The Factory

I awoke in the white room, eyes revolting against the harsh light. Flashes of memory hit me, tumbling and sharp like glass in a kaleidoscope.

Writhing arms and legs, draped in the strangest clothes they could’ve found, or none at all. Rapid-fire speech forming a chorus with thumping not-quite-rock music, a mishmash of genres I couldn’t place. Mirrors. Chrome. Silver, glinting off of every surface. Monochrome occasionally broken up by screaming colour. A dog. Or maybe a horse.

The sights were hard to make sense of, fuzzy apparitions that wriggled out of my grasp as soon as I began to grab hold of them, lost in the swell from whence they came. The scent I was much clearer on. Over everything hung a fog. The sheen of a hundred sweaty bodies mixed and mingled with paint fumes, cigarette smoke, and the sour aftermath of something more sinister. A chemical genesis constantly occurring, lending another formless character to the crowd. It was a cacophony of sensation that could only exist in that room. Or maybe the room wouldn’t exist without it.

All the people, drunk on that air, swimming in it day after day. Drowning. My chest tightened at the thought, bleary eyes coming into focus. My new surroundings, white as bleached-bone and stark as it too, were in such contrast that it burnt.