***
Solid grey walls assault my eyes. They
are meant to be neutral, impartial, completely forgettable in a time
of dire distress. They are my clearest memory of that day. Plain
grey cement walls, grey with grey paint, no trim, nothing to break up
their monopolization of the hallway except plain grey doors with
silver handles. Light grey tiles on the floor slightly longer than
my foot, arranged into squares like my grandmother's quilt. It is
amazing the thoughts that flit into my mind in this impossible task.
I am awash in the lack of colour, I am adrift in the surreality of
the moment. The soft click of my boots against the floor is the
loudest sound in existence. It almost drowns out the sound of
weeping in one of the closed rooms. Is it to my left or right? Does
it matter?
The detective in front of me is
Hispanic, with a kind, intelligent face, today set only to grim. He
walks at a normal pace, that I match easily, but the hallway seems to
go on into infinity. In the ignorance that exists in living through
a memory, I start to feel uneasy. The hallway is too long. The doors
are too wide apart, in too large of number. I try to take bigger
steps, but I feel resistance against my legs, and I don't gain any
distance. I try to look down to see if my skirt is perhaps caught on
my legs, but I can't move my head. I can only look forward, walk the
same pace, follow these footsteps again. Again.
The uneasiness blooms into a flower of
panic in my head. I've done this before. My breath seems to be the
only thing I can directly influence, and I start to breathe too fast.
I look ahead, and finally I see an end to the hallway, a door that I
am intended to pass through. A door that I cannot pass through. The
sound of my footsteps echoes so loud in my ears that I want to slap
my hands over my ears. The muffled crying increases, seeps under the
cracks of every room. The grey of the walls presses into me
oppressively. I am sweating. The detective is oblivious to my
discontent: he seems to be trapped in this repeating scenario
without self-awareness. The door slowly grows closer, and inside my
head, I start to scream. I yank, pull, wrench with all my might to
force my body to stop walking, to end this torturous slow-motion
parade. I might as well throw feathers at a steam roller. I
continue to shriek in my head: nonsensical, mental manifestations of
terror, a last resort after all efforts to free oneself have failed.
I am hyperventilating, and tears start to gather in my eyes from the
rebellion I am waging against my body. We have almost reached the
door, and the detective turns towards me with concern on his face.
He can see my wet cheeks, my too-fast breath. He gently pats my arm,
but cannot do anything. We are both locked in this nightmare.
Stopwalkingstopwalkingstopwalkingstopwalkingstopwalkingstopwalkingstopwalking
It all runs together as one word, a holy chant to ward off evil.
Evil is indifferent.
Don'topenthedoordon'topenthedoordon'topenthedoordon'topenthedoor
DON'T. OPEN. THE. DOOR.
The detective swings open the door
silently to a room filled with more grey. The wails of suffering,
having reached a crescendo, are abruptly cut off as the door shuts
behind us with a dull thud. There are different kinds of grey in
this room: the dull metallic grey of steel. Dark grey plastic bags.
Grey cotton scrubs, even grey sprinkling the heads of the
technicians as they mill around a table set up in the center of the
room. There appears to be some kind of arguing going on, but my
attention has zeroed in on the zipper in the middle of the bag on the
table. There is something wrong with the bag: it seems too loose
and empty for the devastation it contains. Now that I am through the
door, I am ignored, and I am as trapped in the sequence as the
detective was before. I watch in gaping horror as I step behind the
personnel having a terse discussion and put my hand on the zipper. I
draw it back, and this time my scream rips apart the veil between all
worlds and shatters the night.
