Circe’s mind was in great turmoil, pictures in lurid colours swam up from the depths. As she struggled to find her balance, her mind like a broken mirror reflected distorted fractured images. Some of the images she could make sense of the flowers, paths, seaside cliff face, moonlight others were from horror stories; the two headed man sized birds, granite hands, the screaming ghiost, blood pooling around feet. They all swarmed in her brain, filling her mind until she had no relief from the onslaught.
She woke and stared at the white walls, totally unrelieved by anything attached to them, her eyes roved muzzily around the space. It was a harsh white impermeable shell surrounding her. No door or window broke the expanse of white. She felt her brow wrinkleas she tried to puzzle out her surroundings. As she moved she felt a cold touch of metal against her wrists. Rolling her head to the side she looked down, her hands were shackled to the metal bed. Experimenting she tried to move her feet, they too had restraints attached to them.
It all seemed too much, she couldn’t bring her mind into focus, her vision kept overlaying the white room with streaks of lurid red blood. A niggling concern in her brain momentarily focussed her attention, she should be more worried about being shackled to a bed than she was, She felt she might have reacted differently once upon a time; but this thought like other thoughts drifted away like a cloud.
Again her mind was filled with pictures flashing past; figures that were half human, half animal, towers on fire, skulls rattling on the ground, an emaciated man leading a horse that was a bag of skin over bones. Crows and ravens cawing harshly as they pecked the eyes out of sheep carcasses. Blood pooling everywhere and a voice booming across the desolate, nightmare landscape “Death, Failure, Despair” repeated in a mind numbing loop.
When she woke the second time she noticed she was lying on a bed in a sealed white room but something was different. She struggled to think, it was as if her mind was caught in an undertow of wet kelp, black streamers fluttering through her mind, tangling up her thoughts dragging them back into the depths. A sudden twitch coursed through her body moving her hand and it slid off the bed, her foot jerked and moved as her knee bent. There had been shackles, she was almost sure that there had been shackles in the before.
She pushed herself up on the narrow white bed, turning sideways she slid her legs off to hang over the side of the bed. Her eyes drifted around the white walls, she remembered the white; but again something was different. The inside of her head felt mushy and red kept overlaying everything. The all encompassing white was broken by a shadowed line. With tremendous effort Circe forced her mind to focus on that line. Slowly she slid off the bed onto unsteady feet. Feeling as if she was moving tons of concrete she stumbled towards the shadowed line.
Limbs quivering she slumped against the wall next to the shadowed line. Reaching out tentatively she traced a finger down the line, feeling a narrow gap. She pushed harder and felt a slight give. Her mind started to wander back to the screaming ghost and the crows eating eyeballs and the blood pooling everywhere – death – failure – despair. It took almost superhuman effort to bring her mind back to the white room. Concentrating on breathing in and out and pushed against the shadowed line and was rewarded with a door sliding open and into a cavity in the walls.
Pushing herself to her feet she stumbled into a featureless white corridor. Turning to the left she shuffled off, hand against the wall. After a period of seemingly endless time she came across a large room and could hear water dripping. On hearing the sound Circe became aware of a driving thirst; until she heard the water she had not been aware of her bodily needs. She stumbled across the room to the basin and greedily sucked up the cold, clean water tasting of stone. As she swallowed she could feel the water soaking into her parched throat and hitting her stomach in a cold pooling. After drinking as much as she could she straightened up and looked around.
There was seating for many people but nobody was here, the corridor has been empty, this room showed signs of people having been here but had a feeling of being abandoned. Having satisfied her thirst Circe realised she was hungry she pushed herself to see if there was anything edible. Finding some wrinkled apples she decided to keep looking for a way out. She wasn’t able to walk for long before tiredness and weakness overtook her. She curled up on the floor in the endless corridor and slept and dreamed of blood and crows and voices
On waking for the third time she got painfully to her feet and crunching on an apple continued walking. After a timeless time she saw and open door and grey light. Reaching the door she looked out into the desolate landscape of her dreams; parched broken land scattered with skulls and bones of the dead heroes and crows plucking out eyes. Falling to her knees she raised her hands to cover her eyes and saw they were red with blood and she screamed in wordless horror.
Circe’s eyes opened and slowly moved over the featureless white walls and felt the narrow bed under her back and echoing in her head the words: death –failure- despair.
