day four, I had to give in and eat.

 I spent more and more of my time sleeping. My body ached terribly as though I had been in a car crash, my throat felt viral, my head felt like it was jam packed with cotton wool balls and my stomach was a washing machine.

Every time I picked up a book, it read like a foreign language. The room spun around me relentlessly. I was in a snow storm. Everything around me was alien and warped out of reality. Nothing met my ears except a deathly silence.

The feeling of complete isolation was palpable. The fear that accompanied it, was suicidal. 

As the cabin fever began to reach almost insufferable proportions and I knew that did I not keep my mind on an optimistic altitude, I wouldn’t survive through this; whatever it was. I had to survive through this. So I began to meditate. I affirmed to myself over and over again that I would get out of this and I would be fine.

Hardly for a momment, did i believe it. In all honestly, I just wanted to die.
 
Slowly, the room began to fill with paraphernalia. A coffee table appeared over a caramel coloured rug. A television appeared on top of it and proceeded to show all of my favourite programs. A kitchen met my eyes one morning at the end of the room furthest from my bed, and the cupboards began to fill with food.
 
Soon I wasn’t living in an empty room anymore, but a studio apartment.

I would continue to cluck about my abode, trying to stay positive and praying that soon there would be a door on the wall where a door should be. When that day came I knew I would be free. All I had to do was keep a positive attitude. This wasn’t easy. I felt more unwell by the flicker of a light. More alone by every night. My head and heart caught up in a vice.

Then it happened.

I woke one morning by the rising sun. Sun light was streaming in through a window by the kitchen cabinets, depositing an ethereal golden glow over my decidedly stark surroundings.

My body aching, yet warming in the beam of light, I followed it, making my way to the window in perpetual disbelief. I could hear noises again. I could here the birds, and the cars and the children. Not only that, I could see them. I lent my forehead against the cool glass and let it soothe my temperature as tears streamed down my pale face, mirroring the drizzle outside. Never in my life had I been so happy to see the rain.

I opened the window a fraction, my heart in my throat for fear it would disappear, and filled my lungs as though I was taking my first ever breath. I could smell the rain; the grass. My body convulsed in sobs of relief and joy and I waved to the children below.

What was that?

I whipped around in search of the noise, my skin still damp, and saw it.

A door had appeared on the wall where a door should be.

I could hear voices outside of it. I flew over to it and grabbed at the doorknob attempting to wrench it open. It wouldn’t budge. I hammered my fists against it and shouted out for acknowledgement. No-one replied. I could hear them though, there were people out there and there was a door. I just had to find a way to open it. 

 Grabbing whatever I could from the kitchen I attempted to jam utensils between the cracks. With all the strength I could muster I tried and tried and tried to wedge it open enough to get something through to the other side, to get into the lock and pick it open. I continued to hammer on the door and shout out for help, until I could no more.

My energy was spent. Frustrated, angry and sick, I went back to bed, and fell into a deep and restless sleep.


 Beep beep beep rolling over in bed I clicked the alarm off. Flopping out of bed, eyes still half shut, I padded my way to the front door. Opening it I reached down to pick up the paper and my pint of milk.

‘Morning deary!’

Looking up I saw my neighbour and smiled warmly at her ‘Hi Mrs Freeman.’

‘How are you feeling pet, still not yourself? You look awfully frail and tired.’

‘No still not myself. I’m okay though. Staying positive.’

‘Yes that’s the only way to keep moving forward. It’s a terrible illness so it is. You used to have such a colourful life. Having your mum staying with you just now must help. Anyway I best be off, if you need anything, you know just to call.’

‘Thanks, bye. Have a lovely day.’

Milk and paper in hand, I shuffled back into the snow storm, and back to bed, passing my Mum only briefly as she put breakfast by my bed and fresh clothes in the cupboard.

I fell asleep before I opened the paper, and dreamt of a life unlived.