My 98

Some interesting collapses



"I didn't realize you were new here. That's new with no K." Arnold said this. Arnold:



Bald

Smoking

Skinny

Hallowed out, black eyes



Arnold continues. He's speaking to you. You've just arrived. You're less than enthusiastic to find Arnold in his lab coat, smoking, not making eye contact; you are probably scared. "The walls. They collapse every so often; you have to be on your guard for your untimely demise."

You ask why they collapse.

Arnold answers, "Because they were built to be broken and break to get fixed. You'll get used to this." And you probably will.

Just so you know, a wall will now collapse.

You're in a small, 623 square foot room and the walls are all soft blue. There is white carpet, void of anything. Surgical. Precisely what you don't want to see here.

The wall to your left comes rumbling down, it falls straight through the floor, and the blue paint gets shaved off the wall and dusts the white, white carpet.

You say "Oh, my God." Because, where the wall stood, there is a white void going out for forever.

You could be high or dead for all you know.

"See, I told you." Arnold whispers between clenched teeth. He's looking down at a piece of paper, making notes with a read pen. He has no desk, just the paper on a slate of wood.

You ask him what's on the paper.

"Notes. Just notes." He finally looks up at you. His teeth are clenched; he must only weigh 100 pounds, you think.

"Notes about what?" You realize you've been speaking to him mentally. And now, the words crash out of your mouth and you wonder why you ever spoke at all. The sheer strain of using flesh to relay thought is mind boggling.

"We have taken very careful notes," he looks up, behind you, another wall comes down. "about you and you're activities. We are now in a dream and there are only two walls left."

"Why am I here?"

Arnold looks down at his notes, and back up at you, quick. He clenches his teeth and blood drips down between the front ones; it drips down to his chin. He shakes his head, vigorously and shouts "You're dead!" in your mind, and you hold your head and crouch down in pain.

Now you're probably real scared.

You look up, crying. The wall to your right collapses and more void opens up. Arnold shoots a glance at the wall and back at you.

You begin to plead in your head to God, but Arnold can hear you. "Too late." He says between teeth that are now beginning to smoke from the vice-like pressure of muscles you can now see on the top of his bald head. The blood continues to run, and Arnold attempts to wipe it off' but, only smears it on his white, white lab coat.

"Am I in hell?" You ask.

"You are in holding." Arnold looks back down at his paper. He makes another note and the wall behind him collapses.

You're surrounded by a void. The ceiling hangs above you, as if on strings. You're looking up at it. A bright light, a pin point of bright light appears in the middle and begins eating the ceiling from the inside out.

You look down and see another pin point, it's black and it begins devouring the white, white carpet you stand on.

Arnold pays no attention, he's still making notes. But, now he's more frantic, you're thinking that no one could possibly write that fast while making coherent sentences. Besides, there's blood all over the paper now, it couldn't possible be legible.

The hole in the carpet is now close to taking both you and Arnold with it.

You start to think, maybe the black hole is hell, and the white one is heaven.

You're moving backward, toward the void, looking over your shoulder so that you don't drop off the carpet.

Arnold makes a sweeping gesture, as if he's signing the paper, then jumps into the black hole.

The white light above is blinding and watching it play on the black hole, you make a sort of decision that you are both.

Both ceiling and floor begin enveloping one another and you can't distinguish the void from the light or from the dark.

Stars follow.

Bright stars and black space. There's so much space, you think.

You awake, on the floor, in a hallway in what seems to be a hotel. There's a man vacuuming, he's wearing headphones.

He pauses when he sees you, takes off his headphones and asks if you are all right.

You tell him you are fine and ask where you are.

He says "Hotel."

"Where?" you ask.

He shakes his head, puts his headphones on and continues vacuuming.

You get up, and walk towards a green exit sign, taking a last look at the cleaning man. He winks.

You open the door and Arnold is walking down the stairs. He's in the same lab coat, but it's clean once again. He nods at you as he passes you, and then continues down the next flight of steps.

"Now, you are knew with a K." He says as he passes underneath the stairs.

You follow, but he's gone. You continue down the stairs and as you walk the walls begin collapsing, like before. You look around and they are all falling at once, but there's no void on the other side, just two large legs and the face of a man wearing a blue mask.

Now you're knew.