Confined Spaces Read online

  There was just him.

  And the white room.

  When he awoke, he was fully dressed. As he’d slept, he reasoned, someone had cleaned and ironed his trousers and T-shirt and made him decent at awakening. He looked at his arms and saw fresh, clean, white bandages. His legs as well, which had cut open as he was flung to the floor, were treated with antiseptic. The sheets – which had been crumpled by his day’s use, and blood-stained from his cuts – were now ironed and spotless. They had even scrubbed the walls where he’d left bloody smears.

  Somebody had felt sorry for him, they had treated his wounds rather than let them fester. But then why had they left him here? Why – if they were capable of helping him – did they leave him alone? Didn’t they know what he was going through? Didn’t they realise he was a prisoner? How could they bandage him so delicately it didn’t pinch or bite his skin while he slept – but still keep him trapped in this white room? How could they do that? What had he done to them to make them do that to him?

  On the desk was placed another tray and another meal. A salmon starter, a rich red pasta dish, chocolate ice cream dessert. He was upset, angry, and so picked up the tray and smashed it to the wall. There was a metallic clang as it whacked into the brickwork and then a clatter as it hit the hard tile floor. Then there was silence apart from the dripping, the food running from the wall and forming a messy pink, red and brown puddle on the white floor.

  He looked at that viscous pool and felt the sting of frustration, the ache of hunger. Frustrated he paced the room again, but with less energy now. His eyes avoided that far wall, trying not to even glimpse it. Instead he lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, rubbing his empty belly. He sang to himself – some tune he may have known before or maybe just made up – a song to block out the rumbling of his stomach.

  There was no clock, no ticking to let him know where he was in the day, to tell him how long he had until tiredness struck. He didn’t even know if it was day or night, didn’t know if his days still lasted twenty-four hours – or if he’d elongated them, shortened them. His main sensation was floating on hardness, conscious that everything around him was solid, but having no bearings.

  Eventually he was overcome by the gnashing of his stomach. The puddle was wide, spreading over the floor, now a dark disgusting brown colour. Without thinking, he bent down and lapped it up. The first few licks were atrocious, the flavours combining to a rancid mixture with a foul bouquet that made him gag, but his hunger won out against the urge to retch.

  It didn’t take long to convince his belly it was full though, and he pulled himself away from the messy remains. But his foot slipped and he found himself back down with a bang. His body lay in it, it seeped through his clothes, to his flesh, into his hair. Slowly he crawled away, didn’t look at it anymore, just curled himself up on the bed and shut his eyes to it all. He lay completely still until at some point sleep took pity and stole him away.

  Once again when he awoke he was clean – even his hair had been shampooed while he lay oblivious. The far wall had been scrubbed spotless, not a stain of yesterday left upon it. He dashed to the table and that day’s meal – vegetable soup, sausages and mash, rice pudding with a swirl of strawberry jam on top. This time he ate cheerfully, a smile on his face, careful not to waste a crumb.

  Who was he? Where had he come from? How had he ended up here?

  He thought of mothers. He must have had a mother, but did she love him? Nurture him? Take care of him? If she did, he had no memory of it. No recollection of being held to his mother’s breast, no notion of whether she’d ever wiped away his tears. Maybe she’d abandoned him, left him cold in a shoebox – but if so, who’d raised him? He’d made it to adulthood, looked fit and healthy, understood English – he hadn’t been neglected, hadn’t been isolated from an early age. Once upon a time he’d been cared for, someone had loved him.

  Did anyone love him now? Did he have a wife? It needn’t necessarily be a wife, just someone he loved, who loved him back – someone who was missing him. Surely he was that type of person, a man who needed the touch of another human. He was alone now, but he told himself that he wasn’t a solitary person. There were other people – another person at least – who was now frantic with worry for him. But if that was the case, why couldn’t he remember them? How cruel was it of him to have this person, but to have no more than a vague notion that they might exist? Maybe this person had forgotten him too, maybe everyone he’d ever met had forgotten him and there was no one beyond these white walls who missed him for a moment.

  Why was he so alone? What had happened to him? With tears in his eyes he felt the walls, gently this time, touching the cold hard brick with his fingertips, knowing there was nothing he could do to them. He cried and tried to miss someone: a mother, a lover, a child somewhere – but nobody came to mind.

  His thoughts turned to suicide, but there was no way he could kill himself. There was nothing sharp, or poisonous, or heavy – the room had been proofed against all melodramatic gestures. Perhaps he could crash his skull against the wall? He tried, but the effort was tentative, and the pain, like some safety mechanism, prevented him attempting it again. Instead he lay on the bed and pretended to sleep. He curled himself up, closed his eyes and let his breath go shallow. But he was awake, totally conscious. They waited for him to fall asleep, so they could come in, give him more food, tidy the room – but how did they know he was really asleep? If he lay still long enough and gave a good impression of unconsciousness, then surely that would convince them. They’d come in and then he’d get them. He wouldn’t harm them, but he’d grab one, demand answers to his questions.

  Excitement thrashed through him at the thought of touching another person, looking at another face, hearing the sound of another voice. Curled up, he presented a restful appearance. He lay there and thought several hours had passed, but had they really? Or was it just a couple of minutes dragging by interminably? He tried to stay calm, tried not to betray anxiety.

  Could they see him in here? They must have been able to, how else would they know when he was asleep? As far as he knew, he had no monitors on him, there was no way for them to actually measure his heart-rate. So surely they could see him, and surely – after three hours of lying still – they’d think he was asleep.

  He started to count, silently behind his peaceful visage. Lying still he counted for what he reckoned was a whole eight hours, but no one came, there were no sounds from the door. Gradually agitation took him and he started to move restively, tossing and turning on the bed. He tried to stop as he knew they wouldn’t come if his sleep looked disturbed. But he was impatient, upset, he wanted to see someone, needed to see someone – but there was no one there. And after more than eight hours of waiting – and he knew it was eight hours as he’d counted it all – there was still no step beyond that door, no creak of opening.

  His hands pinched against his teary eyes, that tranquil expression contorted into pain.

  He couldn’t remember when real sleep actually struck. As usual he just came back into consciousness with a jolt, a steaming tray of delicious food waiting on the desk. With a wretched despondency, he sank back to the pillow and tried to pretend it wasn’t there.

  His days – if they were days – now took on a kind of routine. The smell of food and the rumble of his stomach always drew him straight to the desk. He’d then pace the room, sometimes pushing his body against the hardness of the walls, sometimes just yelling out for help. Eventually he’d tire himself and be forced to rest on the softness of the mattress, staring up at the ceiling with tears in his eyes. Then he would pace some more – sometimes angry, sometimes calm – before going back to the bed and pretending to sleep. He had no idea when sleep took him or how long he actually slept, but he knew he could pretend to sleep for longer than ten hours. He also knew that not once had he fooled them.

  It was while pacing the room after filling his belly that he made an interesting discovery. He was particularl
y angry that day – annoyed and furious with his eight-foot square world. Frustrated, he kicked against the walls, knowing it would harm his naked feet more than the solid brick. His foot whacked the side of the door and he hobbled back bruised; he karate kicked just above the bed and he recoiled with an injured heel; then he smacked at the side of the desk. His foot was injured but he didn’t scream, he just stood and stared.

  It was the far side of the desk, away from the door, out of sight of it, in fact. His foot had kicked against the bricks, and some of the cement between two of them had crumbled. He looked at it – this first glimmer of fragility within his cell – then he reached down his little finger and hooked out a dry chunk of cement. There was an inch-wide gap in the solidity of his walls.

  For the rest of that day he pretended he hadn’t seen it. He did everything he normally did, acted like the tiny gap wasn’t there. Pacing as usual, screaming as usual. He lay down as if there was nothing out of the norm. Not once did he look at that corner, not even a glimpse.

  Were they watching him? Could they see what he’d seen? That loose cement, that little gap in the wall. It sent him a little delirious, gave his heart a much faster bounce, but it also scared him in case they blocked it. What if they used his sleeping time to fill it in? He paced around as normal, tried to scream as normal – but wasn’t sure how convincingly normal he really appeared. There was too much giddiness, he was too excitedly conscious of never staring at that chink in the wall.

  When he put his head to the pillow he didn’t just pretend to go to sleep, he genuinely tried and wanted to – but he was too anxious, rolling back and forth before he found peacefulness.

  The moment of wake-up was horrible.

  Nervously, he peered over the table into the corner.

  There it was, that little dent in the bars of his cage.

  His smile was unstoppable. He glanced back over his shoulder, as if to check there was no-one in the room to spot what he was doing – then reached his finger in and dug out another chunk. It crumbled easier this time. He pulled out a good five inches. Quickly he flushed it down the toilet and then left it. Again he worried. Once more he paced and rested and paced without thinking of anything else, but was too scared to even glimpse it.

  The next day he peered nervously again – it was still there. Not a chink any more, but a gap, a weakness in his impenetrable cell. He leant forward and took another chunk and then another – then he stopped. It was too big now, a definite and unmissable hole in the cement. They were bound to see it, it was too obvious. They’d notice, put in stronger cement. He was destined to stay trapped for the rest of time.

  Petrified, he sat and stared at it, all his fermented hopes vanishing before him.

  Then he decided to go for it. He’d managed to loosen so much with just a few jabs, maybe he could get right the way through with a day’s solid work. Maybe if he spent all the energy he had, he could remove the brick and crawl his way out to freedom. And when they came to check his room, there’d be nothing they could do about it.

  That day’s food was ignored as he dug his finger right in, grabbing out another dusty ball of cement. It got harder the longer he went on. Only the outer cement was truly loose, the rest he had to wrestle, scraping away with his little finger until he managed to find a loose chunk and then he wrenched it out. It crumbled to powder at his knees, and there was no way he could now conceal it or drop it down the toilet.

  His finger was cut and bruised, throbbing and trembling. At one point he sat back against the bed with the napkin from his tray wrapped around the swollen digit, but he still had the finger of his left hand and even though it wasn’t as adept he was able to work with it. The hunger got the better of him eventually and he sat down to eat his cold dinner. He didn’t mind and ate it slowly as if savouring the now dusty taste, giving himself nearly fresh energy and impetus.

  The work continued, until the sweat from his brow combined with the tears in his eyes and he was almost blind with weariness. He hadn’t made it all the way through, or anywhere close, and he cried with exhaustion and frustration. The hole in the wall was too big, and the easily glimpsed grime on the floor made it immediately clear what he’d been doing. But there was no way he could manage any more, no energy left to continue. His tiredness was overwhelming – his bones shook, vomit bubbled at his throat. Eventually he shifted the desk in front of the hole, so it wasn’t instantly seen. But then the desk being in a slightly different position was surely going to make them suspicious, along with the cement on the floor and the grey powder on his clothes and the blood on his fingers. It was all he could do right then though, all the precaution his feeble mind and body could contrive.

  He crawled to the bed and was asleep the moment his head touched the softness. It was a consuming exhaustion and he awoke in exactly the same position, he’d not even had the energy to turn over in his slumber.

  The first thing he noticed on awakening was his fingers, they were bandaged. He sat up and the desk was back in its right place. Light-headed, he jumped up, staggering to it, ready to collapse at what he’d see. They’d cleaned the dust, wiped away the trails of blood from the brickwork – but the hole was still there. They hadn’t fixed it, hadn’t blocked it off. They hadn’t stopped him.

  He actually cheered, bounced up and down and whooped. The food was eaten quickly, whipped down while hot. Then another day’s labour started.

  Maybe he was some kind of laboratory mouse. That was a comforting thought. Nobody actually dislikes those mice, despite all they’re put through. They’re there for a reason, because the end results are important to someone. A laboratory mouse isn’t sent through those tests out of malice, it’s merely a small part of some grander experiment, and the swifter it solves the task the quicker it’s rewarded.

  He imagined them waiting for him to solve his task, how frustrating it must have been when he was just pacing the room. They must have thought he was useless, not worth giving cell space to – but now he’d figured it out, was moving in the right direction. What was happening to him wasn’t vindictive, it wasn’t done out of spite, it was just part of an experiment – and now he was making that experiment a success. He already felt like he was being rewarded, the food he received at the start of each day had always been good – but now it came in larger portions, hearty helpings to give him strength for the work ahead.

  It took four days to carve out that brick. He pulled it back and dropped it with a thud to the floor, then peered through to complete blackness.

  There was always light in his room. Even during sleep the lights stayed on and stained his subconscious pure white, but this hole was sheer and impenetrable black. He pushed his head through the hole and held it there, hoping to make his eyes accustomed, so he could see what was awaiting him. But it just stayed black. His fingers reached out and felt the floor but nothing else. It didn’t matter though. He held his head in the blackness and marvelled for a long time, fascinated by a space that wasn’t totally white.

  The gap wasn’t big enough for him to squeeze through. He could fit his head in the hole, but he couldn’t follow with his shoulders and body. The adjacent brick had to be removed as well. This didn’t dishearten him – he’d seen the promise of the black room and was willing to work to get there. He didn’t even sit back to ponder, instead he charged on impatient to be finished.

  Strangely, at the end of the day, just when he could take no more – he would put that loose brick back into the wall. He knew it wouldn’t fool anybody, that they already knew what he was doing – but still he made that effort to lift it with shaking hands and slot it into place. Maybe he was scared of tarnishing the black room, of somehow letting the dreadfulness of his white cell in there. He pulled it out every day, for those hours spent scraping and clawing with his fingers. But each night he slotted it neatly back, as if somehow in his sleep a white contamination could spread.

  It took him three days to carve out that second brick, days where he found himself
whistling some nonsense tune he might have remembered or might have made up. That last time he went to sleep was the hardest. He knew it was nearly finished, but his body could do no more. That loose brick was shifted into place and then he crawled on the palms of his hands and his kneecaps to the white sheets of the bed.

  But he couldn’t actually sleep. His mind was bubbling over even though his body was wrecked for another day. He looked at his fingers, swollen and wounded – blood and dirt smeared across the pale skin and bandages. They hurt, but not in a way that bothered him, more in a way that felt like accomplishment. Overnight they’d be treated, freshly washed and wrapped pristinely, and in the morning – despite the worn skin and broken fingernails – they’d feel great and ready for work.

  He thought of the outside world, of what existed beyond his four white walls, what awaited him when this was over. Were there people out there ready to squeeze and kiss him? Loved ones glad to see him again? As the hours passed he tried to think of his mother, what she must look like – but there was nothing. Was there a lover? Someone who was going to hold him better than anyone else? Were there any kids who’d be delighted to see their beloved Daddy? He wanted to be touched, to see other people, hear them laugh and cheer. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t remember them at that moment, he was sure when he saw them he’d know who they were and how much he loved them.

  That night he actually dreamed, dreams which were not just white. They were fragments of images – places he couldn’t remember but which looked real, people at a distance who surely meant something to him. There was nothing distinct, nothing he could cling to – but still they made him feel good. These were his memories, they were what he’d done until now, who he was before he entered this white room. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t quite make them out, if they lingered at the periphery of his mind – they were there and before long they’d make sense to him. It would all be completely clear.