Empty room

For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

There’s an empty room with your name on it.

The door is ajar, moving slightly…Â just a trick of the eye, perhaps. Soft pale light frames the opening, pulsating gently in an irregular pattern. The handle is still warm, but cooling fast. I think it will be ice cold by morning.

The empty room beckons me, but I dare not enter. It is your room – it says so right there, on the door. Scrawled hastily with a nail file, one word – your name – and a dire warning. Lasciate ogni speranza…

I steal a glimpse through the slight opening. A wall: whitewashed, neutral, reflecting light in tune with the broken bulb. Upon it, a spider built its nest, and now it’s waiting. Waiting in vain, for there is only I who’s left alive, and I’m not coming in. The spider is staring at me.

Half a vase crawls into view, within it a dozen dried roses. They used to be red. I can see their leaves, almost crumbling, frozen scream around the last evaporating drop. They’re brown now, the colour of old blood. The colour of nails endlessly scratching a brick wall.

I used to know this room. In my mind I can almost see it. The vision is hazy and incomplete though, like the glimmer of distant mirages glimpsed through the midday sun. I open my eyes. The spider mocks me silently. I think it’s already dead – chitinous carapace stuck in its own dusty web, moving gently with the current. Death is ironic nowadays.

There’s an empty room, sanctified in your name.

Who are you?

I cannot remember.