The Crimson Room

by josclift97

A man wakes in a room covered in crimson wall paper. The man walks around and notices there is no one around, no one to care about his troubles. He also notices that there is no doors or windows in this room, only the outlines of doors and windows. The man must find a way out of the room, or else the room will devour him, or the man in the black suit and red tie.

Joseph Clift

The crimson room.

I awoke in a room, a dark and lifeless room with no sound to pierce the silence. The only light illuminating the room came from a dangling ceiling light bulb, with it I could see part only of the room, and what I saw puzzled me. The walls had worn crimson wall paper, as if it were there for fifty years without care. The paper was starting to peel off showing the black dry wall like an exposed nerve. Along the walls there were also golden picture frames, some had no pictures to fill them, others were filled with black and white photos of people from different times and in different locations. Some were from the twentieth century while others looked like they were taken yesterday. each picture had at least one person standing strait with their arms dangling at their sides . No emotion was to be seen on their faces. The floor was covered in a dark red carpet that felt wet and crisp when stepped on by bare foot.

I remember waking up on a wooden table, I was blinded by the singular light bulb that was only a foot away from my face. It startled me and I quickly leaped up, hitting my head on the bulb and surprisingly not shattering it. I was bare foot, but then again- I never recalled having a pair of shoes. I wore a black Jimmy Hendrix T-shirt, a black over shirt and a pair of blue jeans, all torn and covered in dried blood. I can't remember where the blood came from or how it got on my cloths, but for some reason I knew it was mine, Judging from the tears in my cloths.

I checked to see if I had been cut or bruised, but I had not been in such condition. After checking myself I got a closer look at the room and instantly realized that there were no doors or windows, just the white frames of what should have been doors and windows. Where there should have been doors only walls lied, covered in the same rotting crimson wall paper.

I walked around to see if anyone was with me, the room was so dark that the little light from the light bulb only lit the center of the room, the corners were dark and cold and seemed to be lifeless. After walking around to see if anyone was with me I finally let the courage that was building inside of my stomach slowly creep up my throat to say "Hello"? I said it over and over again with no reply. With each word it echoed through the room, each echo would sound deeper and a little quitter, like someone else was repeating what I had said. I looked back at the light bulb and thought it had looked familiar, like I had seen it before. I then remembered a light just like it, but instead this light was heading at me at fifty miles per hour. I remember the light dimly, I can faintly remember a bottle in one hand and a steering wheel in the other, but that is all I can remember.

I recalled the past events as much as I could of at the time, and that is when he shows up. I never know his name or where he came from, but his look is always familiar. A strong built man with tan skin and black hair appears. He wears a black suit, black pants, black shoes, black shirt, and a bright red tie. Every time he always seems to scare me at the moment when I am most vulnerable. He then says hello in a deep voice and almost scars the life out of me. He says "hello" to me in a kind of friendly and ominous way, it was as if he knew me before I entered the room, but I had no certain memories of him, only a faint recollection. He always appears with his hands together one over the other over his mid section. I ask him who he is, and he replies that he is God, the God of the room that we were in. He then preceded to tell me that whatever he wanted it would appear in the room with just the snap of his fingers. I would then say that I did not believe him, that there is no way that he could do the stunts that he claimed he could do. He then snapped his fingers, and with the crisp sound of the crack of his middle finger and thumb, he disappeared from the room. Then the sound started to appear in the silence. The sound of a car horn continuously honking was apparent in the room. Then the man's deep voice appeared and said " I can make it stop, all I ask is that you lay on the table and let me kill you-slowly. ". I obviously did not want to die, I thought that the honking would eventually become background noise. I thought it would not be a problem until hours pasted and what seemed to be days as the honking continued.

As I tried to close my eyes the honking appeared to be getting gradually louder and louder with every hour that passed. I tried covering my ears, but there is only so much pressure a man can exert on pushing on his ears without cracking his skull. It didn't matter, I could still hear the car horn and it always became louder and it never stopped, or even dimmed. I wandered the room in pain and agony, thinking that the car horn would never cease, not until I found something on the table, something that I had not spotted before. A Golden pen that I had never seen before had appeared on the table with the words "silence is golden, but bliss is blood red" inscribed on the side. The thought of denial never crossed my mind as I took the pen and jabbed it into one ear and then the other. With blood running down the sides of my cheeks and dripping onto the crimson carpet, I had a wave of peace flew through me as the noise stopped.

I stood there, not noticing the pain in my ears over the peace of silence I felt. Then fell to the floor, I then closed my eyes, and fell asleep. In my sleep I dreamed of a deer, the deer was far away but it was moving closer and closer, faster and faster toward me as a speed I thought would be unavoidable. I didn't know what to do, so I tried to dodge the deer. With only inches to spare I dogged the deer, I then saw a blinding light and heard a car horn honking, and then I woke up. When I awoke I could not hear anything, anything except for the ringing in my ears. the peace was gone, and had been replaced with anger. I then started to scream " What the hell do you want from me? Do you want to see me beg for mercy without knowing why, do you want to see my apologize for an action that I don't remember doing, do you want me to say that I am sorry for a deed that could not be forgive?" Instantly the ringing became louder like that of a screaming jet engine. I screamed as well, and yelled and begged the man to please stop this. the ringing had stopped, and it had been replaced with humming.

My hearing had returned to me, but I did not perceive that as a good sign of things to come. The humming sounded like it came from a little girl. I then turned around , wiping the blood from the sides of my face and neck to hear where it was coming from. I turned to see a little girl with a blue dress and black hair, with her back turned toward me. I asked her what she was doing here and how she got here, but all she did was hum the same tune.

When she turned I nearly vomited, her face was shredded with pieces of broken glass with bits and pieces still infused into her skull, and then her humming stopped. She then asked me " How about another drink"? I asked her what she meant. I then smelled the room fill with what smelled like liquor. I saw the ink of the pictures on the wall start to slowly drip onto the floor. Then, one at a time, the pictures began to fad and liquor began pouring out of the portrait frames. The rug covered floor was beginning to fill with the liquor and I could feel it crawling up my foot. The little girl kept repeating the words "How about another drink"? Over and over again she would say those words. I would shout " Stop saying that" but it would not matter. The room was filling with alcohol. The alcohol started to creep up my knee, at that moment I had to find a way out of that room. I tried to look for a door in a room without doors. I began to panic, I stated hitting the walls trying to make my own door, but there was no luck. The alcohol was flooding in, like the room was sinking in a sea of regrets and bad memories. The room was starting to fill as the pictures one by one started to fall and the liquor spewed out like someone opened the alcoholic flood gates of hell.

The alcohol reached my knees, and then my waist, to my shoulders until I stated floating in a sea of alcohol. There was little air to breath. Each time my head went under water I felt like my ears and my eyes were on fire. There was only a few inches between the alcohol and the ceiling, and with the last remaining air I then yelled " Fine, I give up- I will get on the table". In that same moment, the alcohol stated to recede into the floor. The room then became empty again after all the alcohol was gone. I laid on the wet floor for a few minutes before he showed his face. The tan man in the black suit and the bright red tie appeared and looked over me. He then asked me if I was ready. I got up with no question or comment. I surrendered to my weakness, yes, I would die slowly, but at least I would die and trade in a torment for another torment. I laid on the table where the man shackled me to all four of the legs of the table. He then approached in a bright red rubber apron. I accepted my death, sure I could have just died drowning in the alcohol, but my need to survive overpowered my will to die. I laid on the table as the man brought out a surgical knife that looked like it could cut deep into mussel. the man put on his surgical mask and asked me if I was ready. In a way, I was ready to face my death head on, to prove that I was stronger than most. As he drew his scalpel and prepared to cut into my rib cage, I closed my eyes and entered the darkness. The darkness of my eye lids consumed every little bit of light that had entered before.

I opened my eyes to a dark room with crimson wall paper. The past memories of the tortures that had previously occurred had vanished from my memory. I looked around to see the same pictures, the same picture frames, the same room with no doors or windows, the same crimson wall paper that was pealing of the sides of the wall. I again hit the light bulb with my head, I again saw my torn cloths and the blood on them, and again I did not know where I was. Again, I wondered the room, confused and alone, and just as before with no memory of ever saying the words before, I worked up the courage to say "Hello"?...