Liminal Red
2023 Creative Writing Contest submission
Alyssa Aidoo, 11th grade
Dim fluorescent lights the color of crimson blood enveloped the man as he slowly opened his eyes, the sleepy fuzziness of the dark red gradually losing its grip on his vision. He did not know where he was, or what he was doing prior to his awakening. As he sat up, he groaned a little, for he was lying on a hard, uncomfortable, concrete floor for who knows how long. As he rose to his feet, he surveyed his surroundings curiously; it looked as if he was in a deserted hospital or a desolate office building. The room he was in was small, with the corners obscured by shadow. In front of him was a rectangular void encased in a bright, electric red doorframe colored by the bright lights above the compartment. He walked toward the bleak door with caution. Even while standing mere feet in front of the entrance, he still could not see a thing past the darkness. It was as if the opaque gloom beyond the door had crystallized and turned into solid obsidian, glistening and impenetrable. After much contemplation, he finally decided to reach a tentative hand out into the pitch-blackness, the ebony nothingness swallowing his arm as he carefully inched it through. He kept his hand suspended out in the unknown for a few more seconds until he finally retrieved it from the dark, almost surprised that it came back in one piece. Though he had assessed it, he was still hesitant about going through the door. He still had no clue what lay on the other side. For all he knew, on the other side of this door hid someone with malicious intent, waiting for the exact moment in which he showed himself to carry out a murderous ambush. This outcome was not entirely implausible, how else could he have gotten to such a strange place? The young man did not think he had any adversaries, in fact, he did not even know if he had companions. His memory failed to recall anything significant about his life or what he was doing before he was thrown into this strange situation by an unclear twist of fate. Still, he had to consider the possibility, especially when considering the uncanny circumstances of his plight. However, he knew if he stayed the only thing that would be awaiting him in this room was thirst, hunger, and eventually, death. So, in one swift, almost abrupt moment, the man threw himself into the void, not knowing what awaited him on the other side. Even as he slammed into the cold, smooth concrete ground, the man’s eyes stayed clenched, terrified of what horrors he would be subjected to if he dared to open them. Hesitantly, though, he allowed his eyelids to rise, and what he saw in front of him was— a room the same color as the one he had been in not moments before. Confused and alarmed, He turned around to see the door he had just entered but was surprised to find it was no longer there. Though immensely perturbed by the image laid out in front of him, the man decided to think logically and compose himself, taking deep breaths as he collected his thoughts. Slowly, he got up and turned away from the blank wall, towards the front of the room. Despite the fact he knew the room was terribly similar to the one he had stood in earlier; the man was nevertheless taken aback when he saw an identical image of the space, he was previously in. In fact, looking at it from his new perspective, he realized that it was a perfect replica of it. The same walls, the same cloaked corners, and most importantly, the same void of a door positioned right in the middle.
Unsurprisingly, the man was disturbed by the development, and for a split second, even thought that he had been brought back to very same place he was standing in earlier. Immediately after the thought crossed his mind, however, the man began to laugh at himself and the absurdity of the suggestion. Scoffing at himself, the man carefully, yet much less hesitantly than before, plunged once more into the abyssal entrance. When the man found himself in yet another replica of the past two rooms, he began to seriously worry. What if his earlier suggestion was not as unfeasible as he thought it to be at first? Frantically, he ran through the door, and then through the next door, and the next. Again, the man began to worry and dismay, his already drained spirit starting to wear even more from the senseless illogicality of his predicament. He half-heartedly tried three more times to get anywhere that was not the miserable room, but to no avail. His lungs began to contract, and tears welled up in his eyes as he pushed himself through the tar-like darkness multiple times. Repeatedly, he tried to make progress in the emptiness of the structure. Feet sore and panic taking over his mind, the man clawed around for any other escape from his stale, unchanging confinement. Hands clawing at the stucco walls, skin and nails becoming ragged and bloody with each scratch. When he realized that plan was futile and fruitless, he again resorted to entering the doors, now charging head-first into them without any of the caution he harbored earlier. When his body could no longer take the abuse, the man would collapse on the floor and sob before forcing himself to do it all again. Three miles. Three miles of the same room, three miles of the same sleepy dark red, three miles of the same mind-numbing, maddening silence. Of course, the young man did not realize he had roamed this far, but the fact of the matter was that he did not care. That information was irrelevant to him. All he knew was that he had been confined in the same, near-identical scene for what felt like an eternity now. The darkness had stolen his vision some 16 hours ago, but the loneliness was just now starting to steal his sanity. He did not know how he had stayed so calm earlier. Was it because he did not fully grasp his situation at first? How could he anyway? What part of this seemed real or even feasible? He did not know what hospital or office building went in the same direction for miles and miles upon end. That is, if there was an end to this place, which at this point, the man began to doubt. His feet ached and his body was cold and numb, but by far what hurt the most was the man’s full realization of his situation. He started to see that his mind was beginning to crush under the unchanging, unrelenting madness that was this building, and knew that, whatever this was, it was far beyond anything human or natural. As he collapsed for what had to be the fifth time in his journey and hit the floor, the man realized something. He realized that he did not feel hungry or thirsty. Desperately, he tried to recall the feelings of necessity and hunger that had been present in the human conscious since prehistoric times, but nothing. He was missing one of the main things that made man, man. He felt like the longer he stayed in this hellscape, the less human he became. Like in each doorframe hid a small imp that nipped at pieces of his soul, until eventually, he was missing so much of it that he could barely be considered human anymore. Then, like a boulder smashing into a devastating car wreck, it hit him that his other senses were becoming dull as well. Not just his sight, or touch, or anything else related to the natural responses of the human mind like sleep, but the emotional ones too. His sense of self, his need for other people, even the dread and anguish he had felt for most of his journey had begun to subside in an unnatural, unfeeling manner. Eventually, he decided to rest in dark quarters, closing his eyes although it did not make much of a difference after hours in dim darkness, and besides, he could not sleep anyway, he had lost the ability to do that as well.
A change, after getting up and crossing the door facing him, the man saw a change in this place. Light, he saw blinding, brilliant light. He ran as fast as he could towards the radiant, oceanic hue of salvation. Shining, glaring, and growing closer by the second, he desperately threw himself towards the ethereal entrance. Finally, the freedom he had longed for, dreamed of for days! Swiftly and joyfully, he crossed the illuminated threshold and found— dim fluorescent lights the color of the dreary Atlantic enveloping him as he slowly opened his eyes, the sleepy fuzziness of the dark azure — the exact same scene. The same rooms he had traversed over, and over, and over, and over again. The only difference was that it was blue. It was blue… How many hours, no, how many days, months had passed since he first crossed that barrier? No food, no water, no sleep, nothing. He did not know how he was even alive, after going that long without the basic amenities that support human life, he should have perished a long time ago. Why was he still alive? Or rather, why could he not die? Like a terrible lightning bolt striking a barren, desolate tree, a terrifying realization flashed across the man’s mind; What if he could not die? What if he were forced to traverse the same nonsensical compartments forever by some unknowable force, with the only varying factor being the shade of the rooms? He still did not sense any indication of an approaching demise that should have been present in him by now, and that fact alone was enough to answer his grim question. Warily and without protest, the man succumbed to the suffocating, stifling weight of the room, laying down and letting his eyes glaze over as if he were preparing for his final rest, though he knew deep down inside that such relief would never come.
