“There is blackness around me. I cannot see any light. I keep looking for something, but I can’t find it. I just can’t.”
“To see something, you need to open your eyes.”
“Who was that? Who said it? I cannot see you. Who are you and where are you?”
“We are standing in front of you. Open your eyes, and you will see us.”
“This was someone else's voice. Who is this? Are there two people?”
“More than two people are standing in front of you, but you have to open your eyes to see us.”
“This is a third voice. You are three people?”
“Why don’t you just open your eyes? You are just asking nonsense questions. Open your eyes, and you will see us all.”
“This is the fourth voice. My eyes are open, but I can’t see anything.”
“Open your eyes.”
“Now, four of you spoke together.”
“It is all your thinking. You are thinking that your eyes are open but they are actually closed.”
“That can’t be. My eyes are open. I am not thinking about it. It is just that I cannot see anything.”
Suddenly, there is silence in the room. There was no voice this time. The man looked around, but he was still unable to see. As he opened his mouth, he noticed that he was speaking, but no words were coming out of his mouth. He tried to speak, but all in vain. No words were coming out of his mouth. He shouted, but the outcome was the same. The man did not know what to do. He touched his eyes, his lips and then his ears.
He did not know what to do. He just sat there. His mind was full of questions, but he did not know what to do with these questions. He was not able to see. He was not able to speak. He thought, “What is next? I won’t be able to hear anything?”
As he was thinking this, someone tapped on his left shoulder. He looked around to his left shoulder and jumped out of the chair. A man was standing beside him, but there was one thing that shocked the man. The man’s skin and his clothes had no colour. He was full white, as if someone had painted him with white paint.
“Wait a second! Now I can see. You are one of those four voices I heard some while ago?”
The white figure smiled and nodded slowly.
The man’s breath caught, “Then, the others? Where are they?”
The white figure raised one colourless hand and pointed behind the man.
The man turned. Four silhouettes stood in a perfect semicircle. All white, the skin, the hair, the clothing, even the irises of their eyes. Four identical white men. Four identical smiles.
“You are all the same,” the man whispered.
One of them, the one who had tapped his shoulder, said calmly, “We are what you left behind.”
“I did not leave anything.”
“You left us,” said another, stepping closer, “In the red room.”
The man’s heart stuttered, “What red room?”
The third tilted his head, “The one you built. The one you locked. The one you visit every night and pretend you don’t remember.”
The fourth man simply watched, unblinking.
The man was confused. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
The first white figure leaned in, “Then come and see.”
A low metallic creak sounded somewhere behind the man, like an old door swinging. He felt air move against the back of his neck, warmer than the rest of the space, carrying the faint scent of blood and rust.
He refused to turn.
“You cannot stay out here forever,” the second man said gently, “It is time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time to go inside,” the third man answered. “Into the red room. Where the five of us belong.”
“There are only four of you,” the man’s voice cracked.
The four figures spoke in perfect unison, “There are five.”
The closest one reached out and pressed two colourless fingers against the man’s forehead, “Look again.”
The blackness split.
Orange streetlight. Rain on glass. Dashboard clock frozen at 2:17 a.m. A wet road. A sharp bend. Headlights catching reflective tape.
The wheel jerked too late. Metal tearing. Glass exploding. A single choked scream that wasn’t his.
Four faces in the rear-view mirror, laughing, then not laughing. Then silence.
But the memory did not stop there. It kept going.
He saw himself climb out of the wreck, shaking with terror. He saw himself looking at the four broken bodies in the back seat. He saw himself walk away, staggering at first, then faster until he was running through the rain, leaving the car, leaving them, leaving the truth.
He told himself it was a nightmare. A story. Someone else’s life. He buried it. He painted the memory white and locked it behind a red door. And every night since, a small part of him had gone back to sit in that red room with the four boys he killed, watching them, listening to them, never speaking because if he spoke, the colour would come back and the guilt would be real.
The vision snapped shut. He was back in the dark, gasping. The four white figures had stepped closer. They formed a loose circle around him now.
“The red room is waiting,” the first man said.
“It is warm there,” said the second man.
“It is honest there,” said the third man.
“It is where we have been keeping your seat,” said the fourth man.
The man felt the floor tilt beneath him, as though the entire space was slowly rotating toward that creaking doorway behind him. Warm air brushed his calves. The smell of old blood grew stronger.
“No,” he shouted, “I won’t go.”
“You are already going,” the first man said softly, “You have been going for twenty-eight years. One piece at a time.”
The man looked down at his hands. The colour was draining, fingers bleaching first, then palms, then wrists.
He tried to back away. His feet wouldn’t move.
The four figures each extended a hand, “Come home,” they said together.
The man’s vision flickered. The black began to redden at the edges, deep arterial red.
He saw flashes inside that red, four boys sitting on plain wooden chairs in a crimson room. No windows. No doors. Just red walls that seemed to breathe. And one empty chair between them.
He understood then. The four white figures were not ghosts. They were not even separate people. They were the four pieces of himself he had amputated that night, his compassion, his courage, his honesty, his shame and locked away behind the red door so he could keep living as the fifth piece, the one who walked away clean.
But the pieces had grown tired of waiting. They wanted the fifth piece back. They wanted the whole man. The red room was not a punishment. It was a reunion. The man’s knees buckled. He sank. The four hands closed around his arms, gently. His skin finished bleaching. His voice finished fading. He let them lead him backwards through the doorway; he could no longer refuse.
Inside, the red room was quiet. Four boys sat on four chairs, no longer white, no longer identical. They looked like themselves again
They looked at him. He looked at the empty chair. He sat, and when he did, the red walls sighed.
Five pieces. One man. Finally together. No more running. No more black. Only red. Only truth. Only silence.44Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7bLR5rCm1Y
and then Add to home screen.