The same ethereal rushing sound fills my ears and I find myself drinking cold air and standing far off the ground. The tree I’m in is old and it groans under our collective weight as branches shake and we climb closer to the heavens.
“What time is it?”
“Quarter to seven,” an unfamiliar voice says from my mouth, “the sun’ll be rising properly soon.”
“Beautiful.”
I leap across a gap and land shakily on another branch. There’s the small nagging feeling that I could die here, but that nag is quietened by a soft reassuring voice that dying here, right now, wouldn’t be so bad. My shoes slipped on the bark and I stared at the deepening blue sky and coughed on my cigarette. I leaned back on a branch and it snapped and I felt the freeing feeling of rushing to the earth.
My body hit a branch and I heard the crunch of bone and searing pain shot up my elbow, but before me the scenery changed and I was back in my little white room, eyes alight with wonder and a fresh need to escape this place and return to that tree, no matter how dead my host may have been.
I escaped! If only momentarily.
I was standing at the walls and pushing as hard as I could, and I saw the strangest glimpse of red between the folds. I tried to see more, but before I knew it there was this huge gust of air and I was sucked in. And, thus, I found myself in China.
It was strange. There were symbols and letters that I couldn’t even begin to recognise, and a huge black and white picture of someone in a military uniform. I wandered around and stumbled across another man, this one was dark skinned and was wearing long flowing robes, but genetalia had been scribbled over his face in black biro with “lol” framing them. I decided that my little white room was much better than this place so I tried to leave.
It took me three days. I couldn’t find any walls, but the place seemed so small. And the images! I turned a corner of information and there was a freeze-frame of one of the orange-robed men being cracked in the face by the butt of a rifle, painted tears decorating his twisted face. There was a short clip on repeat showing a man throwing a petrol bomb at a granite house. And lastly there were cameras being thrown to the ground and stamped on by military boots. The thing is, these images were only up for five, six minutes at the most. After that they were replaced by a big black square and I knew they were gone. Deleted.
I have no shame to tell you that I was terrified at this point. What if they found me, an unknown being, wandering round their site? My blood ran cold at the thought of being deleted. I needed to get back to where I was as quickly as possible. So I ran. I ran as fast as I could, tripping over piles of discarded black squares as I searched wildly for a way out. Every time I saw a news broadcast or a conversation going out of this place it severed before I could reach it. It was only when I found a number being dialled that I realised my escape, and I leapt into it.
The rest is hazy. I remember a small space filled with garbled sounds and a useless amount of low resolution pictures, but that’s it. I must’ve passed out or something, because I was back here before I knew it.
I haven’t been near the walls since. I don’t want to find them. I like this little white room.
I know I keep grumbling, but I really want to go home. There’s nothing for me here apart from a dingy white room with options of font style. And tags.
None of this really puts across any challenge or fun. Occasionally those random excursions provide some form of entertainment, but I haven’t had one for days now and I’m bored.
Though, I think I may have made a breakthrough. If I push really really hard against the walls of this place (if I can find the walls) I can catch a glimpse of other things beyond this room. I swear I saw some colours the other day. I just need to work at it I think. Maybe I’ll find a way to break free. Hopefully.
They’re happening more and more lately. I feel a lurching feeling in my stomach – like someone has tied a string round my intestines and decided to yank it – and suddenly I am not here. I am somewhere else in someone else’s body. It’s unsettling, for I keep thinking that this is it, this is my chance for freedom, and as soon as I become comfortable in my assumed role, I am yanked back out again.
It’s upsetting.
I had the strangest sensation today. It was a lurching feeling in my stomach, like I was on a roller coaster. I found myself sitting at a table in a low key restaurant, chewing on mushy peas and conversing with a bespectacled colleague.
“There are tons of magpies where I live. Like, a lot of them.”
“Is that a euphemism for thieves or something?”
“No.” He said. “Magpies.”
I felt a fool.
I’m still here. It’s been a whole day and I can’t seem to find my way out of this place. I don’t think I can stand a week here. There are themes and fonts and god knows what else I need to contend with. Not to mention the hooks.
Oh, the hooks! Every blog has them these days. They have to have something to make their blog unique and enjoyable to read, whether it be letters, third person, humour, politics – they all have one! Maybe if I leave this place without a hook then no one can read it and I can escape.
