Chapter 2
(flabby)
He opened his eyes and let out a hoarse cry. He wasn't sure why, but he felt compelled to scream, as if he had been holding it in for a long time, waiting for this moment, his chance to finally release it. It ripped from his throat, taking all the remaining air in his lungs with it.
The scream rattled at the end, his throat tight and dry, and he gasped for breath as though he had never before breathed. His heart pounded in his chest. He could feel it in his neck and hear it in his whoosh behind his ears. Anxiety and fear clouded his mind which hunted for awareness. He was in a state of panic and looked around wildly for familiarity, but saw nothing.
Unknowable moments passed this way before he slowly began to calm down. He inhaled deeply, tasting stale air filling his lungs. Then he exhaled slowly. After a few repetitions, he managed to somewhat get his breathing under control.
His heart continued to beat rapidly, pounding in his neck and ears, but even it was slowing and becoming bearable as his mind began to reawaken. He blinked his eyes several times and brought them into focus. He looked around. His brain was slowly starting to function again as his senses began registering once more.
He found himself lying on a smooth, flat, gray stone floor. The stone had no markings, texture, or patterns. He thought to himself that this substance couldn't be natural. His brain told him this, but he didn't know why or where this knowledge might have come from.
He moved his eyes to the walls and ceiling to compare them and examined them with a tickle of curiosity. They were the same gray substance as the floor, plain, unadorned, flat, and smooth, with obvious, darker gray lines demarcating the separation of the individual bricks, but nothing more.
He then noticed a threadbare cloth lying beneath him. It barely passed as a small blanket, more of a towel really. It was the only thing keeping him from lying on the stone floor itself, and in fact, the only other unattached item in the room he occupied.
He pushed himself up onto an elbow and noticed his naked body plastered to the floor. He stared at it, taking in the details as if it were the first time he had ever seen himself. It seemed familiar, but at the same time, different. His skin was pasty and white, pocked with acne scars and he wondered to himself, "Have I always been so pale?"
While his body felt like his own, it somehow also felt unusual.
His legs seemed too large, flabby, with no muscle tone or definition, which seemed to be the theme of his body in general. Even to look at them he needed to look around his round, protruding, yet ultimately saggy stomach. Extra skin hanging limply from the sides and bottom. His mind told him that his legs should have some definition from carrying around so much weight, but that was obviously not the case and he wondered what could have caused such circumstances.
But the most unusual and difficult part of his body to see and for him to deal with was what lay between his under-muscled legs. Just beneath his flabby stomach, his: little-man, was too small, inverted even. He had to pull up the rolls of fat and skin to even look at it properly. Granted, he was naked on a cold stone floor, but he wasn't sure he remembered it being quite so tiny before.
Actually, he didn't remember; remembering before. He tried to think back, to remember who he was, but there was nothing. He couldn't recall his name. He didn't know how old he was. He had no idea who his parents might be or anything else about himself or his past.
He thought about how he had just known what walls and the blanket were called, and found he still knew what things were. He knew the walls were called walls, and the cloth thing was a blanket.
"Can I talk?" He said out loud to test if he actually could talk. The voice which came out didn't sound right. It was nasally and flat like his nose was being pinched.
He slowly and ponderously began to stand, his joints and muscles protesting. With the help of the wall, he hesitantly moved his flabby body into an upright position. Once standing, he found he could walk, albeit with less stability than he would have liked. He moved around and looked more closely at where he was.
The room he was in was small, about five steps in any direction from the center, a perfect square. There was a door in the center of one wall, but no other exits or windows in the room. In fact, there was nothing else at all in here.
The more he scanned the room, the more he noticed that everything here was unnatural, artificially created. The walls and floor were smooth and bare, devoid of any natural features. He examined them closely and confirmed that they were made of the same unmarked substance as the floor. It was not stone and he decided he would no longer refer to it as such. It had none of the characteristics of stone.
He peered more closely, inspecting the substance for any clues to its identity. He moved his eyes closer, closer than he thought necessary to observe fine details. Finally, he could make out the small squares of color that made up the substance. The lines between the faux bricks were not mortar. They were artificial lines made up of randomly darkened squares to give the appearance of a brick wall, when in fact it was completely solid and flat.
A word came to his mind: "pixelated." The word brought with it the idea of computerized images created by changing the colors of squares, or pixels, on a screen. The idea was absurd, but the more he looked at the lines on the wall, the more the faux texture resembled the idea.
He followed the line until his eyes came into contact with the door. It was the only thing in this room not gray. He stared at it closely as well and was happy to see it was not made up of the same flat substance.
The door was actually somewhat large and made up of a dark wood, with an old, rusty pair of hinges noticeable on one side, but no knob. Its starkly different material makeup seemed so out of place in this room of gray nothingness that he had to double check by touching and feeling the grain of the wood before he believed it was real.
A thought then popped into his head: "There is no door knob, or knocker, or puller. No way to open or close the door from this side at all? Is this a prison cell?"
He looked more closely at the door, seeing it in int’s entirety, and realized there was a small opening in the center of the door. It was rectangular, wide rather than tall, and just large enough for a tray to fit through. It also had no way of opening it from this side of the door. "I AM in a prison cell," he thought to himself as panic began to set in once again.
The idea of being locked inside a prison cell was genuinely alarming, and he felt an immediate and urgent need to get out. He needed to find out who he was and why he was here!
He picked up the flimsy blanket from the floor and wrapped it around himself as best he could. The small size of the cloth was barely enough to fit around the girth of his waist. He shivered, not from the cold, but from the wave of shame that came over him. He felt his body was gross and ugly. The feeling of shame felt foreign though, as if someone else was feeling it for him, like he knew there was no reason for him to feel this way even though he did.
He shook his head to clear his mind of the strange mixture of emotions, both familiar and different, and approached the door. The room was dark and silent, except for the sound of his own breathing. He ran his chubby, short fingers around the edge of the door and felt that it was not completely closed. He gave it a small push, testing it, but the hinges creaked loudly in protest, breaking the silence.
Startled, he backed quickly away and huddled in a far corner, fear overwhelming him. Once again, his heart pounded in his ears, and his entire body quivered with fright. He imagined monsters of unspeakable horror lurking in the shadows, awakened by the harsh squeal of the rusty hinges. He waited and listened, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps.
Several minutes passed and nothing happened. No monsters came to devour him. Nothing seemed to change or move other than him. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, trying to calm himself down. When his heart rate finally slowed, slowly picked himself back up and stood once again. He moved to the door and peered cautiously through the small crack he had made.
Outside was gray, just as the inside of the room was gray. Light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He couldn't see anything moving, but he had a feeling that he was being watched.
Finally, his need for freedom and curiosity about what lay beyond the door took precedence, and he began to push once again. This time, he redoubled his effort. With a prolonged heave and an even more prolonged screech, the rusty hinges begrudgingly gave way and folded outward, and the door moved open. He winced the entire time at the excruciating sound, but he was able to move the door enough to slip his flabby body through.
He stepped tentatively through the doorway into a long hallway with the same gray artificial walls. A bank of fog hung static in each direction down the corridor as though it were being held at bay by some unseen force. The light was still diffuse, with no obvious source.
Large wooden doors, matching the one he had just opened, lined the walls on each side, spaced several feet apart in a staggered pattern. The fog limited his view to three doors down in either direction. The hall itself was wide; he could probably have all the doors open and be able to move around without much impediment.
He stood there, just outside his cell, his brain not yet comprehending the situation. Questions floated through his mind: Where was he? How had he gotten here? He watched the fog swirl and dance, as if blown by a cool breeze moving through unseen windows, yet bound within a seemingly transparent barrier.
"Wait, windows?" he thought to himself. He looked back into the cell he had just exited, but there was no window. He wondered if the other cells had windows. If so, he might be able to see outside and figure out where he was. But for some unknown reason, he doubted he would be able to see anything useful even if he did find a window.
A feeling of curiosity and excitement washed over him, though once again it felt alien and out of place. Logically, he knew he needed to move and try to figure out where he was and what was happening to him. But this newfound curiosity urged him to look everywhere, check everything, and take anything not nailed down.
Since nothing seemed to move but the fog in the hallway, even when he had loudly opened the door to his cell, he decided it was safe enough to satisfy his need for exploration and curiosity. He took ten steps to the door across the hall, counting them in an attempt to learn anything useful about this place.
The next door wasn't directly opposite the one he had exited, but was set about two doorways down the wall. He stared at the identical door and wondered if he should risk opening it.
The door was made of thick, dark wood slats, with a large metal ring attached to a metal plate on one side. The blackened plate wrapped around the side of the door and must have provided the latch or mechanism for keeping it closed. In the center of the door was a hole, or slide, for the food trays he had seen in his own cell door from the other side.
A rectangular opening centered in the door had a simple metal hinged flap that could be pulled downward to give access. It had a slightly raised cylindrical bar along the top to create a handle.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
He grabbed the ring of this second door, its cold metal biting into his fingers. He took a deep breath and tugged hard on the handle, fully intending for the hinges to scream in protest as it slowly gave way. But to his surprise, the door remained stubbornly shut. He pulled again, harder, but all he got for his effort were sore fingers. The door refused to budge.
He realized then that this door must be locked. He frowned in consternation. Why was it locked? And what was behind it? Could he try to talk to whoever or whatever was locked inside? Should he? He could knock first, but that might alert them to his presence. Did he want it to be known that he was out of his cell? Maybe he should just move on and try another door.
But in the end, his curiosity got the better of him. He reached for the small metal flap on the door. It was rusty and stuck in place, but with some effort, he managed to pry it open. The loud clack and screech of the hinge echoed down the hall, but then the sound seemed to end abruptly. It was as if the fog had absorbed it.
Jarow paused, listening for any other sounds, but there was nothing, no echo. It was as if the fog had absorbed the sound.
"Curious," Jarow thought to himself as he paused and scanned the hallway. After a moment of nothing new, he peeked inside the room.
The room beyond was empty, save for a very familiar looking small blanket on the floor. There was no window and no occupant. He stared, taking in as much as he could. Finally, he withdrew his eyes when he saw nothing else of interest.
In this overly quiet place of gray walls and brown doors, there wasn't anything else to do or see, and yet, for some reason, he felt in unusually good spirits. His mind told him that he should be at least frightened, since he had just woken up alone on a stone floor in a spooky hallway filled with prison cells. But his mood didn't change, and his overpowering curiosity pushed him forward down the hall once again.
He moved to the next door, noticing that the fog seemed to follow him, keeping pace with his every step. Another door appeared as he reached his destination. He was determined to figure out what was going on with the fog, but for now he had another room to explore.
This door was identical to the one he had come from, located the same distance away on the same side of the hallway as his was. He tugged on the metal handle, expecting it to be locked, but to his surprise, it opened easily.
"Well, that's nice." He spoke aloud, startled by the lack of resistance. Unlike his own door, this one swung open easily, without protest or ear-splitting sound. He yanked the handle hard, and the door swung open wide.
The interior of the room was exactly like the others: a flimsy blanket on the floor of an empty square chamber. Gray walls and floors, no window, nothing else.
"At least I have another blanket now," he said sarcastically as he picked up the cloth.
As he moved the blanket, a dark beetle-like insect scurried out into the hallway. "Oh good, I'm not the only living thing here. That's encouraging," he said dryly, only half-sarcastically this time.
In the back of his mind, he felt fear, uncertainty, and loneliness, but they didn't go beyond that. His general demeanor remained curious and almost happy, which made no sense to him.
It was as if his brain were simultaneously following two different paths of thinking and feeling, making it difficult for him to fully focus on either set of emotions. In the end, he decided to focus on the curious and happy side of things. The negative feelings felt closer to what he thought he should be feeling, but they also felt less intense and more distant. He decided that the negative feelings would only be an obstacle in his situation, and so decided to keep them locked away for now and focus on being functional in this extremely unusual situation.
With nothing more for him to see or do, he left this room and moved on to the next, which was also on the same side of the hallway as his original door. He found as he approached and tried to pull open the door once again that it was also locked, a pattern now forming in the different sides of the hall. He opened the flap and looked inside. No difference in this room either: a simple small blanket and gray walls.
He stepped over to the next door, which was again on the side of the hall where his original door had been. He pulled the handle, expecting the door to easily swing open, which it did, to reveal yet another empty room and another threadbare piece of cloth on the floor.
He wasn't sure what he would do with another blanket, but he took it anyway, the thought of accumulating anything not bolted down was still prominent in the forefront of his mind. He had used the last one to tie a makeshift top around his flabby manboobs.
As he picked up the flimsy piece of cloth from the floor of the room, he was startled to see a shiny metal key laying underneath the flimsy piece of cloth.
"Oh? What do we have here?" he asked as he picked up the key. "I'll bet you unlock the other doors." He turned the key over in his hand examining it. It was a simple skeleton key with two teeth at the end of the shaft and a finger hole on the other end. A small decorative flourish of the metal on each side of the shaft connected it to the finger hole. It was a dull gray but had small areas where the tarnish had worn away, revealing the bright, silver metal underneath.
Happy to have finally found something useful, he slid the key on his finger and twirled it as he walked back out into the hallway and over to the next door in the hall, this one on the opposite side, the side with the locked doors.
He briefly considered going backwards and using the key to unlock the doors he had already passed, being only able to peer inside, but he knew their contents already, so chose to move forward. He assumed he could always return if he decided to. The fog moved along behind him as he moved, it now covered the original door he had come from, which gave him a small pause, but ultimately didn’t keep him from continuing his forward progression.
He arrived at the next door and yanked on the handle to make sure it was locked. All of the others on this side of the hall had been so far, and true to pattern, this door set firmly in place as he pulled.
It didn't budge as he had foretold, so he grasped the key firmly in his hand and began searching for a hole to stick it in. He checked the metal bracket where the ring was attached, since this was the most obvious place for a keyhole, but found none. He then lifted the ring, and checked around the metal flap. But to his utter astonishment, there was no hole.
"How can there be no keyhole? How else would you unlock these doors?" he questioned the wall. He had hoped that finding the key would change something, that he would be able to find something new behind a locked door, that something would lead him to the end of the hall, or at least be something useful, but this complication just left him more baffled and aggravated.
"This place is getting confusing," he thought to himself as he slowly moved his head from side to side to get his mental juices flowing. He analyzed what he knew.
"The doors on the other side of the hall are open, this side are locked. The fog stays the same distance away and moves at the same pace as I do." He tried to piece together what he had learned so far. He hadn't tried moving faster towards the fog, and briefly considered sprinting towards it, but he felt a soreness in his hip forming from standing too long and abandoned that thought.
He really didn’t know much else about this place other than there was a bug here somewhere and that he now had a key that didn't seem to unlock any doors. He couldn’t make sense of it. Worry and fear crept back into his mind, but he quickly suppressed them. There was no point in letting himself get down now and he had nothing better to do, so let his strange cheerful curiosity lead him once again.
He walked over to the other side of the hall where the next door was located. His negative feelings still tickled at the back of his mind, but the sense of exploration kept him searching for answers.
He examined the door, checking for a keyhole, as he had with the last door, but found none. He yanked on the ring and easily swung the door open. This time, instead of entering the room right away, he spent a moment to check the metal bracket which wrapped around the side of the door. It was solid, no holes or anything resembling a latch or locking mechanism. There was nothing at all to keep the door closed.
"More and more confusing," he thought to himself. Walking into the room. Then something caught his eye, something different. This room had a window.
The small window was set in the wall about twenty feet up from the floor and had metal bars crisscrossing it. Much too high for him to climb up to let alone look out of. The bars definitely barred any hope of escape as well.
"I guess I'm not looking outside then," he thought sarcastically.
He picked up the blanket from the floor, but didn't discover anything underneath it, not even another bug. He was accumulating a decent collection of thin blankets, though. The absurdity of the thought made him smile slightly.
He shook his head again as if clearing out cobwebs. "Why would that make me smile? Why would I be happy? This entire situation sucks. I should be screaming, not chuckling." He berated himself. He was actually getting mad at himself for being so chipper.
It seemed that anger was another emotion that he couldn't fully access at the moment. He could think about it, he knew he should be feeling it, but just couldn't find the correct path for it in his mind.
He looked up at the window one last time, but saw nothing but darkness beyond. There was nothing to see here, not even a star twinkling in the darkness beyond the bars of the small opening.
Compelled to move on, he walked further down the hall to where stood the next door. It was on the locked door side of the hall, and stayed true to the pattern. He yanked on the handle, searched for a keyhole, and then finally looked through the flap, but saw nothing out of the ordinary
As he approached the next door, a wave of unease washed over him. He looked around and listened intently, but detected nothing unusual. Still, a sense of uneasiness accompanied him as he crept forward towards the door.
Paranoia and curiosity battled in his mind. He felt more strongly than ever before that he had to open this door, even though he didn't know why. At the same time, a bout of extreme anxiety clamped onto his mind and fear of something dire about to happen sent shivers up his spine.
He padded forward slowly, tiptoeing to remain silent, his head swiveled back and forth, watching, searching. His muscles tensed, ready to run or act on a moment's notice. His entire posture and mindset were tense and strung tight, ready to act at the slightest change to the environment around him.
He gripped the ring of the door and almost pulled, but hesitated, his hand arrested by the anxiety and fear of what lay beyond. He once again felt as though he were being watched, and studied like prey for an unseen predator. His fear told him that any noise could trigger an attack.
His mind whirled. A few moments ago, he had been feeling happy-go-lucky, despite not understanding why he wasn't crying in a corner. Now, he shivered with fear, thinking even his own shadow might be an enemy. "This place is completely crazy," he thought solemnly to himself.
He knew he had to pull the door open, though. He was caught. His paranoia and fear paralyzed him, but his need to act gnawed at him. His heart pounded, and sweat ran down in rivulets over his entire body. He could feel the thin blankets soaking up the sweat and clinging moistly to his skin.
Finally, when he could take it no more, he closed his eyes and with a silent mental plea for nothing to eat him, yanked the door open with more force than absolutely necessary.
This door swung open without resistance, and his hand, slippery from sweat, slipped off the ring and sent the door careening into the wall with a loud bang. The clang of the metal ring hitting the stone quickly followed by the thud of the wood hitting just after.
His hands were slick with sweat, but he didn't notice as he yanked on the doorknob. The door swung open with a bang, and he stumbled backward, trying to catch his balance. He wobbled for a moment, his heels teetering on the edge of the doorway. Then, he overcorrected and toppled forward, landing on his knees with a thud.
The door rebounded off the wall and slammed into his side, knocking him over onto his back. He lay there for a moment, stunned, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He had never felt so clumsy and embarrassed in his life.
“Fuck!” he said loudly as he reacted to the door hitting him. His knees hurt from colliding with the stone floor. The expletive covering both his injury and his surprise.
His eyes were open as he lay there, but his brain didn’t fully register what he saw before him. He instinctively pushed himself to a kneeling position, his brain still processing the sight before him. He noticed something inside the room and shifted his gaze upward, focusing on exactly what lay ahead of him on the floor of the now open room.
He instantly forgot about what had just happened with the door. All sense of pain, fear, and paranoia instantly erased. These emotions were replaced with surprise, fascination, and more than a little disgust.
On the floor before him, in the now open cell, lay a mangled body. Its limbs were crushed, its bones protruding from its skin at awkward angles. Cuts and dried blood covered its torn skin.
It lay face down, naked, its muscles withered and emaciated, virtually nonexistent. Its tanned skin stretched tightly over its narrow, brittle bones, giving it a skeletal appearance. Yet something about it seemed familiar.
The compulsion returned, and without realizing his actions, he moved forward. He crawled over the stone floor, his knees stinging from the impact and his skin scraping against the rough surface, but his brain barely registered the pain.
His focus was completely centered on the corpse in front of him.
He crawled to its side, the sense of familiarity growing stronger with each passing moment. He began to shiver. He wasn't sure if it was from the sweat soaked rags wrapped around his body, the anticipation, or the fear that gripped him. His body seemed to be acting on its own volition.
A voice screamed in the back of his mind, repeatedly warning him to stop. It screamed at him to stop, telling him he didn't want to know, that he should leave the thing alone.
He ignored it. It didn't stop him.
He came up beside the corpse and pushed it over. It felt too light, barely any weight to it at all. The shoulder blade was still intact somehow which made the top half of the corpse easy to roll over. He pulled the shoulder up and pushed it to the other side so that the face of the corpse now faced upward.
The face on the corpse, it was his face. Not his face now, though. He inhaled deeply and his hands immediately moved to his face where he adeptly felt the curvature of this new face, round, hairy, and dimpled with acne scars.
He stared at his old face, his real face. It was lean, angular, and shaved, yet even through the blood and scars, it looked handsome. He didn't understand. He couldn't fathom what was happening. His brain refused to let go of either identity. He was there, lying on the floor. But he was also here in this flabby older body kneeling over his own corpse.
He was finally able to grasp why he had never felt truly home in this body. It wasn’t his own. He was unsure why he was in it, unsure what caused him to move from his old body to this older, fatter, less desirable body. He had no idea what had happened to him, to his body which lied before him. He knew he couldn’t have survived whatever had happened.
“How am I still here? How am I in another person’s body? Who was this person?” His mind began posing the questions.
Within this fear and anxiety ridden moment of panic and realization, a window appeared before his eyes. It was a pale yellow glowing square with rounded edges. The image shocked him, and caused him to skitter backward in surprise until his back hit the wall.
The window had white writing in it. The font was squarish, it almost looked like old LED lettering. It read:
You have discovered your old body. Do you wish to loot? [ Yes/No ]
He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Loot? What did that mean? His old body?
As if in response to his mental questions, at an unimaginable speed, images and thoughts flew into his mind. A life, a family, friends, heartache, despair, joy, longing, fear, and then the crash that killed him. He watched and felt his entire life within seconds. His brain felt like it was about to explode from the intensity of the memories.
Then, as soon as the memories began to sink in, they began to fade once again. The memories, the sensations, the feelings. They were not lingering, not staying in place where they should, they were being forcefully withdrawn.
As much as it had hurt to have all these memories crammed into his brain at once, the feeling of them being ripped away felt even worse. While the removal of the memories wasn't painful, the sense of loss was devastating to him.
Though the process took only seconds, it felt like an eternity. Tears streamed down his face and his body heaved with exhaustion and sobs of loss. He slumped to the floor, utterly destroyed.
Through the ordeal, he retained only a few distinct pieces of information. One of the few things he remembered was his name: Jarow. He could vaguely remember being crippled and that he couldn’t walk or move much in his old life. This explained why the body before him was so skinny and brittle.
He could also remember his parents. It wasn't a complete memory, it was more like their images were burned into his brain, like a mental photograph. They didn't move or have any memories associated with them. He simply knew who they were and what they looked like. His parent’s names: Martin and Eva Holloman.