The White Room

A Story by Alan B.

She waits.

She sits in a white room. The walls are bare save for a portrait of a little girl sitting in a field amidst yellow wild flowers. She stares out the only view she has of the outside world and waits. The wood under her feet is old and stripped, the boards a splintery shade of faded brown. Her heart beats and she can hear it. Blood continues to move in her body though it has lost its purpose. A small undisturbed bed sits across from an old desk where papers lay with half-finished words written on them in shy, reticent cursive. She stares at but does not see the world; no atom of its lights and sounds enters her white room. She waits until such time that the Great Eye closes, the eye that lays waste to all who become aware of it. Ours is a strength that is maintained only in ignorance so she waits until the last petal falls, and the last tree dies and the oceans freeze over under the unknowable blackness; until the blue orb of earth gives its final rotation, she waits.