A Boy Is Observed
White. Everything in this building is white. It hurts his eyes to look at, especially since the light above him is so bright. This room is nearly identical to the room he was in the day before only it was on a different level. He wonders just how many of these rooms there are, if there is just floor upon floor of small rooms with strangely tinted mirrors that hides another room full of scientists. He doesn't want to think about this. It makes him uncomfortable but he can't stop imagining it. He wants to run out of here but the soft click of a lock had echoed through the room just a few moments before this. He is trapped here, at least for now.
In the mirror he sees himself, blue jeans, red sweater, brown hair, brown eyes, pale skin browned by the sun. He is plain and ordinary in crowds but in this room he stands out. He always wants to be the centre of attention except for right now. Right now he wants to wait himself the same colour as this room, wants to lay down and disappear from the eyes watching him. He can't see them but he knows they are watching. For a brief moment he thinks he can hide just beneath the mirror’s edge, that he's discovered a blind spot but then he spots the only bit of colour in this room that does not belong to him. A tiny, blinking red light is all that draws attention to the camera in the corner. This room has no blind spots.
He fidgets in front of the mirror, watching the way his fingers twist and tap themselves in its reflection. There are no instructions given, no commands to tell Valeri just what it is that he’s here for. Intake the doctor had called it. It’s a word he’s not certain about, he’s never heard it before and his mind fills in his questions with its own imaginative answers. He doesn’t like the suggestions that his mind gives about what the word might mean. Every option seems to suggest that he was stuck here, trapped. His parents had said that they would be back in a week, just a week and then he could home. A week in this place would be too long, already he was feeling caged by this lack of colour and lack of sun. Valeri loved the outside. Would he spend this whole week inside? He hoped not.
“Face the wall.”
A voice crackles over the speaker that is painted just like the camera. It startles him, he didn’t see it in his observation of the room, it doesn’t have a little light to draw attention to it. Listening to the instruction he turns to stare at the wall. His fidgeting gets worse. He can see the texture of the wall, the uneven surface marred with vertical streaks to show the path the brush took when it was applied. His eyes follow the shadow lines up and down the wall, using that to occupy himself while there is more silence. It's not enough to keep the questions from whispering in his head but he is saved from them when the crackling voice asks him to face the mirror once more.
“Valeri Sycamore, room assignment 313. Breakfast is at seven, lunch at eleven, dinner at five. If you miss a meal you miss a meal. Speak to a monitor if you need a drink between meals. Your schedule will be delivered to your room. You are dismissed.”
He is lead up stairs to a long hallway full of doors. They are all solid save for small windows, too high up for him to look through, leaving their rooms a mystery to him. It is only because two doors are marked with a figure each that Valeri figured out where the bathrooms are. This does also have a window into their depths and he is uncertain how he feels about that. Bathrooms are private things, a window means he could be seen, could be watched. His stomach virus with the notion and he very much wants to call his parents only they left him here and didn't say when they'd be home.
Here the boy would always be watched.
His room is near the end of this hall, a large set of double doors like the kind in his school are barely more than 10 steps away. These doors are the only ones with windows low enough he can see through them, though all that lays behind them is just enough hallway for there to be a turn with no indication as to what is on the other side of the corner. He’s still wondering what’s just around the bend when the door to the room labeled 313 is pushed open for him. The creak in the door distracts him, a sound that echos loudly in the nearly silent hallway. It draws his gaze back to the room he’s been to delivered to.
Just as every other room has had, this one has white walls, a white dresser, a white chair. The only thing that isn't lacking in colour is the blanket spread across the top of a narrow bed. It's an attempt to counter the rest of the room, patches of every colour stitched together in what might have been a pattern, if studied hard enough. Valeri doesn't have a knack for puzzles really but he lets his eyes wander the paths between colours as if he might unravel its mystery just by looking hard enough. Perhaps if he stepped closer there would be some sort of clue as to the meaning of each shape but the boy is rooted in place. The door is open but an unseen force keeps him from taking that first step forward.
A hand presses firmly against his back, just enough to make Valeri lurch forward, feet passing through the doorframe followed by the rest of him. He is inside.
The door only creaks when opened, it’s silent when it closes behind the boy. He is left in the room, footsteps outside barely audible as his guide walks away. He’s not locked in, though frozen moments before he finds himself spinning to test the knob before its had a chance to settle back into place. The woman who had shown him the way doesn’t bother to turn around, even though the door squeaks once more, a loud and horrid sound. He closes it, cuts himself off from the long hallway this time. There are more doors than he’s ever seen before in one hallway but the place feels empty. Feels cold.
He sits himself upon the slimb bed and wraps the odd blanket around himself. It does nothing to ward off the chill that is determined to set itself in his bones, fingertips like ice when they brush against the palms of his hands. From his new position he can see a clock with a digital face, faint green glow of the numbers staining the paint with their light. It sits right above the doorway, angled downwards just enough to make it easy to read, particularly from the head of the bed. Breakfast is at seven, lunch at eleven, dinner at five. The clock on the wall felt larger than most, glaring down at the boy.
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