One, Two, Three

Another morning, another mark scratched into the wall.

She didn't know why she still felt this compulsion every day, finding anything with an edge just to make a litany of lines behind the bedpost. So many lines, she'd forgotten the counting words to know how many lines were really there. It had been so long since she'd seen anything other than sterile white walls and a tray of food that appeared through a rusted metal slot three times a day and every waking bought more blank spaces in place of memories from before the white room.

Today seemed no different. The naked fluorescent light buzzed to life at 7.30am, she still remembered this, useless though it was. It did provide a scant point of reference in her day though, proof she'd made it through the night to the fake dawn. Marks now safely hidden, she lay back on her bed to start the next morning ritual, counting the ceiling tiles to see how high she could go, scraping the words from the foggy depths as her grating voice coated the spoken words in the rust of disuse, one, two, three. She faltered in the low forties, cadence broken by the metallic scrape that heralded the arrival of breakfast.

As usual, it was a dim affair. Two dry, plain wheat crackers in plastic film; a stick of unrecognisable dried meat in a foil pack, some dried fruit chips of unknown age, and two large white pills in a small pack labelled vitamins. Every meal, every day. Prepared by unseen hands, delivered without fail. A routine as much as any other in this place, precise as clockwork. She ate precisely and neatly, every crumb a delicacy in a place where food was strictly rationed. Water was one of the few resources the room offered, though it's taste was stale yet sterile, filtered of any defining flavour. She drank slowly with measured sips, another ritual, counting twenty sips until the glass was empty. The same as yesterday and the day before that.

Turning to her left, ten steps bought her to the desk. Plain, white, like everything else. Four black-covered books lay on the desk. Their well-thumbed pages stuck out in the room of clean lines like a tragedy, and she still felt the guilt of ruining those once-crisp pages, revelling in the texture of each page. She'd forgotten most of the words but the feel of them still remained as she glided her fingers across the page in a literary dance. Stories she thought, from before. Before what though? All she knew was the room, so why did she keep feeling like there was something more? Something swimming in the depths of her mind that could unlock this dreary existence but every time it slipped elusively from her grasp.

She wandered her thoughts for some time, idly tracing the lines on the wall with her eyes, unconsciously making patterns as she tried to draw her fragmented thoughts together. Numbers, why did they feel so important? One, two, three...three...three meals...same meals...so much sameness...same walls...same floor...same solid door...same slot in the far wall. Her musings were abruptly interrupted by a low growl. A twist in the pit of her stomach caused her to wince as the sound echoed through the room.

Hunger. This was new. Distracted, she savoured the feeling as much as it felt alien. Not-same. Exciting? No that wasn't the word...it began with a P. Primal, that was it. Some instinct stirring within her that began to scratch at the sides of the mental cage she battered against every day. She could feel the desperation of it's claws scraping against the foggy glass walls that kept her from remembering. She looked expectantly at the slot, assuming she'd somehow missed the arrival of a meal, but the flap was silent. Unease stirred within her. Another new emotion, vital. It drove her to her feet, no longer a passive pattern finder, bidden to approach the slot.

No food. Why? Panic prompted her to lift the flap for the first time to see what lay beyond. White. More of the same white walls and floor, with a small shelf underneath the slot where the food had been pushed through. It looked like a corridor, across the way she could see what looked like a strange white box room, with a strange odd coloured window giving a hazy suggestion of something within. Desperation started to rise as her anxiety began to crash into the wall of her mind, spiderweb fractures slowly making their way across the surface, survival still desperately clawing in from the other side.

'Hel', she croaked, her voice breaking on the second syllable. It had been so long since she had spoken aloud anything other than her beloved numbers. Longer still since she'd raised her voice above a whisper. She crossed to the water fountain, this time gulping down the contents in an attempt to lubricate her dusty vocal cords. She ran back to the slot, lifted it once more and tried again.

'Hello'.

The word echoed down the corridor and the only reply was her own muted voice echoed back at her. She tried for hours, louder and louder, but still, only the silence embraced her words. The hunger gnawed at her now, her mind becoming sharper and clearer than it had in days. Images had started to fill her thoughts, flashes of memories. Walking down a sunny street where the shadows of leaves left a delicate filigree along the concrete pavement. Standing before a board filled with numbers and knowing they had some great significance. A white lab coat embroidered with a name she couldn't quite make out. Each image punctuated with one phrase.

Get Out.

Another glass of water seemed to steady her nerves and she returned once more to the slot and took a measured look. Her gaze was drawn back to that strange window again. She considered it's placement, the arrangement of the strange white box standing proud from the wall. Wooden synapses slowly fired and with dawning horror she noticed an overlooked detail, a small white shelf with a grey opening above it. An opening exactly the same as the one she was peering through.

Sickened with this new knowledge, she slowly slid down the wall becoming a boneless heap. She was in the same box. Why? What kind of person would do this? Did she do this? Was this some kind of dystopian future and like Sleeping Beauty of old, she had awoken to a new world? Was this actually safety and not the imprisonment it seemed to be? Her mind started to fragment again, hours of panic and fatigue taking their toll. She fell back to her numbers. One, Two, Three. Over and over, until her body stopped rocking and the worst of the desperate shakes had worn off. How long had she been crumpled here? Time had no meaning without the imitation of routine provided by her fake former life. The light still cast it's spotlight glare above like a vengeful sun, though if it had darkened in the time she'd been lost within, no one was there to witness it's withdrawal.

Muscles cramped from her awkward position she rose once more, this time determined to see her situation as a math problem to be solved step by step. The first step was to escape. There were no obvious ways to leave. The door was solid with no raised surfaces to offer purchase and no gaps to allow leverage. Running her fingers over the walls revealed smooth cool concrete. She knew...something...there was a way out here if she could just think. Looking back through the slot, the window drew her eye again. That window, that strange window. That strange window that wasn't a window at all! Rushing back to the walls, this time she started hitting them, listening intently for any small change in the sound of her fist against the surface. There! There it was! Clever, painting the glass like that. She glanced frantically around the room, looking for any object that might carry some weight, eyes falling upon the chair neatly tucked into the desk.

With sudden purpose she strode across the room, snatched the chair into the air and spinning with as much force as she could gather, she smashed the chair full force into the falsified wall. A sharp crack appeared in what once seemed solid concrete and with a scream of triumph, she threw the chair once more into the glass, watching with glee as it erupted through the two-way mirror like a glorious firework with a trail of glittering shards in it's wake. She'd never seen anything so beautiful or imagined that breaking glass was the sound of freedom. No time to admire her handiwork though, escape now drumming in her veins like a pulse.

She dragged the desk over the gaping hole in the wall and climbed on top, careful to avoid the jagged glass teeth still left in the frame. She awkwardly dropped to the floor, huddling low and close, suddenly worried the noise of her escape had been overheard but the silence still hung in the air, broken only by her harsh breaths. After a few minutes of rest, she was ready to move. Now she was out of the white room, she could see it was one of four, built into a bigger room, with a central office space allowing observation of all four rooms. Figuring the best source of information would be there, she crossed to the middle of the warehouse and considered the cheap metal desk, a replica of the one in her own room. It was empty except for a discarded pen and a few granules of white powder, barely noticeable against the surface. To the right of the desk stood a battered filing cabinet, a veritable Pandora's Box, and ignoring a pang of misgiving she hauled the first drawer open.

Files, lots of files. Each within a plain brown case, each labelled with an alias. She opened the first, a woman she didn't recognise, a couple of small tapes designed for voice recordings, some charts. She searched a few more and all contained the same information. The next drawer contained more of the same. The third drawer contained two files, this time bound in green. The first revealed another woman, some more tapes and a collection of notes. She opened the next file and stared into a pair of eyes she had seen every day of her life. Her hand shaking, she reached up to touch her thick brown curls as she drank in her own picture. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen her own face. Printed in bold text underneath 'Aurora Salvatore - Dean of Mathematics, King's College'. Pain gripped her head like a vice as these words settled into her subconscious, finally breaking open the last of the fog clouding her memories.

She'd been walking home late one night through London, everyone always said be careful, there had been a huge campaign about women being able to walk safely at night. Aurora had had her rape alarm in her pocket and stuck to well-lit areas. She hadn't expected the danger to be lurking in her own home, the dark figure who'd clamped a sour-smelling rag over her face and then she'd woken up here. Flicking through the notes certain phrases caught her notice.

Trials in social isolation.

Subject 42 has been administered an ongoing cocktail of benzodiazepines and low dose ketamine to induce a calm and amnesic state.

Subject 42 has shown signs of cognitive degeneration the longer the isolation continues. A counter trial to see if she could regain lost skills may be of interest to determine if the medication is responsible for this or if this is a genuine result of isolation. (Use placebo on Subject 40 as control?)

Kidnapped. Drugged. Experimented on. This was no attempt at salvation. Aurora backed away from the filing cabinet and started hunting for the exit, pausing as she passed each white room to check if anyone else had been trapped like a little white mouse in a little white box. Two rooms were empty. The last contained the body of a red-headed woman, curled into a fetal position on the floor. Subject 40. Blood bloomed around her like a bed of roses, she had pulled out a metal plate from the water fountain and made her own kind of escape from this living hell. Had she known or did they just leave her to be driven crazy by her own mind?

Aurora shook herself like a dog, needing to leave the feel of the place behind her. She walked to the east wall, drawn to a portal rimmed dimly with light. Pulling it open, the light speared into her retinas, forcing her to the floor as her eyes swam with tears and her lungs gulped huge breaths of fresh air tinged with the taste of salt. As her focus returned, she took in the vista of her new world. A small empty dock lay before her and looking behind, she could see the warehouse was situated on a small island no bigger than half a mile wide. Willow trees provided a screen for most of the island, an innocent green veil concealing the horrors within. A dim grey sky that had begun to darken with the warning of a coming storm.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she picked her way down to the shore. She revelled in the feel of the grass tickling her soles, relished every sharp point of every stone that pierced her with gratitude of being alive. The temperature was already starting to drop and a silvery fog was rising from mirror-like waters, offering a shroud to make one final bid for freedom. The island offered no hiding places and the far shore didn't seem too distant. The moment of the final choice had come. Stay and wait or swim one final stretch to true freedom. No choice really.

Taking a deep breath, she strode into the water, cold silken fingers caressing her skin as she struck out for the other shore. At first, the activity warmed her and she counted her strokes in groups of three, always three. One, two, three, breath. One, two, three, breath. Time slowed as she fell once more into the same safe ritual. One, two, three, one, two, three. Not noticing her strokes beginning to falter as her muscles could no longer sustain the effort to keep her afloat. Not feeling her mind slow as the cold gripped her bones and pulled her heavy, tired body gracefully under the water. No marker to show her passing bar the slow ripples moving underneath the fog-like spirits of the lake.

One, Two, Three.