Hey... hey, you
OPEN YOUR EYES
Light swims across a ceiling you do not recognize. The air is wet and stale. Something hums inside the walls. You try to remember where you were, who brought you here, how long you have been unconscious.
Nothing comes back.
A loudspeaker crackles somewhere overhead. Static. A breath drawn too close to the microphone.
“Enjoy... that... cell.”
The words dissolve into a low, deliberate laugh.
Your vision clears. Padding covers the walls. Padding covers the ceiling. The door has no handle on your side.
This is not a hospital room. This is a cell!
“HELLO?”
“HEY! LET ME OUT OF HERE!”
Your voice strikes the walls and comes back smaller. No footsteps approach. No orderly answers. No one looks through the door.
The light continues to hum.
You search your memory again. There should be something: an ambulance, an arrest, a doctor, a name on a form. Anything that explains why you are standing inside a padded fucking cell.
There is nothing. No one is coming. Then you hear something. Not from the loudspeaker.
Not from the hallway.
Voices. Distant, overlapping, impossible to place. They are speaking to one another.
They are speaking about the room. They can see what you see.
And they may be the only reason you leave it.