In a Small Room in Dreams

In a small room deep within the confines of a secret place, artificial lighting began to brighten at the same rate that the sun without brightened the world. By the time the sun had fully risen above the earth’s horizon, the room was bright with perceived daylight, emitted by eco-friendly and extremely efficient LED lights. Within the small space lived a variety of organisms. The most noticeable at first was the very dense and deep green foliage that grew over almost every surface. After a few moments, movement was evident from a pile of fresh hay that was lain down on the floor. A figure stirred from sleep. It was a young woman, of indeterminable age but roughly late teens or early twenties. As she rose from her slumber, her relaxed and care free attitude became increasingly anxious. She looked around her with the air of someone who has found themselves in a completely alien situation. As the fresh leaves and stems fell from her, she realized she was not clothed, and became more alarmed.
Suddenly, within the room a great rush of sound seemed to materialize out of the air. It was as if one were in the middle of a windblown field with crickets, birds, and myriads of grasses being windblown around, but greatly amplified. The girl screamed in abject terror and covered her head when it began, but she abruptly quieted, looking around with a horrified expression at her undisturbed surroundings. The noise did not abate, but went on and on. It was maddening.
On first glance at her surroundings, it was easy to mistake that she was in some very dense and deep woods. A more careful scrutiny of the plants however revealed that they were not at all related to one another in their placement or their natural homes in the wild. They were all planted there by someone, and they only served to cover the four walls that contained her. Looking up, she saw that the ceiling was far above her, about forty feet. It was illuminated like a huge bright television screen to resemble the early morning sky. The floor was dirt, and also covered with plants. Most were varieties of grass, but she could see some that were potentially harmful, such as poison ivy and nightshade.
Memories of seeing these plants before were firmly engrained in her experience. But however she tried she could not remember the instance or circumstance of the memories. In fact, she could not remember much of anything besides the danger of those two plants.
Shaken, wondering what was happening to her, if perhaps she was going mad, the girl stood up in her small space. The cut hay underfoot was soft and springy. She knew that it was cut hay, but did not know why she knew. Arms folded protectively over her chest, she took a tentative step closer to the closest wall. It was a wall. The perfect box shape of her space left no other explanation. However impossibly there seemed to be trees and vines and all manner of plants growing on it, and through it. She reached out to touch it, and the bark proved as rough and wood-like as any bark in her broken memory. Could she even trust her memory? she asked herself. How did she know that it was a tree at all? Perhaps she was totally and completely mad, incapable of real thought and this experience was something her mind had come up with to keep itself entertained… or
Marcy! That was her name. Her hand shot away from the tree bark as she realized this with magnetic force. Clinging to this one bit of information on her identity, she tried to remember anything connected with her name. Her mother must have called her many times, but she could not recall one time. There were no memories of any other people, or of anyone saying her name. How did she know it was hers? She just did.
Marcy went back to examining the wall of plants. It certainly was impassible. She sensed rather than saw a structure behind the vegetation; a mass that was large and forbidding. She felt it all around her, and wondered where she was.
In a moment, the noise came back to her. She had nearly forgotten it altogether. What was going on? Marcy turned around and stepped over her cut hay bed, headed to the opposite wall. She had no sense of direction in this place. It was like its opposite counterpart; thick with foliage and utterly impassible. Though the plants were all different, they all hid the same thick mass of something that was behind them. Again and again, the questions assaulted her. What happened? What is this place? Where am I? Never before had she experienced anything like this. At least, she couldn’t remember it.
Eventually, Marcy sat down and stared at a wall. Which one she was not sure, as there was no direction or sense of it there. There must be someone who purposefully put me here, she thought. There is no chance that I could be in a room with no doors by accident. This is someone’s doing. But who? Who would imprison me in a room full of plants? What is this?
Again she looked around the room. More carefully this time, she inspected every small nook and cranny. Careful not to touch the poison ivy, and avoiding the nightshade, she made a thorough investigation. At the end of which, she was still baffled. She had intended to find some sign of human presence; technology, building material, something. Even when she looked up at the ceiling, Marcy could see no corners where the walls met, nor could she distinctly make out the plane of the screen at the top. It was as if this place was made completely out of plants, except for the ceiling, which was some kind of television. When she tried to pull out vines from the walls, she found only more organic life; not plants per-se but layers of hard moss over calcified wood. Even the wood of the tree trunks seemed to be imbedded in this confounding material.

Last updated June 10, 2019