The cabin

By: Angel Perdomo

The character John's inner warped white room.

The following is a fictional piece.

He was patient #23069. He was admitted to The Cabin Mental Health Institute under the name John Doe—the feeling of anonymity on this stage of the process made him feel less anxious about the whole ordeal, not that his name being known to the organisation would have made any difference. 

Everyone knew where “John” was—everyone that mattered to him, that is. He was ashamed. “I don’t care what they think,” he thought. He was struggling to breathe. The pressure on his chest reminded him of the sensation of being deep underwater. He didn't expect the sudden pain in his abdomen. Stab, and twist. He wanted to run as far away as possible from everything. He remained there with a straight face in front of the receptionist. Or so he thought. 

“Is everything okay, Mr. Doe?” The receptionist asked.

“Pardon?” John said, snapping out of his trance. “Sorry. You were saying?” 

“Are you okay?” She repeated. “You look a bit pale”

“I’m fine,” he said with an awkward smile. “What were you asking me before?”

“Do you have any previous knowledge of how our treatment works?” The receptionist asked in that tone of voice that lets you know she has been asking the same series of questions all day.   

“No, I don’t.” He said. “I thought you guys had the wrong person when you called me. I think I am quite healthy.”

“Cases of mistaken identity are quite rare. I’ve never seen such a thing during my time here,” she said. After writing something down on John’s form, the receptionist looked up to meet John’s eyes.  “Why did you come if you think you are healthy? 

John was taken aback by her question. Why was he here? Admitting to himself that there was a problem was something beyond his current powers. He realized that by being there, he was admitting that there was something to be fixed that he could not fix himself. That idea frustrated him. Deep down he hoped that when he showed up at The Cabin and they were going to tell him to go back home. That it was a mistake. John raised his hands in defeat and said “Touché, you got me there.”     

The receptionist scribbled something else down. “Let me walk you to the room where the procedure will be taking place,” she said with a smile, pointing towards a long hall. “You'll be out in no time.” 

“Procedure!?”  He exclaimed in a shrill tone, immediately feeling his face getting hot at the sound of his voice. In an attempt to get his composure back he said again in a calmer and deeper intonation, “What procedure?” 

“Everything will be okay, it's quite simple really,” she said, trying to comfort him, noticing his uneasiness. “The whole process doesn’t last more than five minutes for most people. We get a lot of women who go through this process voluntarily, you should be fine, I’ve gone through it myself before.”

“Okay,” he said. Neither of these comments made him feel any less anxious. A lot can be done to you in five minutes, and for him most women were a lot braver than men. To him, women’s bravery bordered insanity. He thought there was a joke in there to be made. He thought it was wiser to keep it to himself. The feminist in him won, he thought. “What exactly is this procedure,anyways?”

“The doctor will let you know everything you need to know,” she replied whilst opening a door, inviting him to go inside with her hand. “She’ll be here soon.”

***

It was dark when John woke up. He could feel dirt under his body, and his hands grabbed at what felt like earth, leaves, and pine needles. The air was fresh and humid. It smelled woody and green and weirdly like home, although John had always lived in the city. John felt at peace, which ironically made him anxious. He noticed the lack of sound, not just from the dark pine forest but also from himself. He panicked, screaming silence. He tried to run but  could not tell if he was moving at all. And then he was sinking. He suddenly felt like he was fully underwater.When John opened his eyes, he found himself in vast, white space, not dissimilar from the white hall you find in hospitals. His back was against an impossibly tall wall. Looking to the sides, he saw two more walls in the distance. There was no end or horizon ahead. He got up to explore and walked along the wall until he got to one of the side walls. He noticed that the white tiles of the floor were of uneven sizes. This was the case for both walls, meaning that neither was straight. It irritated him. Something about the perfectly empty, white space being warped in such a way disturbed John. John decided to walk straight ahead. There was not much else to do anyways. He thought of himself as a very practical man, there was no need to panic just yet. “Nothing dangerous seems to be around,” he thought. “No need to panic, nothing is really scary except in books.” he whispered. This was a little mantra he said to himself when scared. He walked, and walked. With only the company of his thoughts he thought of everything he had done so far with his life. Nearly 30 years old he reflected on how little had accomplished, and how little he had lived. “Nah, nah, nah,” He said to himself. “Gotta keep my morale up, you have to be practical about these things.” He then patted himself on the back for always being so pragmatic. He thought of how even if he did not have much in terms of accomplishment, he could always be proud of being his most authentic self. He did not have many friends, but he was there when the few needed him. He was not a good person—there was too much nuance to that question—but he was definitely not evil. 

He could not tell if he had been walking for hours or days. He did not feel tired, he wasn’t hungry. He just felt disoriented. Now far from any of the walls, he could not tell where he was going. Everything looked symmetrical—he felt lost, terrified. His heart began to pound in his ears, his ears began to boil, his eyes began to bubble, he was gasping for air. And then he saw him, or her, or them.   

At first, what he thought he saw was a child, who quickly melted into fleshy goo. It bounced and wriggled with unnatural flexibility, rapidly shifting through different faces and body shapes. It stopped moving, its shape settled. One step at a time he was making his way towards it, his eyes scouting for any signs of danger. The creature turned out to be a woman.John’s first instinct was to approach her and ask her if she was okay. At the same time he remembered how it was a couple seconds ago an amorphous blob of flesh in a strange dimension. It looking like a woman should not make it any less dangerous. Against his better judgement, he still felt within the instinctive need of helping her. “You’ll be alright,” she said with a calm, clinical tone. “I don’t bite.”

John was startled. He tried to speak but choked on his words. She chuckled and asked with a cheeky smile: “Are you okay?”

“Yes, sorry,” John said, a little embarrassed, a little annoyed at the tone of her question. “Are you okay?

“Is that really the question you wanna ask?” She replied. (From John's point of view, her face was really asking, “Are you dumb?”).

“Where are we?” he said, trying to not let his annoyance show. “Is that a better question? Miss…?”

“We are under the forest, and I am Jane, Jane Doe,” she said confidently. “Pleasure to meet you,‘John’.”

John almost squared up to fight, hearing her say his “name” made his blood run cold. He did not know how to face her. Yes, he was scared, but he also felt very frustrated. He did not know how to behave in front of her. Not knowing his role in the interaction was something new to him. He relaxed his stance and asked: “Who are you?”

Jane’s eyes drilled into a place within John which he himself could not quite locate:“I’m ME.”

John was shaken by her words, and he was shaken about how much they shook him. He could not name that emotion it made him feel. He knew his body felt numb, and that his mind had that awful feeling you get when you have a word on the tip of your tongue but you can’t quite get it out.

The realisation hit him, but before he could say something or elaborate in his thoughts,the white tiles of the floor melted beneath him. He sank. He saw his warped white room cramble, the deeper he sank the darker it got, and he drifted into his thoughts. 

John thought about his first question to Jane. “How are you?” Why did he ask that? It was an odd question to ask given the circumstances. The truth was that it was not out of kindness. It just seemed like the thing to do. The script you follow when in that situation. He did not think himself a good person or a bad person. If anything he saw himself as a bit twisted—slightly warped, like the crumbled white room. When he reflected upon his life, he always did the same. He followed the script, moulded to the role. He remembered Jane, and how she looked into him, and what that meant to him. For the first time, or at least the first time he was able to tell, that there was no script to be followed. In her eyes there was nothing he was supposed to be. 

It was disorienting. It showed him he did not know who he was, or where he was supposed to go. For now, he knew he needed to go deeper before going back up. 

***“Welcome back,” said Dr. Angelou while removing the interface from John’s head. “Took you a bit longer than I thought.”

John was silent, still in a daze. He looked at her with a puzzled look.“I’m Dr. Angelou, Do you know where you are?”

“The Cabin,” John said, still piecing all his memories together. “How do you feel?

“Like I need to go for a walk and think about myself.”“Good, good. Do you need some help getting up?

“Yes, please.”

John exited the Doctor’s office eight minutes after entering. He went into the world with a lot to ponder about and a direction to go.