The Dark Room

______Before she entered, she remembered there was sun.  Sun that was bright, beaming, and perfect.  The skies were blue with wisps of clouds in the sky, and a warm breeze pushed them through the air like little ships through Caribbean waters.  It was a flawless day, really, and that was very unfortunate.  She would not be able to enjoy such a perfect day, but that was that, and there was no use dwelling on it.

______The building before her was quite old, with moss seeping from the fissures of the worn brick.  A vine curled lovingly about the curve of the door's arch, and from that, a single yellow flower popped from a green bud, pleading for attention.  She opened one of the heavy doors.  Both were marred with peeling paint and chipped so the moldy wood showed through, and the metal knobs were spattered with layers upon layers of rust.

______Beyond the doors was a room much dimmer than the daylight.  Even further in were more doors, and little passageways here and there, all which progressively grew darker as they worked toward the center of the building, all which led to their own important areas.  The room at the very end of the hallway was the darkest room of all, with no light other than a faint orange-red glow that flickered like a weak fire from above.  That was the room she went to.  It wasn't her favorite room, but she had a penchant for it.  It smelled musty, but it wasn't a bad smell.  There was something about the strange smelling room that was homey.

______After adjusting to the room's scent, and soon not even being able to notice it at all, she began the process.  She spent many hours inside that place, working away, moving things from place to place, checking things, testing things, always concentrating on details, never halting except for thinking.  Minutes passed.  Hours crept by.  The hand on the clock was always in motion, as was her own.  She never paid attention to the exact time.  There was no point in looking at the numbers on the clock.  The numbers that the big and little hands were pointing at were not important, because what they told her wouldn't matter.  It wouldn't matter how long she was in there until it was done.  

______She was responsible, and looking at an arrangement of numbers on a circular plaque would not change that.  Time had no meaning in this place.



______But soon, it was done.  Soon, the process was over.  She could look at those numbers and care, but even so, they still would not be important, and so she refrained from doing so.  Things were put away; everything had it's own place.  As she closed one of the hefty doors, she sighed, though the wind was quick to steal her breath, so all that was heard was the whistling of the wind and the scratching of shutters against plastic windowpanes, and all that could be seen was the slinking of the sun behind fog-ridden mountains.

______Anything that happened at that moment would have been an okay thing now that everything was finished.  The darkness and the cold wind were trivial matters.  The dark room had been reduced to a thing that her mind was able to comprehend, and that was that, and nothing else ever felt more important in that moment.  Nothing else came to mind.  Nothing else at all.  She was okay, and she almost felt like smiling, even though she missed out on the perfect day.  

______There would be other days, she told herself.  There would always be other days.