Short Fiction 2

My second piece of short fiction, a little late but here nonetheless. Not like anyone cares but me heh. Again, I started with a single line and just let it roll from there to stop wherever it wanted to :)

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The room had a view, but it really wasn't much of one by his standards. Just the stale wall of some building maybe five hundred feet across an equally stale and uninteresting street far below. There were no windows in the wall. Just bricks, and even those were hard to discern, they were chipped so badly from age and whether. The streets didn't fare much better either; shattered concrete and the occasional floating newspaper that came barreling down the avenue as if it were late for some very important date.

Great, he thought. Now we're getting poetical. 

He sniffed at the air and recognized the vague scent of oil and gas and pollution that he hadn't known he knew in the first place, let alone remembered. It was an odd contrast to the flat white and cleanliness of his new surroundings. A white table draped with a white cloth and encircled by three white chairs, overlooked by white walls on four sides (all the same size; he had checked), and upholding a strangely shining white telephone. He watched the telephone for a long few minutes, as if waiting patiently for it to ring and his "people" to call him up and tell him to come down for some supper. 

Maybe the food is white too. Bastards just keep it all to themselves, whatever it is...

Maybe he was being just a little selfish, he admitted dryly to himself. I mean, he did have a view of something, even if it wasn't much of a something, and there was a place to sit unlike some of the other rooms he had previously visited. Cautiously he approached the open window that let the pure white drapes drift to and fro only slightly to the sides. He could almost imagine people walking and children playing far below, just bigger than ants in the cracks of concrete he remembered stomping on as a kid with such careless glee. Feeling a little braver, or perhaps a little more curious, he stretched his neck out into the open and twisted to peer on either side of the window, wondering if the building, too, was white. To his surprise, it was not; rather it was a sort of pukish brown, more stale even than the wall it ran parallel to beyond. 

"Hmmph," he grumbled. "Least its more interesting than all this other crap."

Staring out into nothingness was somehow enthralling enough as to distract him completely for hours. He thought about the imaginary people on the ground and imaginary windows filled with offices and scurrying workers across from him, ignoring him. He thought about the family he left behind so easily in their two-bedroom apartment on the far west of town--his two little girls and darling wife. He didn't miss them, but it was interesting to think about them from time to time and wonder. 

When the phone did ring, he had fallen asleep on the window sill and jumped at the sudden trill of the internal bell in the phone. Straightening himself out and playing it cool for some imaginary guest in the room, he took in a breath and answered.

"Yeah?"

"They're ready for you. Are you?"

"Who's 'they'?"

Faint static. Bad connection maybe, and he shook his head, knowing better.

"Well, I'm ready to meet 'them' or whatever. I haven't eaten."

"You know who they are. You know."

"Hey, hey listen. Listen, a'ight? I need food, 'kay? I don't even know why I'm here. I just need food."

"They will provide your meal."

"Yeah? And how the hell am I supposed to get out of here, man? The door's locked in case you forgot."

"You know--"

"Answer the goddamned question!"

A dial tone.

"Son of a bitch. The hell's he want me to do, jump out the window?" Again, he swore under his breath. He didn't even hear the door open, nor notice the two "men" enter, until he turned around to face them barely a foot before him.

"Mister Johansen."

"The hell do you want now?" He feigns ignorance and carelessness, but watches them with sharp eyes.

"Just a little of your time. Are you ready?"

"Not until I eat."

"Soon. First you must meet them."

"Who? Tell me who! Why am I here?"

The tallest of the men smirks, a smirk that makes his chest clench and his eyes flicker briefly around the room for an escape, but he doesn't know why. 

"You know, sir. And you'll know soon enough."