Strangers in the Room: Intro (667 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 1.85 on 18 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Axolotl (View user info) at 2005-09-21 08:37:53 EDT
Adrian slowly pushed the door inwards, stepping into the darkness of the house. Easing his black glove off the polished knob, he tentatively moved into the center of the room.
"Come in, Miguel, it's safe," Adrian whispered, his heart pounding.
His partner Miguel silently crept into the atrium, and closed the door, the latch clicking in the vast black void. As Adrian's eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the outline of the room and the furniture.
"First, the silverware," Miguel whispered, leaning close to him. "I'll get that. You check the living room for any valuables."
Miguel slinked away into an adjacent room, searching for the kitchen and dining area, while Adrian perused the family room. He could see slightly better now, and with his small flashlight, he shined the beam onto the wall.
The man of the house was in his late fifties, early sixties, and was evidently the single father of a son who looked college age. He wouldn't be home at this time of the year, and there was only one car in the driveway. The man was alone, apparently.
Adrian spotted a cabinet under the television. While the TV itself was impossible to transport, the man was certain to have a collection of DVDs.
Sure enough, there was a trove of technology under the entertainment center that Adrian was able to stuff into his bag. A stereo, Xbox, and a dozen or so DVDs. Probably the son used them whenever he came home from school.
Adrian stood up, searching the room. On a desk by a stairwell was an expensive calculator that would be able to raise a good sum on the black market or eBay.
A shadowy form appeared in the doorway to the other room; Adrian's heart jumped. He quickly seized a hefty candlestick, ready to strike.
"Only me, Adrian," Miguel's voice said. "I've got some plates and crystal."
"All right...good," Adrian replied. "We should go now. No point going upstairs, I think the man's home."
"Right, let's go," Miguel said. He silently cracked the door ajar, and quickly strode out. Adrian followed, eyes fixed on the dim moonlight streaming from the open door.
With a sickening thud Adrian smashed his shin into the coffee table, and involuntarily cursed. An amateur mistake.
"Adrian? What happened?" Miguel hissed, looking back into the room.
Footprints slapped on the wood floor upstairs. There was an awkward pause, and a light flickered on in the upstairs hall.
"Who's there?" boomed a loud, cigarette-scarred voice. "Is that you, Michael?"
Adrian froze, then said tentatively, "Yeah, dad...it's me."
"You came back tonight? It's a Wednesday?" the father asked, beginning to walk down the stairs. The steps creaked under his weight. "What happened? Did you get in trouble? Don't tell me you've been suspended..."
He began to descend. As he drew closer, Miguel hid himself in the darkness, and Adrian stepped onto the edge of the beaming light shining down the stairwell. The father, a tall, stately man with tussled grey hair and stubble emerged into the living room.
"You sound a little different. Do you have—"
Adrian raised his heavy candlestick and brought it down on the man's head. He immediately fell to the ground, dropping his small handgun onto the rug. Adrian again lifted his weapon, and delivered a mighty blow between the man's shoulder blades.
"He's dead," Miguel said, slowly drawing up a pistol he had taken out of a cabinet he had jarred open.
"I don't think so," Adrian replied, nervously discarding the candlestick. He kneeled next to the man and ran his fingers over the bleeding wounds.
"You hit him right in the spine. He's dead. No more."
"...We have to call 911! He's still breathing!" Adrian gasped, feeling his victim's mouth.
"What, and get arrested?" Miguel whispered angrily. "Hello, operator, I just killed a guy robbing his house, get down here and pick us up. Is that what you'll say? Let's get out."
"I can't..." Adrian said. Three years in the Army and another three years as a criminal should have dulled him to random death, but he couldn't just finish off the man lying on the floor, and he certainly couldn't allow himself to leave.
"You can't...you won't!" Miguel spat. "I can't do this. Sorry, Adrian, you've got to go."
Adrian looked up into the nine-millimeter barrel of the father's handgun and his heart sank into his intestines.
"Miguel—"
He fired twice, both shots hitting Adrian's temple and tearing through his brain. Adrian fell like a stone onto the floor next to his victim.
"All right," Miguel sneered. "I get the loot, you get to stay with him. Fair's fair."
The world dissolved, all quickly blurring and fading away. Only dimly aware of any trace of life, Adrian slipped away from his earthly prison and gently awakened into a new consciousness.
* * *
"Where am I?"
Adrian stood in a long hallway, pure white and with doors on both sides. Extending infinitely in both directions, Adrian sensed an acute pain behind each one of the doors, as though they were gateways into the netherworld.
"You're right where you're supposed to be," said a clear voice behind him. Adrian turned around to see a tall, brown-haired man in a business suit and glasses, about five-nine and entirely average looking.
"Where is that?" Adrian asked. "I thought..." He felt the side of his head. There was no discernible difference to before he was shot. "I was looking at Miguel's gun...he was with me right now. What..."
"Through here, please," the man said, opening the nearest door. "Step right in."
Adrian willfully walked into the bleak room, a white cube seven feet by seven feet by seven feet. There were six ordinary chairs inside, five of which were occupied. There was a foreign-looking man, a tall, thin Caucasian, a black male teenager, a white woman in her forties, and a middle-aged white man. They grimly looked in his direction, then went back to staring into space.
"Take a seat,"
Adrian followed the man's directions and took the remaining chair.
"I am locking the door now," he said, stepping out of the room, all the while looking at the five behind his steely frames.
"What! Until when?" Adrian exclaimed. The three others merely glanced up at him.
"Adrian," the man said, smiling. "You killed a family man in cold blood, not to mention several other crimes over three years of thuggery. This is your punishment. You are in hell, my friend. I will not be unlocking this door ever again, Adrian." He smiled again, fixing his gaze on the group.
"Goodbye," he mouthed cheerily as he shut the door.
The bolt clicked.
Adrian screamed.
The others simply looked down. Just as they had been looking down for what had seemed to be an eternity.
"Shit!" Adrian roared, pounding the doors from where he had entered. "God damn it! Let me out of here you bastards!"
Adrian punched and shouldered the door, grunting as he pressed all his formidable weight against the door. His flailing disturbed the two occupants nearest the door, the foreigner and the white woman.
"Sit down, you idiot," said someone behind him. Adrian wheeled around; it was the paunchy man in the tie and collared shirt. "They're not coming back. We're stuck here."
"Hey, fuck you, I'm getting out of here," Adrian snarled. He frantically felt the smooth surface of the door. There was no handle, just a flat white surface made of some unknown material. "There's no way they can keep us here, it's against the law."
"Here's denial and anger coming at once," said the foreigner, a gaunt dark-skinned Hispanic or Arab, eyes closed in meditation. "Next comes bargaining..."
"And then depression. That lasts a long time." the white woman said. Adrian saw she was wearing a white tunic with a red cross on it; she was a nurse.
"Most of us have accepted it," the man who looked like a businessman said. "I accepted it the day
I killed myself. The good father over there doesn't talk much though. I think he imagined there was some sort of heaven after you die."
Adrian's attention was directed toward the black-clad gentleman with his face buried in his hands in the center seat to the left.
"You can't be serious!" Adrian breathed. "You can't...you can't say that we're all stuck here...we're all here..."
"Sit down and shut up," the suicide businessman said. "Just be quiet and think. That's what we're here for, to think about our lives."
"No, we're here as punishment," the foreigner said. "We cannot get out because we have offended God."
Adrian numbly took his place next to the silent priest and across from a teenage black male.
"Yo," his opposite said, holding his outstretched hand toward Adrian. Adrian weakly clasped it. "LaShawn Jones. This guy got my bro Curtis arrested, so I tried to get revenge. I couldn't do it."
"Adrian, ex-army," Adrian muttered. "How long do we stay...?"
"Forever," said the foreigner. "But I believe she has been here longest..."
"Alice Stevenson," the nurse said. "Red Cross. I was killed in...in the fall of 2003, I believe."
"That was months and months ago..."
"Has it been that long?" Stevenson said thoughtfully. She thought for a moment, and then hung her head in the same silence. The room was dismally quiet; Adrian had the impression that they had nothing left to stay to each other.
"Why were you here?" Adrian asked. "What did you do to get here?"
Alice sighed, saying, "We don't talk about it. Just vague...vague recollections of the past, when we were human."
"Aren't any of you interested in what did this? What did this to us?" Adrian inquired.
"You are too angry," the foreigner said. "But it will settle down. We will be here for years and years, until the end of all the world."
Adrian sat back in his chair, feeling himself grow lethargic by the minute. The others in the tiny room pressed against each other, stubbornly silent and bitter. Adrian settled into the unearthly quiet. Hours passed, maybe days. Adrian never grew tired nor hungry or had any human needs. There was nothing but the unending flux of time, trapped in the fourth dimension of Hell.
Time began to lose meaning.
User Reviews
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-09-23 16:25:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Why can't I rate stuff...?
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-09-23 14:23:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good. Although I didn't buy the intro. it was silly.
I loved the bit with putting him in a room and the whole "I will never unlock this door" bit.
I'm going to use that when I have kids.
Submitted by jack11058 (user info) at 2005-09-23 14:00:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
great idea, interesting characters. miguel and adrian's dialogue caught me as a little stunted/hackneyed. i still enjoyed this, and am on to the next.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-09-21 22:16:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Well, that certainly would suck...but I think I prefer it to spending eternity burning in hellfire and writhing in agony.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-09-21 17:46:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Kaos-King - The Balances of Justice are on a temporary hiatus. I've been really busy lately, and haven't got much of a chance to go on Uber. The Fallen Faith series sounds cool, I'll review it as soon as I can. Thank you
SkinnyKenny - The name actually comes from a story by Julio Cortazar...I must now google the Frank Herbert thing
TheCaes - There's a book by Jean-Paul Sartre that influenced me in this story. I never read the book, but I heard that the general message was "hell is other people." Just extrapolated into a room filled with strangers who messed up in life and are punished by everlasting solitude and silence in death.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-09-21 16:56:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice setup. Lots of possibilities here. I like your non-conventional take on Hell, if that is truly what this place is. Very interested to see how this plays out.
Submitted by SkinnyKenny (user info) at 2005-09-21 16:54:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
So your screen name comes from the tanks the Duncans were grown in, right?
Frank Herbert?
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-09-21 16:39:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
very very good.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2005-09-21 14:40:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was excellent, as usual.
Axolotl, what happened to the "Ballance of Justice" series? I really dug that. I went back and read all 3 of them. Oh yeah, I went back and and wrote a huge review on the encyclopedia post that you made for your "Angelic World" series. (Can't remember what you called it, right off hand.) I was very impressed by all the research you did for that long ass series and heaped praise on you in disgusting detail.
I've just started a new Series called "Fallen Faith" about an Angel who was forced to fall to Earth then committed suicide. He ends up in the dark side of the astral plane. I think you would dig it.
As always, I look forward to your next post. You're easily one of the best authors on this site.
Submitted by nya_nyo (user info) at 2005-09-21 13:48:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
As Ralphies teacher from 'A Christmas Story' said
A +++++++++++++
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-09-21 13:25:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Professional_Peon (user info) at 2005-09-21 11:25:13 (#)
Ranking: 2
Hell sucks. But I like reading your take on it.
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Yes indeed, Hell = sucks. Not a nice place
Submitted by ajanssen (user info) at 2005-09-21 11:47:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
lovely
Submitted by Professional_Peon (user info) at 2005-09-21 11:25:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hell sucks. But I like reading your take on it.
Submitted by highlander (user info) at 2005-09-21 10:55:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is good stuff; looking forward to the rest.
Submitted by Chazzy (user info) at 2005-09-21 10:08:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
A good read
Submitted by CJRipley (user info) at 2005-09-21 09:36:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Barnymeinhoff (user info) at 2005-09-21 08:45:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Good stuff
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-09-21 08:39:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
The next parts will tell the stories, sins, and deaths of Adrian and the other five people in the room, why they went to Hell, and how they are connected. Only about two or three parts maybe, not a big story.