The room

For writers craft class. Had to describe a made up room in our minds.

 

The dark dingy cold of the room flooded over me. Shadows crept along the cement bricks like vines. Water dripped from the old leaky pipes overhead, which had a deep rusty puddle forming below it in the far right corner. A big wooden rocking chair sat in the far left corner, slowly swaying in the silence. Its rotted wood looked as though it would collapse if a feather sat upon it. Cracks and scratches were etched in each wood panel held together by tarnished screws from decades ago. The single dim light in the room hung from the centre of the ceiling, swinging from left to right slowly after being pulled by my sweaty hand to hear a ‘click’ and have some sight in the darkness. The cool cement beneath my bare toes was uneven and almost wet. Moisture and must floats in the atmosphere, taking the breath away from intruders. A drain in the centre of the room just below the dim lamp was clogged with dirt, dust, and deceased insects who may have once tried to inhabit this inhospitable environment. Mold had grown and spread along the sticky, damp pipes overhead and between the cracks in the floor. The smell was unbearable, as if something was rotting away in the pipes just a foot over my head. There were no windows to bring in natural light, just the dim bulb still swinging gently like leaves in the wind. Sunlight was un-thought of in the gloom surrounding me between the four walls. Corroded chains and shackles sat alone near the drain that seemed to swallow any life form trying to survive here. It could gulp you up like a black hole and take you down into the sewer systems. I finally realize after a moment or so that there is no door visible to the eye, as if I’d been put in a dungeon with no exit. Just sealed in and left to suffer, trapped in the loneliness of the cold. Looking around the grey walls of my prison, I feel chills through me, top to bottom. The icy cool of the ground felt as though the arctic was just below me. My mind screamed for comfort, for a partner to face the big dead emptiness I had so suddenly encountered, but there was nothing to save me. This room would swallow me whole.