A milky smooth whiteness greeted the man. As far as the naked eye could tell, there appeared to be nothing else for miles on end. As the man stood there, wondering where exactly everything was, and how quiet it had become, a knock came from nearby. From the seamless white expanse, a door pushed open as another individual showed themselves.

“Hello,” the man welcomed.

“Hi.”

“Do you know where we are?” the man asked.

“Aren’t we here to play?”

The man observed his empty surroundings, nothing but white. “What are we playing?”

The individual waved their arms with a little pizzazz. A toolkit of sorts materialized between the two. Brilliant paints and stencils, colorful pastels and pencils, and a beaming smile from the individual invited the man to draw.

“Where’s the canvas?” he asked.

The individual grabbed one of the paintbrushes from the receptacles. After dipping the tip in lemon yellow, they lashed their paintbrush vertically upward, forming a splash of color that miraculously hung in the air. The man inspected this new paint smear seemingly suspended like some colloid. As he got closer, gawking and squinting, he realized the paint did not actually hover midair but rather adhered to a wall. Curiously pressing his palm out onto this white wall, he shuffled over until he reached a corner. He continued walking around, tracing out the walls with his bare hands, hitting two more corners. Eventually, he had made his way back to the paint smear. It turned out the ceilings, the walls, and maybe even the air all camouflaged together because everything was milky white. It was none other than a white room that he had found himself in.

The individual handed the man another paintbrush from the toolkit.

“What should I draw?”

“Something pretty,” the individual suggested.

The man contemplated for a few minutes before summoning his inner romanticism (the art movement, not the one involving lovey-dovey feel-goods). Alternating through an arsenal of brushes and assorted acrylics mixed on his ceramic palette, he applied himself wholeheartedly, fully immersed in his own imagination. By the time he finished the final layer, he took a step back to proudly examine his own handiwork.

“Wowzers,” the individual admired.

White clouds shrouding snow capped summits overlooked their own mirror image down in the clear lake below. Little black arches representing ravens soared near the mountain crests, the hillside stippled in frosty green pines.

The individual beckoned the man over. “Come look at mine.”

Golden and twinkling, the individual’s painting radiated a nostalgic warmth. A cozy fireplace illuminated a burgundy rug guarded by cotton sofas. Steaming mugs of hot chocolate cooled on seasonal coasters at the dining table. Ornaments dazzled from a Christmas tree with the fragrance of pine wafting through the living room. And the individual themselves surrounded by their family in the kitchen, making cookies, produced a cohesive narrative far more compelling than the man’s. It wasn’t merely an exposition.

Music began to play. The man recognized it as a Christmas carol. Redirecting his eyes to the source, the man saw the individual cradling a small retro boombox as if it were a baby. The individual swayed back and forth in glee, caroling to the man, “You’re no Grinch, mister.”

“No. Well, I’m not at all green.”

The individual frowned in puzzlement. “That’s a weird way to put it.”

The man smiled. He couldn’t help but feel a wonderful state of bliss. Like the comfort of home after having been gone for so many years, the redolent aroma of gingerbread and hot chocolate effusing from the individual’s painting smothered his soul with love and affection, placing him under a spell.

“You want to come with me?” they offered.

“Where to?”

The individual tapped their own painting, enlarging its area by twenty-fold. The family members, the furniture, the fixtures, and everything else depicted in the painting exploded in size. Deliberately and decisively, the individual maintained eye contact with the man while striding forward, disappearing into their own picture.

The man now looked before him.

The painting had sparked to life. The flames in the fireplace flickered. The family members and the individual could be seen rolling out dough, cutting shapes, and powdering cooled trays of cookies with confectioners’ sugar, laughing and chatting about something the man couldn’t hear.

How silent did the white room become without the individual? He looked over at his own painting and then back to the one animated before him. In his mind, he thought maybe it’d be nice.

He slowly poked his index into the drawing. A soothing warmth immediately embraced his finger. It made him slightly euphoric. Pulling back, he slipped off his shoes and placed them to the side.

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“Pardon my intrusion,” he announced. He took a step forward into the painting.

“So bright!” Rubbing his eyes and tumbling over, he felt his body hit the ground. Thud.

The cold floor jolted him into reality. He steadily hoisted himself up. At his headboard, he found the bright spot where the sun had peeked through under the blinds, perfectly shining on the indent in the pillow where his head lay moments ago.

He turned to face his reflection in the closet door mirror. Disheveled, grumpy, and ridden with bed hair, the man grunted. He trudged to the kitchen.

Stacks of dishes cluttered the sink. The stovetop had some burn marks on it. Bringing out a black pot from a cabinet underneath, he filled it halfway before setting it on the stovetop, cranking the heat to high and chucking in a handful of spaghetti. Without a second thought, he retreated back into his bedroom to go on his phone.

The first and second notifications on his screen displayed “Ye is missing” followed by “Chess scandal involving vibrational beads.” The third notification read, “Janna’s hot dog water.” The fourth notification exclaimed, “Your Giant Chest is ready to open!”

The man touched his own chest. They reminded him of barren flatlands. In fact, his entire body had nothing to show for.

Mindlessly scrolling through everything his social media and video recommendations had to offer without keeping track of time, the familiar sound of sizzling entered his ears. He hopped off his bed and back to the pot, blowing down the foam overflowing onto the stovetop. He snatched the leftover meat sauce from his refrigerator, mixing it in with the hastily strained overcooked pasta in a bowl. Once calmly situated at his tiny dining room table, he ate with his phone in his right hand.

A sense of boredom numbed his mind as he sparingly took a bite here and there. There was no particular purpose in what he read or watched. It was as if a perpetual fog obscured his reasoning and he couldn’t remember why he did some of the things he did a few minutes ago.

Upon consumption of his breakfast, he sunk his dirty bowl into the sink. Jacket, car keys, house keys, and with phone already glued in hand, he exited his dingy apartment, descending into the freezing underground garage and into his old Honda, coughing from the musty odor of leather and a sour pair of socks balled up next to some crumpled crackers in the backseat.

He drove outside. White snow glittered in patches. Neighborhood children ran around on their lawns and into the streets. Decorative inflatables of red and white waved at passersby. He couldn’t quite piece together the phenomenon. This mood of unbounded jubilance and mystical wonder seemed unfounded to him. Where did all this energy and spirit come from?

Driving to the sandwich shop he worked at, he unknowingly fussed at all the red lights, the slow automobiles, and the crossing elderly pedestrians who ironically moved as if they had all the time in the world. And to his dismay, as he pulled up into the plaza where he worked and got out, he found the sandwich shop dark and vacant.

“Closed for Christmas,” the sign showed behind the glass. It now dawned on him. He felt dumb. Really dumb.

Surveying the empty parking lot and the multicolored lights bedecking the eaves of local businesses, he sat back down in his car. An indescribable, nagging sensation bugged him. Like the seed to a thought, it sprouted with its roots digging deep into the recesses of his mind. He turned on the radio in frustration.

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”

Normally, he would have muted the music if it sounded too halcyon. His reasoning was that it evoked a sense of dread within him, knowing moments like these don’t last forever. But he didn’t cut the radio this time. After listening for a while, he began to hum along.

By the time he made his way back home, he remembered he heard “The Christmas Song” at some point last night in that white dream of his. Everything looked white in the room, like a blank canvas, a tabula rasa, until the individual showed up. They were painting something happy.

Going in front of his computer, he decided to browse the internet as usual to occupy his mind, watching and reading some more until his room darkened. It was getting late. His stomach grumbled. Alone, slightly anxious as he always had been in his single bedroom apartment, he darted to his fridge to grab his bag of leftovers, a sandwich probably from yesterday or if not, the day before that. “Two minutes in the microwave you go, you hot pastrami,” he nervously personified.

The sandwich rotated on the turntable, the cheese gradually melting and the bread sweating oil. The man occasionally peeked over his shoulder or into the darkness of his dining room.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

He carefully carried the piping hot pastrami out and tippy-toed back into his bedroom, bolting the door shut before delicately nibbling on his dinner while another video on his computer played.

“Despite their cute and cuddly appearance, the domestic house cat is nothing less than an apex predator, primarily carnivorous crepuscular hunters who stalk their prey in the wee hours of the morning or into the later hours of the evening.”

He opened a new tab, typing in the search bar, “What do cats eat?”

“Cats have to have protein from meat. Cooked poultry or beef are best, and deli can be given sparingly.”

“Are cats hard to take care of?”

“Cats are quite independent relative to dogs. They are much easier to take care of in terms of attention and cleanliness.”

“Should I get a cat?” The man typed this next query into the search bar but did not hit enter. He rotated in his chair to inspect his own bedroom. Dirty laundry strewn all over his floor and empty water bottles huddled at the foot of his desk. If one scrutinized for any corners or crevices, one would find accumulated dust and cobwebs, neglected and gray. Maybe if he got a cat he would have a reason to rid all the filth he harbored in his apartment. Perhaps the cat might even help himself become clean once more, to become a decent human being. It’s true, he thought. He couldn’t remember the last time he cared so deeply for another living thing.

Click. Click. Tap. Tap. The man stayed up past midnight playing video games, occasionally hearing the vrooms of speeding cars and the spray of uncoordinated fireworks through the little gap he left in his window. It was only a little gap and nothing more. As abrupt as the holiday spirit that emanated out into the open winter like columns of smoke rising from the fire brick chimneys, so too did its cessation. Only the ambient rustling of leaves could be perceived in place of the once convivial night. The chill in the room had grown quite noticeable. He found himself with his knees tucked into his chest, his thin frame shivering. As he reached to check his phone, his hand rigidly grasped, icy cold and stiff.

“3:56 AM.”

He put his computer to sleep and brought his phone with him to bed, curling up in his blankets as he turned off the bright lamp on his nightstand. With only the tiny little screen of his phone to keep him company, he scrolled through whatever the internet suggested, his mind laxly drifting away like tufts of clouds.

In the darkness of his bedroom, only the bright little screen of his phone could comfort him. There was no lingering fear of loneliness or the daunting existential dread moments before one fell asleep. There was only the prospect of oblivion as he held his device in his hand, dozing off before he could even realize what was happening to him.