The Empty Room

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897723]

It first happened on a Thursday, when Nick was in Sam's dorm room, buying his usual two bags of pot for the weekend ahead. He had a nice buzz going and the world seemed shimmery and light, even in dim auspices of the dorm.

Sam was saying something about some movie he'd recently seen, completely forgettable, when Nick's vision started to blur.

“Whoa,” he said, blinking in an attempt to clear his head. The drugs were definitely messing with him. Sam was saying something in response, but Nick didn't really hear him – everything was distant, like viewing the world through a thick haze. Nick closed his eyes momentarily, shaking his head vigorously and waiting for his vertigo to pass. It did, but what happened next was decidedly worse.

Nick opened his eyes. Gone were Sam and his mangy dorm room. Instead, he found himself staring at a blank wall, and gradually became aware that he was no longer sitting, but standing. He blinked, but the visage persisted. The wall was white, and marred by scratches and scrapes. Nick whipped his head around, a surge of adrenaline passing through him. What was this new madness? Behind him, another dented and scraped wall, just like the first.

Gradually the awareness dawned on him that he was in a small empty room, with badly battered walls and a plank wooden flooring, also showing signs of wear. Nick blinked again, waiting for Sam and his dorm room to reappear, to no avail. He twisted his head in every direction, spying nothing but white walls and mahogany floor. Nick was in a room with no door.

[Anonymous No.1897728]

shut up

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897730]

The strangest part about it was that he recognized the room. Nick had been there. One day while waiting for his college's most reliable Adderall dealer in the common room of Bundy Hall, Nick had noticed a door he hadn't seen before, and pushed it open. The door led to a room just like the one he was in now, aside from the fact that it had a door. After a few minutes in the room, Nick had left, feeling a strange chilling sensation. He hadn't thought much of it, until now.

Was this the same room? If so, what had happened to the door? Nick didn't even see any outlines in the wall to show where a door would have been.

Nick smiled briefly, considering the possibility that his weed had been spiked with acid. Nothing else would quite account for such a vivid hallucination, and it just had to be an hallucination! He rubbed his eyes again, trying desperately to shake whatever possessed him to see such things. Nothing happened. The white walls remained; the mahogany floor remained.

Nick ran his hand along the wall. It certainly felt real. The wall was solid under his hand, much moreso than would be expected. Thinking about it more closely, acid didn't really account for it.

Nick's palms grew sticky with sweat, and he felt his stomach twist. Whatever was going on, he certainly seemed to be in a room with no doors, and that was not an ideal situation. Nick reared backwards and punched the wall, hard, with a resounding thud. Nothing happened. He hadn't made a hole in the wall, barely denting it.

It was at that point that Nick noticed something. His fist had made a distinctive mark on the wall, but it was not alone. He could see what looked like other fist indentations up and down the wall, as if someone had been wailing on it.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897735]

“Help,” Nick said plaintively. “Help!” He didn't expect an answer, but it was worth a try. He heard no reply. With his stomach still churning, he pressed his ear against the cool surface of the wall and listened, only to hear deafening silence. How long had he been in here? He reached into his back pocket and extracted his cell phone, feeling an irrational wash of relief when he saw the familiar device.

Nick knew that if he wasn't simply hallucinating, his situation was rather unusual, to say the least. He had always secretly wished something extraordinary would happen to him, but this was hardly what he wanted. In the stories he read as a kid, people wandered into magical worlds through wardrobes or mystic portals. No one ever simply found themselves there, and furthermore, an empty room was about as far from a magical world as one could get.

His cellphone clock read 3:24, which was about twelve minutes later than when he had last checked the time in Sam's dorm room. As far as he could tell, he had been in the room for at least ten minutes. His cell phone got no signal. Nick really began to panic. He pounded on the walls and shouted until his throat burned. His prison showed no sign of relenting, his efforts eliciting no response whatsoever.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.

“Help!” Nick yelled, “help!” Before the word could fully leave his mouth, he found himself back in Sam's dingy dorm room, sitting across from the other boy on his bed. Relief slowly seeped in. Sam gaped at him silently, then spoke.

“What's wrong, dude?” he asked, running a hand through the stubble on his neck.

Nick blanched. What had just happened? Had he imagined all that time spent in the strange, yet somewhat familiar room? Sam didn't seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary, so maybe it really was just an odd hallucination. “I'm trippin'.” he said.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897740]

“I hear ya,” Sam replied. “Hey, you wanna go out for a smoke?” Nick nodded.

As he was leaving the room, Nick quietly checked his cell phone. The clock was fifteen minutes ahead of the one in Sam's dorm room. A slow, but definitely building sense of abject terror filled him. Nick spent the rest of the evening and then the next morning trying to shake himself of this. He couldn't explain what had happened. No hallucinogen could account for it. It wasn't even an experience he could contextualize in some way with references to fiction, as he usually did. He went to his morning classes, but barely heard a word the professors said. Halfway through Econ, he hit upon the idea of going back to Bundy Hall and finding the room he had been trapped in. Nick wasn't terribly optimistic about this, and almost didn't see the point, but it would make him feel as if he were doing something, which was comforting. He could have sworn he had seen the room before; however, if it really was in Bundy Hall, there should have been a door.

[Anonymous No.1897742]

>>1897730

>weed spiked with acid

Lrn2Drugs

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897743]

At lunch Nick barely touched his pizza, electing instead to sip coffee incessantly. Sam noticed this, and perked up. “Is something wrong, man?” he asked.
Nick didn't want to respond. He knew his friend would think he had taken way too many drugs if he told him about the room, so he just shrugged.
On the way to Bundy Hall, the growing feeling of terror returned. Nick felt nauseous and tired. He hadn't slept much the night before, that was true, but there was only one reason for feeling this way, and that was the room. He had seen a picture once in some class or the other of a man tied beneath a swinging sword. Nick was beginning to understand how that man felt, having something so dangerous hanging over him. He wasn't entirely sure if the room was dangerous, but that was beside the point. It certainly felt dangerous. He wondered if life would ever return to normal. Could anything be normal, now that he had been to the room? Nick wasn't sure, but he didn't think so.
Bundy Hall was a large dorm with great windows in the front that looked out on half of campus. Access to the dorm was controlled by key cards, and Nick swiped his, still feeling a little sick. The lobby was deserted at first glance, but soon Nick noticed Jonathan, the campus's most reliable Adderall dealer, lounging on the sofa with a laptop computer. Nick nodded at him, but wasted no time chatting. He could see the door to the room, along the back wall of the lobby, buffeted by a few chairs. Ahah! Nick thought. He knew he had been in the room before, and here it was, with a door and everything. Clearly the room was just a conference room, for use by student government or something, and Nick had simply imagined-

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897750]

He opened the door, and stared blankly into a phone booth. There was a wooden bench against the wall, and a beige phone affixed to the other wall. This was not the room of his nightmares; this was a completely ordinary location. It looked nothing like the room that Nick remembered. The walls were wooden and the floor carpeted, like the rest of the lobby. The room, if it had ever been there, was gone.

Nick's stomach turned. He must have been visibly distressed, because Jonathan piped up. “What's wrong, man?”

“Nothing, I just...” Nick stammered, and before he could think, ended up blurting it out. “I thought there was a room here?”

“A room?” Jonathan said, picking a leaf from his long, ratty blond hair. “That's the phone booth, man – it's not really a room.”

Nick shrugged, but didn't say anything else. He didn't want Jonathan thinking he was crazy, because then the other boy might refuse to sell to him. As if Jonathan had read his mind, the boy said, “You lookin' to buy?”

“No,” Nick said, but then thought about his answer for a moment. If the room was real, he would need to stay as sharp as possible, and Adderall was a good way to do it. “Yes,” he said sheepishly, and followed Jonathan upstairs to his dorm room to collect the drugs. Nick popped one of the orange pills and waited for the amphetamine buzz to kick in.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897754]

As he left Bundy Hall, Nick was feeling pretty good. It might have just been the drugs, which tended to make the world more bearable, but he no longer felt sick to his stomach or afraid. Surely he had just imagined his first visit to the room in Bundy's lobby, and then hallucinated a return visit last night. Nothing like that could happen, not in real life, at least, and it wouldn't make for very interesting fiction if it did. There was no mystery to solve, except maybe figuring out how LSD had gotten into his weed. He had no reason to be worried-

Suddenly, the campus was gone, and Nick was once more staring at a blank white wall. He looked down, and saw mahogany flooring. Nick was in the room once more. He blinked, as a force of habit, but knew that nothing he could do would shake him out of this predicament. He glanced around at the white walls, mahogany floor, and a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Nick didn't know what to do. He knew that pounding on the walls and screaming was probably pointless, so he took a seat against one wall. He checked his cell phone clock, which he had reset earlier this morning. It read 3:12, which he recognized as almost exactly the same time he had gone into the room before. Oh, fuck, he thought. This was a reoccurring phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.1897755]

>>1897742

Change it to embalming fluid instead of LSD.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897756]

If this visit was anything like the last, all Nick had to do was wait it out. And then what? Continue living his life, occasionally interrupted by a windowless, doorless room? That didn't sound very appealing. He looked around him, noticing a series of long scratches on the floor. He bent to examine them. Five horizontal scratches, each about five inches long. They weren't terribly deep, and cut into the wood only slightly. They looked for all the world like the marks of fingernails, and they, combined with what appeared to be fist marks on the walls, sent a chill through Nick.

He may be alone in the room right now, but he clearly wasn't the first person to be in it. There was too much evidence of struggle. Someone else had been in here, and had pounded on the walls and scratched at the floorboards in an attempt to escape. Judging by the fact that the walls and floor were still intact, they hadn't been successful. Clearly, however, they weren't there now – what had happened to them? Had they simply been summoned back to wherever they had came from, much like Nick was yesterday? Or had something worse happened to them? Nick surveyed the room. Nothing seemed threatening, but he couldn't be entirely sure. He began to survey his prison, bit by bit. Nick was unsure what exactly he was looking for. More signs of struggle, perhaps?

[Anonymous No.1897761]

>>1897754

Yeah LSD isn't like that bro. Do some before you write a story about it. You know those spiral swirls of color they always have posters of at smoke shops? That's actually about what it looks like when you close your eyes.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897758]

>>1897755
Good idea, thanks.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897763]

He paced back and forth, and suddenly noticed a crumpled piece of paper lounging against one of the walls. Nick snatched it up as if it were made of gold, but his enthusiasm soon waned when he saw it was a receipt of some sort. Derry Andrews Dry Cleaning, 412 Perrysville Avenue, Oakland, CA. Below that it listed several items of clothing and a total at the bottom. California? How had a receipt made its way into the room from California? Nick was nearly positive he had first seen the room in Bundy Hall, on his own campus in Indiana. Was this happening to other people, in other parts of the world, just as it was happening to him? There seemed to be no other explanation.

Nick noticed that there seemed to be some kind of stain on the reverse of the receipt, so he flipped it over and gaped. In the tiniest print, and written with a purple pen, there was a note on the reverse of the receipt. He read it and felt a layer of cold wash over him, as if he had just stepped into a freezer.

"Been here five days. Next will be ten. Water running low. Help me."

[Anonymous No.1897767]

Guy gets transported to a doorless room and 4chan quibbles about what kind of drug he was on.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897769]

Someone else had been in the room between the last time he had visited and today, and they had left this note. Who was the note for? Did whoever wrote it expect someone else to visit the room? It seemed likely. Had the person seen the marks on the walls and the floor, and known that others were being pulled into the room as well? More importantly, what did the note mean? Been here five days. Nick's previous visit to the room had lasted only fifteen minutes. He checked his watch. He had been in the room at least fifteen minutes already, and obviously hadn't been summoned back to the real world. Next will be ten. That seemed to imply there was a pattern to the room. Did it summon it's victims for twice the amount of time it had previously? That was a terrifying thought. Nick wasn't good at math, but knew that an exponential increase like that would eventually be deadly for anyone trapped inside. As the note intimated, a person couldn't survive forever without food and water. The note seemed to indicate that the person leaving it had brought food with him, however.
Was it possible to bring things into the room? Nick realized his backpack was still on his back, and chided himself for not noticing it sooner. He was so used to wearing it that being without it was exceptional, not the other way around. Inside, he found his Econ book and several notebooks, his bags of weed and pipe, and a pack of Pall Malls along with his lighter. He checked his cell phone again. It was 3:33, much longer than the time he had spent in the room before. If what the note implied was correct, then he would be in the room for another nine minutes. With little else to do, Nick opened his backpack and extracted a cigarette, lit it, and began to puff. The room quickly filled with thick bands of smoke. The familiar taste and smell gave Nick cold comfort.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897775]

Nick tore a page out of his notebook and began to write, in sloppy ballpoint, using the floor as a table. "I was in this room for 15 minutes before. Now it is seeming like I will be here for 30 minutes total. What can I do to stop this? How can I help you?" He crumpled up the paper and tossed it against the wall. Staring at it and puffing on the Pall Mall, an idea occurred to him, and he grabbed it and uncrumpled it. He scrawled his e-mail address just below the note, feeling a little silly, but making the effort nonetheless.

Then, just as it had begun, it was over. The white walls faded, leaving Nick standing in the middle of campus under a canopy of fall trees. Nick realized he was covered in a cold sweat, and wiped his brow. As he walked back towards his dorrn room, people stared. I must look awful, he thought. People expected stoners to look a little odd, though, so maybe he wouldn't draw too much attention to himself. When he arrived back at his meager dorm room, he tossed his backpack onto the bed and called Sam. He knew precisely what he was going to do, and the thought gave him a sense of purpose and drive. “I need to borrow your car,” he said to Sam.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897781]

An hour later, Nick was off campus in the town, at a small hardware store he had often seen but never visited. He examined a selection of hammers. Most were too small for his purposes. He picked up the largest one, which was practically a sledgehammer, and turned to the aging attendant a few feet away.

“D'ya think I could put this one through drywall?” he asked.

“Sure,” the man said. “Doing some remodeling?”

“I think so,” he replied, and paid for the hammer. It cost him more than he had expected, but Nick didn't plan on cutting any corners with this. The hammer was important to his plan, and he needed the best, strongest hammer he could get. He declined a bag from the attendant and shoved the sledgehammer into his backpack along with his notebooks, weed, and other belongings. The backpack was almost too heavy to wear, but Nick knew he could handle it. After leaving the hardware store, he drove to the mall, and visited the outdoor outfitters. They sold warm clothes and, more importantly, rations. Nick bought two boxes of emergency ration bars, which were marketed as meal replacements, and several bottles of water. He shoved those into his backpack as well, and the thing was just light enough to continue carrying. Tired but still determined, Nick returned to his dorm room.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897783]

He couldn't sleep. He knew it was important to get a good night's rest in order to face whatever awaited him, but he just couldn't shut his brain off long enough to drift off. His mind buzzed with questions. What was the room? Where had it come from? What was it doing in Bundy Hall that day? Was entering it a catalyst for what happened afterwards? What of the other person who had been in the room? Who was he? The note suggested he was from California. Where was the room itself? Was it here, in Indiana, or was it in California? Someplace between the two? It was almost two in the morning when Nick remembered about the e-mail address he had scrawled on the note. It wasn't as if he was going to sleep anytime soon. Now was as good a time as any. He got up, opened his laptop, and checked his e-mail.
Amid the usual clatter about classes and offers for penis enlargement creams, there was a message without a subject. The address was [e-mail]. California! Nick clicked on it expectantly.

[Anonymous No.1897787]

>smoking acid

DARE, is that you? Don't try to imagine what a drug does... it will just look stupid to people who've already done it, the same way some sci-fi looks retarded to physicists.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897788]

"To whom it may concern,
My name is Jennifer Chandler. Two weeks ago, I found a door in the attic of my house that I had never seen before, and opened it. It led to the room. I have been visiting the room for seven days now. I begun by visiting it for fifteen minutes, but each visit grew longer, multiplying the previous time by two. I visit the room every day at 11:43 am. It does not matter where I am or what I am doing. I always find myself in the room. It is growing too late for me now. I will next be in the room for 256 hours, far too long to survive on the water I can carry into the room with me. I will soon starve to death in the room, and there is nothing I can do about it. You can't help me, and you probably can't help yourself. There is no way out. My only advice is to pray. I created the room. I am very sorry."

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897794]

Nick's stomach did flip-flops. The letter confirmed most of what he already suspected about the room, and matched his experiences quite well. The room manifested somewhere in the physical world, where people were lured to enter it, and then it trapped them. Why? I created the room. I am sorry. Created the room? How could Jennifer Chandler have done that? It was possible she simply blamed herself because it had first happened to her. How could it have begun? A flurry of crazy ideas fell through Nick's mind, ranging from alien abduction to evil wizards. None sounded very plausible. He felt a creeping dread when it occurred to him that he could die in the room, without ever having an explanation for its powers.
Nick pushed the feeling away. He didn't plan on dying in the room. He fondled his backpack, feeling the stiff hammer within, and the dozen or so emergency ration bars. Nick planned to survive, no matter what. Whoever Jennifer Chandler was, she clearly didn't have his resolve and determination. Nick knew he was strong. He had been through amphetamine withdrawal twice – how bad could going without food for a little while be? If it came to that, he would bring his emergency ration bars with him. Surely they could last him through long hours. What then? The room couldn't keep summoning him forever. Everything had an end, didn't it? All he had to do was survive till the end. It sounded almost like any number of the video games he played on a daily basis. Eventually, if you lasted long enough, you would win the game. Nick intended to win.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897798]

Nick allowed himself to sleep late the following day. He wanted to be as strong as possible for his next encounter with the room. He ate a big lunch, and left off smoking afterwards, not wanting his faculties to be dulled. He tried to sleep again after lunch, keeping his backpack on at all times, but found he couldn't, so he paced his dorm room nervously. At one moment, inspired, he tossed a pack of cards into his backpack. Sam called several times, but Nick let the calls go to this voicemail. He couldn't afford to get distracted now.

At 3:12 p.m., he entered the room once more. It was just as he remembered it. If everything he thought he knew was correct, he would be in the room for just one hour. That was plenty of time to do what he planned. With a grin on his face, Nick reached into his backpack. He felt around, amid all the emergency ration bars and bottled waters, and found the sledgehammer. He gripped it carefully, pulled it out, and stared at the unforgiving white wall.

Nick had never been an athlete, but he wasn't puny. He had enough upper-body strength to put a sledgehammer through drywall. He swallowed hard and took a swing.

For some reason, Nick could swear he heard the sound of the hammer hit before he actually saw it. The noise seemed to echo throughout the room, despite its diminutive size. Nick used his left hand to shield his face, fearing a chunk of drywall in his eyes, and when it was done, he blinked at a gaping hole in the wall. Light streamed through, and Nick eagerly knelt to see what was on the other side.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897803]

Nick found himself peering into a room much like the one he was in. The only difference was that, in this room, there was a man standing at the far wall, folded over like a hunchback. “Hey!” Nick shouted, and waved. He then froze.

When he moved his hand, the man in the other room moved his hand as well, waving in front of him. Nick paused and lowered his hand. The man in the other room lowered his. A sensation like pins and needles overtook him. Nick realized the other man was wearing his shirt, pants, and backpack. The other man was him. Nick lifted his arm again and waved it back and forth. The man did, as well. Nick was looking into the very room that he was in. How was that possible? Nick turned around. Through the corner of his eye, he saw himself turn.

Behind him there was a gaping hole in the wall, freshly punched through.

Nick screamed and flung the sledgehammer through the hole, and watched it fall into the room on the far side, landing a few feet from where he stood with a resounding thud.

Fuck.
Nick picked up the sledgehammer again and flung it at the wall. It crashed through and landed on the opposite side of the room, leaving another gaping hole. He picked it up again and began to swing, breaking down the drywall between the two holes. He watched himself from behind as he did it. The space got larger and larger until he was looking at a doorway sized hole in the two walls. Not knowing what else to do, he walked through it, and found himself standing on the other side of the room. He could see the hole through the hole, and it looked a bit like what one sees when two mirrors are put face to face. Anger and frustration rose in him. He picked up the sledgehammer again and kept making holes.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897807]

Soon, half the wall was in pieces on the floor, and the strange mirror-like effect was completely visible. Nick walked through the opening a few more times, laughing hysterically. Was there any hope to be had whatsoever? If he couldn't escape his prison, would he certainly die there?

And then, without any warning, he was back in his dorm room, still clutching the sledgehammer. Physically and emotionally exhausted, Nick crawled into bed. He felt as if the world were collapsing in on him, as if all of reality were becoming crushed until it was no bigger than the room. His stomach churned like the ocean in a storm. He felt something damp on his face and reached his hand up to feel tears spilling from his eyes. Nick hadn't cried in over ten years. He couldn't remember the last time – he had been a child, he knew that much. Nick wasn't a child anymore, but he couldn't stop the tears from flowing.

Around 3 a.m. he fell asleep. He sleepwalked through lunch the next day, and dragged himself to a movie being shown on campus with Sam. The other boy noticed his defeated posture and inquired about it several times, but Nick kept his mouth sealed. If he had to die in the room, he would rather die without people thinking he was going crazy. His friends would never believe him. None of them had any experience with the paranormal. Were his experiences paranormal? They didn't involve ghosts or magic, but they certainly weren't normal, so he supposed that qualified.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897813]

At 3:12 p.m., like clockwork, he found himself in the room again. The room was not as he had left it. The walls had reformed and there was no hint of the damage he had done previously. Nick approached it with the academic curiosity of the damned. He examined the area where he had taken the sledgehammer and noticed faint indentations in the wall, deeper than the fist marks but not terribly noticeable. He felt sort of proud at that moment, that his efforts had made some kind of lasting impact on the room. In the future, when someone else was drawn into the room, they, too, would notice his handiwork. Even if he was dead, which was in any case likely.
Nick laughed aloud, his chortles seeming to echo even in the small room. If someone had asked him why he was laughing, he would've had no answer for them. There was nothing inherently funny about his predicament. If anything, he might claim he was laughing at God, for being such an asshole. He laughed until tears ran from his eyes, and then he simply broke down and wept like he hadn't for many years. He thought of Sam and Jonathan and his other friends, who would never understand what was happening to him. Would they somehow know what had happened if he died in the room? Or would he simply be another missing person?

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897818]

He pulled out a notebook and, through a flurry of tears, began to write. He wrote about who he was, and what his life had meant to him up until this point. Who was he? There was so little to write. He was a college student at a prestigous liberal arts school. He hadn't yet declared a major. Most of his life was devoted to drugs. All of his friends were dealers or users – there was so little else in his life. Were they even really his friends, or just acquaintances of convenience? It was hard to say. There was certainly no one in his life that Nick felt he truly trusted, no one to tell about the room. It wasn't much of a life, Nick realized, but it was still his to document. Nick wrote about his love affair with drugs and his hopes for the future, a future that might not come to pass. The world was likely going to remember him as just some stupid pothead, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He began to write about the room, putting down everything he knew and suspected. He wrote about Jennifer Chandler and her message, and about how he intended to survive the room. With his tears finally dissapating, he remembered his resolve. He was going to survive the room. He was going to win the game. He listed his supplies and all the things that gave him hope. He was strong. He could make it where others had failed. He had to keep reminding himself of that, or he would fall into madness and be lost for sure.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897820]

He returned to the real world with much more confidence than he had expected of himself. He was going to make it, and nothing else mattered. He gave up on keeping up with his studies, letting papers go unwritten and books go unread. The next few days were a blur. He was never without his backpack, which contained the emergency ration bars and bottled water. The pack was getting pretty full, and Sam commented on it. “What's in there? Are you smuggling rocks or something?”

Nick just shrugged, and continued to sleepwalk through the day, his life interrupted regularly by increasingly long visits to the room. Each time he found himself in the room he wrote more of what he was coming to think of as his memoir. Bits and pieces of his past, thoughts on his current predicament; in general he tried his hardest to put the bulk of his identity on paper. When his pen ran out, he played solitaire with the deck of cards he had thought to bring.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897825]

His parents called repeatedly, as did Sam, but he let all their calls go to voicemail. He had no desire to see anyone. He remained determined to survive. This resolve carried him when he was trapped in the room for sixteen hours, and finally, for thirty-two hours. The blank walls and mahogany floor continued to mock him, but he staved off boredom with his pack of cards and kept hope alive by writing. He broke into his emergency rations and drank from the water bottles, knowing that they would have to be replaced as soon as possible.

When his internment in the room ended after thirty-two hours, he felt the need to be proactive. It was necessary for him to learn as much as possible. He popped an Adderall, and sat down at his computer. He wasn't quite sure what to look for, but it suddenly occurred to him that he might benefit from finding out more about Jennifer Chandler, so he googled her name. The first few results were from Berkeley, where she apparently taught (or had taught) creative writing. There were links to books she had written, which were, ironically, mostly horror. A few pages back, he found a news report. Local Author Found Dead at Home. Nick continued reading

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897828]

This better not end with bel air.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897850]

"Popular local author and Berkeley professor Jennifer Chandler was found dead in her home last night. Police initially suspected foul play, but are tentatively declaring the death accidental. The coroner has ruled the cause of death to be starvation, possibly due to anorexia nervosa. An investigation is ongoing at this time, and those with information are encouraged to call our tipline. Dr. Chandler was a popular author of science fiction and horror, including her most recent work, a collection of short stories entitled The Room."

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897855]

So, she had died in the room, but had been found at home. Clearly the room had returned her to the real world after her death. Is that how it would be with Nick? Would his friends find him, starved to death, in his dorm room? They would also find the notes he had been making, and would hopefully be able to piece together what had happened to him from those. It gave him a sort of cold comfort to know that his friends could know what had happened to him. He would die alone, but at the same time, his friends would know, and come to understand what he had been through.

Nick skimmed the news report again, and noticed the final line. ...a collection of short stories entitled The Room. Jennifer Chandler had written something called The Room. There was no way that was a coincidence. Had she written it while trapped in the room? He recalled her e-mail. I created the room.Did she mean that she had written about it before experiencing it? How was that possible? Nick flipped over to Amazon.com and searched for Jennifer Chandler. He was astounded at the number of books published. Chandler had been writing for a long time. There, at the bottom of the first page, was The Room: A Collection of Horrors. He went to the page and was relieved to see a Kindle edition available. He bought it, and shuffled around under the bed in his dorm room until he extracted the little device with its black and white screen and tiny buttons. Nick tossed it in the backpack to read the next time he was in the room.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897859]

Nick spent the next day researching starvation. Apparently, people deprived of food and water don't really starve to death. Starving takes a long time. Rather, they died from lack of water, which is much more important than food. You could live almost a month without food, but could only live a few days without water. Curious, he began to look for starvation deaths in the United States, recently. Were he and Jennifer Chandler the only victims of the room? It was hard to say. He came across a few news bits that pegged a cause of death as starvation but gave no other explanation. Some of them had to be anorexics, but maybe not all of them. A few were upstanding citizens, doctors and lawyers. They could have been victims of the room, Nick thought.

The next day, Nick settled in for sixty-four hours in the room. He had his Kindle and his playing cards, and enough food and water to last. He took it upon himself to read Jennifer Chandler's short stories. The book was filled with them, and they were mostly ghost stories. The story titled The Room, however, after which the collection had been named, was something decidedly different. Nick blanched as he read.

It told the story of a college student named Ricky who entered a strange room at the back of his dorm. The room was plain and empty, with mahogany floors and white walls. Ricky felt odd in the room, so he left. Later that day, he found himself summoned into the room again, for fifteen minutes, and then again the next day for thirty minutes. This pattern continues. The story ended abruptly after Ricky's one hundred and twenty-eight hour confinement, with the main character half-mad from dehydration and hunger. Nick sighed. It would have been helpful to know what happened to Ricky, especially if, by writing the story, Jennifer Chandler had created the room as she suspected.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897861]

Upon leaving the room after sixty-four hours, Nick drove into town and bought even more bottles of water. Water, not food, was the important thing, he realized. He shoved the rations into his already bulging backpack and returned to campus.

The next morning, Nick awoke to a pounding on his door at 11 a.m. Nick threw on some clothes and answered the door, surprised to see Sam standing there. He hadn't spent time with Sam in days. The two had no plans together, and Nick really just wanted to be left alone, but Sam was having none of that.

“What's going on with you, dude?” he asked, “We haven't done anything in days.”

“I've been busy,” Nick grunted noncommitally. He was ready to shut the door when Sam pushed his way into the dorm room.

He glanced at Nick's backpack. “What's in this?” he asked, and pulled it off Nick's shoulders. Nick spun around and grabbed for it, but Sam was already on the other side of the room, pawing through its contents.

“You preparing for the end of the world?” asked Sam, holding up a bottled water and an emergency ration bar.

“Leave my stuff alone,” Nick groaned. Sam tossed the backpack on the bed, and turned to the door.

“I'm going to go smoke up behind the chapel.” Sam said. “Wanna come with? I'll smoke you out.”

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897865]

Nick sighed. He couldn't afford to get distracted right now. Still, it had been a long time since he had partaken of any pot, and his body hummed with anticipation. One smoke wouldn't hurt anything, he thought, and nodded. He checked his watch. He wasn't due in the room for another two hours, and a smoke before then would certainly lessen the boredom of being trapped. He reached into his bag and extracted his clay pipe, and shoved it into his pocket.

Nick was tight-lipped on their walk to the chapel. He had nothing to say except to talk about the room that consumed his mind, and he simply couldn't talk about that. Sam prattled on about politics or science fiction or something.

“-and that's why Julian Assange is a hero, and-” Sam said, then paused. “Hey Nick, you listening?”

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897870]

Nick shrugged, and dropped to sit beneath the thick canopy of trees where they usually smoked. The foliage was dense, and people rarely came back there, making it an ideal place for illicit activities. Nick had good memories of the place, and felt calm and peaceful just being there. When they started to smoking, the feeling increased. The world grew light and bearable, and even Nick's dark secret didn't detract from his mood. Sam pulled out his iPod and started playing some music, with the two of them sharing the earbuds. It felt good to be around people again. Nick had craved this kind of experience all throughout his self-imposed room-inspired exile from reality. Thinking out it, maybe his life wasn't quite as bad as it had come across in his writing. He had friends, and, even if they were all druggies, they meant something to him, and he was pretty sure he meant something to them. No one had made Sam come and find him. It was a gesture of friendship. The day wore on, and they laughed together at Sam's stupid jokes, listened to great music, and smoked until their hands were sticky with soot and the bowl of the pipe was empty.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897872]

Then it happened, just as it had always happened. Nick blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he was in the room. He no longer felt shock when it happened – it had become second nature for him. A moment later, he felt behind him and began to panic. His backpack! His backpack, with all his supplies, was still back in the dorm room. He was completely without water or food.

Fuck

He could have made it. He knew it. With the supplies he had gathered, one-hundred and twenty eight hours in the room would've been nothing but a minor inconvenience. Without the supplies, he was dead. He was going to die. Die, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nick kicked the wall, leaving a sizable dent. He fell to his knees and began to weep. Crying wouldn't help anything. If anything, it would just make him dehydrate faster, but he couldn't stop.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897873]

Time passed, and the tears faded, only to well up again with avengence when he thought about his ultimate fate. He thought about Sam. Sam was going to find him, slumped over dead next to him, once his body returned to the real world. His notebook was in his dorm room, so there was at least a chance of someone finding it and learning what had really happened to him. He took comfort in that, if nothing else.

The hours were a long haze. Nick was still pretty buzzed from the weed, and that made awaiting death somewhat more bearable. Nick kicked the walls repeatedly, then threw himself against them pounding. He knew it wouldn't have any effect, but he didn't know what else to do. He discovered deep anger within him, anger at God or the universe or whatever accident of nature had lead to him being trapped here. He cursed Jennifer Chandler for writing that short story and the universe for listening to her. His tongue began to feel scratchy and dry. Water. if only he had water.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897881]

Nick's limbs began to feel heavy and his eyelids drooped. He sprawled out on the floor of the room with his head resting against the wall, and fell asleep. In his dreams, he wasn't trapped by an impossible phenomenon awaiting death. He was just a college student stoner, making his way in the world. He dreamt of Sam's laughter, of Jonathan's snide remarks, his professors and his classrooms, the dining hall and the quad. He saw trees and grass for the last time, and smiled in his sleep. The sky was big and blue, and around him all was green, the campus spread out like a stunning green gemstone. The wind tousled his hair and he breathed deeply.

Hours later, Nick was awoken by a massive headache. His parched throat ached, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His lips were dry and beginning to crack painfully. He felt like crying, but no tears materialized. A soft ringing sound filled his ears, like a distant old-fashioned telephone. Nick stood up and felt his knees buckle. He felt faint. A moment later he regained his bearings and wandered towards the source of the sound. He pressed his ear to the wall, but the ringing wasn't any louder. Was he hallucinating? He couldn't be sure. Given what had already happened to him, anything seemed possible. He half-heartedly pounded on the wall.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897885]

“Help!” he croaked, but it hurt too much to scream. He punched the wall so hard that his knuckles came back bruised purple. There was no point in fighting anymore, but he couldn't stop himself. He yelled hoarsely and pounded on the walls with both fists.The ringing grew louder and Nick was positive it was simply inside his head. His tongue felt huge, as if it had swollen to twice its size.
Hours passed. He felt a welcome trickle of liquid on his lips and touched them. He was bleeding from where his lips had cracked. He sucked on the wound with abandon. His vision was burry and his heart raced. He could feel his pulse, hear it in his head, a continual protesting series of thuds. His limbs felt tingly as if they were asleep. He watched the lightbulb swing overhead, too weak to stand. His whole body felt like it was on fire.

He could hear the blood rushing in his head. Blood! He seized upon an idea immediately. Gingerly, he lifted his arm and brought his index finger to his lips. He bit down, hard, and the smell of iron assaulted him as his mouth filled with the salty taste of blood. He sucked on the finger until it stopped bleeding. He passed out.

When he awoke, he heard voices. It sounded like Sam. “Sam?” he called weakly, unable to even lift a finger.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897890]

“You're dehydrated. You don't have much longer left,” Sam replied. Nick opened his eyes with some effort and, through a veil of blur saw his friend. “There's nothing I can do, not in here, anyways...”

Nick's eyes closed once more, and he welcomed oblivion at last.

[Leif !ICiTK8sqeU No.1897896]

That was my cousin's story. What does /lit/ think? I will pass the criticisms on to him.