Author: Pacifique
Title: Free
Date: November 18,
2005
Description: A sketch. One-shot.
(Explosions in the Sky - The Earth is not a Cold, Dead Place)
It wasn't a small room, but the walls were painted white. There might have been a camera fixed in one upper corner. There were no windows. There were no doors, save the one leading to the bathroom. The bathroom had no windows either. There was a mattress lying in a corner of the room, with thin, rumpled sheets testifying to nights of sleeplessness. He was lying on the mattress, gaunt and drawn. There was a clock, but it moved arbitrarily, mimicking a drunkard's walk.
Every time he rose from his squatter's nest in the corner, he drifted toward the bathroom for a shower. Hot water always woke him up, it seemed, or prepared him for...what? Every time he got back into the inadequate huddle of sheets, he would think of sleeping, and how people turn into birds when they sleep, and are free.