Round Peg

Day 16

    I’ve been in this room before. The scent of bleach fades with the passing days but the stark white walls do nothing to calm the chaos that runs circles in my brain. The table is in its usual position. The chair, ditto. Nothing changes from day to day except the increasing degree of unease I feel somewhere in my head.

    I sit at the chair and once again grasp the two objects that have been my tormentors for the past fifteen days. One is a cylindrical piece of foam rubber about two inches in diameter. Malleable enough to shape as I see fit, but stiff enough that it will always snap back to its original shape once I inevitably grow tired and throw it in disgust. The second object is a rectangular plexiglass box with a square hole in one side and three solid sides. It measures 4 inches by 4 inches looking down from the top into the square hole. There is nothing particularly intriguing about either object save the reason for their existence in the first place.

    The familiar voice crackles on the speaker mounted on the wall. “Harry Carl Nichols, three-hundred and sixty hours.” Yesterday they said three-hundred and thirty-six hours. Tomorrow they will say three-hundred and eighty-four. For all I know the passing of time for the remainder of my life may be measured in 24-hour increments, announced to me every morning by the tinny masculine voice. The daily ritual has become strangely reassuring even though I know the counting will eventually stop and it will mean the end of me.

    Harry Carl Nichols is not my name. Originally I considered this ordeal may just be a case of mistaken identity but after screaming just that and pounding on the perfect white walls for nearly a week I started considering that I was not a mistake. Either they know exactly who I am and they were looking for me all along, or they don’t care who I am.

    I’ve forgotten who I was. I don’t remember if they did this to me or if it is some post-traumatic induced amnesia. But I know my name is not Harry. I awoke standing in this room right inside the seamless door sixteen days ago. Since that day I have seen one person; a gentleman in a white scientific-looking garment and a gas mask. He arrives every day exactly sixteen hours after I wake up in this white room and shoots what I can only guess is a tranquilizer originally meant for a much larger animal than me directly into my neck. Naturally I struggled against this for the first few days. But I soon found that to be futile. Either I am not nearly as physically fit as I assume myself to be or the man in white is much stronger than the normal human.

    Back to the two objects. As the saying goes, it’s like putting a round peg in a square hole. I realize the saying is reverse of my current situation but that is neither here nor there. Given the foam rubber consistency of the round peg I could have solved this “puzzle” my first day here. The round peg can easily be pushed into the square hole by forcing the round peg to change shape. I have been close on more than one occasion to doing just that but something stops me. A brief thought that the people behind the gas mask and static-ridden speaker want me to do just that. Admit defeat.

Day 245

    The chair grows more uncomfortable with each hour. I have deep purple bruises from leaning my forearms on the unforgiving table. I’m reminded of the sense of vertigo while reaching the lowest point of an underwater tunnel. The earth stretches in front of you uphill but with no sense of having traveled downhill in the first place. This feeling now overwhelms me.

    I still pick up the peg every day but with no intention of completing the task. It only increases the vertigo and imbalance in my middle ear.

Day 401

    There have been good and bad days. The bad days I weep in the corner, pick up the plexiglass rectangular box and throw it against the perfect white walls. I rip at the foam rubber of the round peg until it lies in shreds and my fingers drip blood onto the white floor. The good days I sit quietly at the desk and study the peg and hole and imagine a solution I am somehow missing. Of course there never is. It is a peg and hole; there is only one solution.

    I’ve come to look forward to the man with the tranquilizer. The hours of dreamless unconsciousness are my only refuge. The white walls mock me endlessly.

Day 538

    But today… today will be different. I will wave the white flag.

    I hear the static say some number over ten thousand. I stopped paying attention long ago. I sit at the table and take the round peg. Without hesitating, I start malforming the foam rubber as I push it into the square hole. The peg is through the square hole, and I watch as it instantly snaps back to its normal shape once completely inside the plexiglass box. It touches the bottom of the box with the slightest thud and falls to lean against the side. I look up, expecting and hoping to see anything other than the white walls. There is nothing out of the ordinary. The speaker on the wall crackles for the last time.

    ”Harry Carl Nichols. Total time, twelve thousand eight hundred eighty eight point three six.” I hear the louvers move in the air duct above me.

    The smell of bitter almonds is briefly noticeable as the hydrogen cyanide is released into the room, triggered by the miniscule sensor at the bottom of the plexiglass box that I’ve somehow missed during my numerous studies of the box. My breathing quickens and as my eyes glaze over I can see the round peg, resting quietly in the clear box. I slump in the chair and my head falls back; I can see the square end of the air duct in the center of the ceiling above me. The square hole was the end of me after all.

Tagged with: Short