Fred came from the bathroom back to his room and closed the door. He was fifteen and it really annoyed if his parents could hear what he was doing in his place.

            The TV ad had already ended by that time. He missed more than a minute of the new episode of the animated series, which was replete, though, with rudeness and sex scenes. But the lad didn't care. He plopped down into the chair just right in front of the TV, threw his head back and closed his eyes.

            This story no longer exists for me, just like all the others, he thought. They no longer help, they are no longer addictive, no longer distract from reality. And the reality… still it pressures me more and more...

            Fred opened his eyes and looked at the shelving unit in the very corner to the right of the TV. Its shelves were filled with hundreds of shabby paperback books. There were many classic novels and stories, some books by Stephen King and Philip K. Dick, a dozen volumes of unfinished manga, and even a couple of books on philosophy among them. The lad enjoyed reading, but since the room appeared in his life, he lost interest in many things that were fascinating to him before. He would pick up a book occasionally, diligently devouring word after word, line after line, page after page, though it didn’t last long. Thoughts drifted away in the same direction every single time.

            Just like now.

            The room.

            It was not the room he was in. He was thinking about a different place. He tried to bring its walls, floor and ceiling back to life in his memory and, although he had been there more than once, he failed to do so. As soon as he left the room, its image escaped, leaving only a feeling.

            The room.

            But at least he remembered how terrifying the first time entering it felt. He remembered the moment he touched the handle with a trembling hand, and then, hearing the blood pounding in the ears, let it go. He must have stood at the door for forty minutes before he finally got inside.

            Fred turned his head and looked at the wall to his right: an unmade bed stood in the corner and a window was above it; but most of the wall was just wallpapered. There was not a single poster or a shelf.

The boy was peering into it for quite a while, but he didn't see anything there and so moved his eyes back to the TV screen.

‘It won't show up without the key,’ he said out loud and started rubbing the strap of his pants belt.

            Meanwhile, the anime continued. Fred had no clue what was going on. Scenes followed one after the other, characters were arguing, agreeing and fighting over something. He started to think that he'd missed the whole episode rather than the last two or three minutes. Suddenly he grabbed the remote control and turned the TV off. The black mirror immediately appeared in front of him, reflecting his hazy ghostlike silhouette lit by the grey light from the window.

            I guess I'm transforming into it, Fred grinned.

            But what am I supposed to do? How could I get away from all this? he asked himself.

            The room got painfully silent.

            But Fred seemed to have heard something, as he always did. He could hardly ever find himself at peace. He stood up, walked slowly to the window and looked out: separated from the roadway by a chain-link fence, there was a railroad track right in front of their house. Farther lied a forest. Eight years ago a train run over a little girl, a friend of Fred. He didn't remember her much now.

            The room.

            The room.

            Each time it’s getting harder and harder to get out of it.

            Fred rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily.

            Each time I want it less and less...

            Maybe I should go to bed?..

            At that moment, Fred heard a loud sound behind him. He gave a start of surprise and turned around. The screen of the phone lying on the table was lit; he got a new message.

            And the lad already knew what was there.

            The key.

            He picked up the phone, read the message to make sure and then deleted it. He stood in silence a little longer, not realizing what thoughts were crossing his mind. Then he put on a black hoodie, approached the door and listened attentively. Silence. His father hadn't come home from work yet and his mother was probably watching a soap opera in the bedroom. Having leaned against the wall, Fred waited patiently. At some point a subtle sound of shuffling footsteps came from the hallway, and a second later the latch on the bathroom door clicked.

            Fred sprang out of the room, threw on a jacket, slipped his feet into the sneakers, grabbed the keys from the table, and half a minute later he was rushing downstairs.

            She will probably get mad at me for leaving like that when she wasn’t looking, he thought, tying his shoelaces and buttoning up his jacket before he went outside, but that’s okay. She'll be pissed off while I'm gone, and when I’m back, she'll calm down.

            As always.

            The key thing is to distract her when coming back, to say something meaningless, something about the weather, just to draw her into a chit-chat. And she will drop her complaints shortly.

            How easy it is to mislead you, Mom, Fred thought wistfully and shuddered. He was often ashamed of himself for taking advantage of it.

            Having hidden his hands in the pockets, he walked past his house and turned the corner of the next one onto the road, where the pavement was heavily cracked and cars were a rare occasion. On the other side the sidewalk was bordered by dead grass. They were separated by a chain-link fence, which was followed by the rails. Right at that moment he heard the awfully familiar train whistle somewhere in the distance.

            Fred crossed the road, got closer to the fence and saw the rapidly approaching freight train to his left. He tried to imagine how that girl could have felt. Did she have time to see it? To understand what was happening? She hardly felt the hit, didn’t she?

            I hope she didn’t, Fred thought, as the winds from the wagons blew around him.

            He gazed after the last carriage for a while, and then turned around and walked along the sidewalk toward the bridge where the train rushed off. Gradually dusk was falling, and the forest behind the railroad was turning into a dark, ominous wall where no single pine could be distinguished. And there was the turn. Right there a road that crossed the rails entered their district from somewhere behind the forest. Fred had found their town, the district and that very road on Google maps more than once. According to them, it stretched far north, and for hundreds of miles it repeatedly turned off into small towns by the rivers and lakes, until it reached a major city where it was completely lost and divided into three similar roads.

            What kind of people live there? Fred thought. Are they really the same as people here?

            I hope not.

            Being completely mesmerized by the blinking traffic light above the barrier for a while, the boy moved on, and within ten minutes he reached the house where Andy and Danny, two brothers, lived. The older one was his classmate. Fred's thoughts suddenly turned to what everyone was discussing at school that day–their disappearance.

            The boy frowned.

            The rumors said they had run away from home. Most likely the previous night, because their mother assured that they came home after school and went to bed as always.

            But their mother’s memory was not the one to rely on, as she was known to be a fervent lover of getting drunk. Moreover, she had a hangover that morning.

            Maybe that's why they had run away, Fred thought, watching his steps.

            The older generation is running away from its reality, creating a reality for the next generation to run away from. It goes on and on. Nothing will ever change here.

            A policeman interrogated the students that morning. But no one knew anything. The boys didn't tell anyone where they were going or when they were coming back. Besides, their mother claimed that all their everyday clothes were still in place. Pants, coats, jackets, shoes–so they could have prepared some other clothes to take with them beforehand, or they left in their pajamas.

            Bullshit, Fred thought, and cast a strange glance at the darkening forest behind the railroad, which, frankly speaking, had been frightening him since he was a kid.

            Probably they’re hiding in the warehouses.

            Having turned at the first corner in order to get farther away from the woods, Fred got to Main Street and soon stopped in front of the bridge.

            There you are, he thought.

            Long high bridge served as a river crossing, and the cars of the same color sped back and forth on its wide lanes. A little lower there was the railroad, where fifteen minutes earlier a train passing by near Fred’s own house had been seen.

            Fred stopped aside and peered into the distance reflecting in the water. Absolutely different world sprawled across on the other side of the bridge; it was clearly seen even from his point. Basically, it had nothing in common with the place behind his back. People there wore expensive suits, drank good coffee and worked with papers; but people on his side wore castoff clothes, boozed up and stole wheels. There were stores with good food, as well as dental clinics and private psychologists; on his side tattoo studios sold guns with scraped off serial numbers, video rental stores removed bullets and closed wounds, and motels offered fifteen-year-old whores. Buildings there drowned in the sky, pricking it with their spires; on his side they sank in the ground, sagging deeper and deeper each year. This place was a real dump. Every night someone was raped, robbed, or murdered. And the ones who didn’t get involved in this were stupid and lazy, not interested in anything and unwilling to understand things. Fred himself associated his district with urine, the orange morning urine of a wasted junkie. Everything was pissed and shit, and no one seemed to notice it, no one wanted to do anything about it.

            That’s the pit where Fred, who used to love reading Steinbeck and Dreiser together with Heinlein, happened to have been born. There he was brought into the world, soon coming to a bitter realization that something was wrong, that he was out of place, that either he was rejecting the district or the district was rejecting him. He couldn’t manage to find a place for himself: he never felt good and calm at home; everyone gave him the cold shoulder at school. He didn’t fit in and felt lonely all his life.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

            An eternal outsider, he thought of himself, wherever I come, wherever I go. Forever outside of all social circles. Maybe I shouldn't have read all those books…

            His peers didn’t understand him very often. They didn't share his interests, his views. Although he didn’t have any communication problems–he wasn’t an autistic or some sociopath, maybe just a bit of an introvert–people didn’t make friends with him, they avoided him. Everywhere and always he appeared to be a stranger, a man whose appearance in the company made people go silent, smirking and exchanging glances. He wasn’t pushed off directly, of course, but he was obviously considered strange behind his back. And the longer he stayed alone, the more different he became, being more and more improper for those people and that place.

            But on the other side of the bridge nobody cared about him either. It had been hammered into his head since he was a child, and he had learned this lesson well. Once his mother even told him that people living in the Central District could order a policeman to arrest him–for nothing!–and he still remembered it. Of course, now he understood that it was nonsense, but it had left its aftertaste and the damage had already been done.

            But what about Dad? he thought back then. What about Dad? He works across the bridge!

He was genuinely afraid for his father since he had been working in the Central District, and still did. His mother explained this by saying that his father was a grown man, so it was okay, but children were not tolerated there.

And Fred believed it, getting used to seeing high-rise buildings on the other side of the river as a threat, something you better not mess with.

            Although his father didn't approve of her parenting style, he stayed out of it. He was in need of perfectly tidy white shirts every morning, so he didn't take the risk of arguing with his wife. By the way, he didn’t work in a high-rise building with a spire in the sky, but he did work on the outskirts of the Central District, in some godforsaken laundry in a narrow street. He wore his shirt only to show off to his neighbors. He liked rubbing roll-on deodorant in the morning, wearing a tie around his neck, getting in his old rusty Ford, and driving through Main Street to the bridge in such a manner that everyone could watch him.

Fred pondered this dolefully. He felt sorry for his father; it must be him Fred had inherited the poignancy from, which made Fred feel the futility of living in that place. His dad must have walked around the shitty district long time ago, unprepared for the future, shaking in fear of what was in store for him.

            Am I doomed for the same thing? Fred wondered, looking at the slow, lazy waters of the river under the bridge. To live all my life among the trash, earning a pittance at a shitty job? Beer and talk shows in the evening? Fighting with a wife, who is disappointed with life just like you?

            And to listen through thin walls to the screams of drunken neighbors threatening to slaughter each other?

            Is that really what it's all about?

            God, is it really gonna be so?

            Fred had once read in a book that time doesn’t really exist, that it is only an imperfect sense of space, its fourth dimension. It means everything that ever happened, and everything that is yet to happen, exists at the same time as the present.

            And we just can't see it, because our perception is three-dimensional. So it seems that we are rushing, rushing, rushing somewhere, but in fact we are standing still, because there is nowhere to rush, because there is no future.

            Everything is always.

            Fred turned around and took a look at his district, covered in ash and soot.

            And this is my always.

            Having pulled his hood over the head, Fred wandered away from the bridge.

            I have to go to my room, he thought, it is my only way to break away from this ugly, disgusting reality.

            God, why? Why am I me?

            Why am I HERE?!

Heading for the motel, Fred occasionally looked around to make sure that no junkie was following him. As he walked, it got dark, and the streetlights were turning on along the roads. Soon he saw the red lights of a signboard in front of him. For the fourth year, the motel located by the barren wasteland had been trying to pass itself off as a strip bar.

When Fred got closer, he stopped across the street. To the left of the motel there was an entering into the parking, which was in the back and was flooded with light of a lantern hanging over the back door.

As soon as the lad managed to see the administrator, who was standing by the front desk, through the window, he sneaked into the parking lot and, hiding in the shadows, stopped at a large trash can, concealed from the administrator’s eyes by a white track, which had perfect timing. He threw a glance at the dark windows, lifted the lid of the container, poked around and quickly found there the key.

            He put it in his pocket, sighed deeply, and quickly left the territory of the motel.

            He turned left, then right, then, as he passed two houses, he was back on the street along the railroad. The forest beyond was no longer visible. When he saw the traffic light flashing an eerie red eye over the barrier gate in the darkness, he flinched, clutched the key in his pocket, and ran home.

            Having rushed up the stairs to the fifth floor, he skidded to a halt at the door. His father wasn't supposed to be back yet since it wasn't more than five o'clock. He opened the door quietly, tiptoed into the hallway, and listened. There was a rattling sound of either pots or pans in the kitchen together with a TV. Great, maybe she didn't even notice he was leaving!

            Fred took the shoes off and walked into the room as quietly as possible, and carefully closed the door behind him. Then he turned around to look at the wall, at that very part of it near the bed, which was wallpapered but empty, that very part of it, which he had been peering into before he went for a stroll.

            Now there was a door.

            Fred took the key out of the pocket and hid it under the bed, Fred took off his jacket, threw it on the floor, and sat down in a chair.

            It was just some ordinary door made of wood, with a keyhole under the handle. You could think it was a closet if the window on the left wasn’t there to prove that the street was right behind the wall.

            Fred took the remote control and turned the TV on. The anime had obviously ended a while ago; now there was some dumb show for teenagers. But it didn't matter, he wasn't listening anyway. He just needed some background noise to drown out the vibrations of the future that had already come, to ease the anguish that invariably overwhelmed him after dark. And the more idiotic the show was, the better it served the purpose.

            How old am I? Fred thought, looking up at the ceiling. Fifteen? Or maybe twenty-five? Or even thirty-five?

            Does it make any difference? Would I feel any difference? We're here and there at the same time. Then how can I tell?

            God, how can I see?

            How? How? How?!  

            Fred stood up quickly with his fists clenched. At that second he looked like a pale ghost in a dark room lit only by a single TV screen. A ghost that only an hour and a half ago was just in a reflection.

            I can't. I can't do this. I can't see this room anymore, how long have I been here? I don't even know how long I've been here, maybe a hundred years!

            Clutching his head, he started whirling around the chair.

            I have to wait until my father comes back home, he thought frantically, until my parents go to bed. I can't unlock the room in front of them, they shouldn’t see it, otherwise they'll take everything away.

            Otherwise... I won't get in there again.

            He turned abruptly and stared at the door to the room.

            On the other hand, I might just not come back from there, right? suddenly dawned on him. I may try to stay there this time and not even come back. After all, what's keeping me here?

            Fred giggled nervously.

            Nothing at all. At all.

            Shocked at the thought, he locked the hall door, got the key from under the bed, stood in front of the other door–the one to the room–and put his palm on it.

            Mother, he thought, my mother is long dead. So is my father. So are Andy and Danny, and that girl who got hit by the train.

            They all died at the same time. They were all dead from the very beginning.

            So was I.

            Fred put the key in the lock, winced for a second as if he got a shot, then pressed the handle of the door and pushed it.

            This is what reality is supposed to look like. It should be space where there is no fear and anxiety, where there is no doom. Where you can't be forced to do what you don't want to do all your life, where you can just be at peace.

            He entered and the door shut behind him slowly.

            This is what reality should be. There, outside, is someone’s blunder.

            Fred turned and looked at the door.

            ‘Disappear,’ he told it. ‘I won’t come back. This time I’m determined to stay.’

            But the door was still there.

            ‘Fine,’ he said to it, walked to the opposite wall, leaned against it, and slid down to the floor.

            He looked around. The room was only about 193 square feet with no windows or furniture. It was completely empty, and not even well lit by the only light bulb hanging from the ceiling on the wire.

            It’s weird, Fred thought, that I keep forgetting it.

            Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

            I'm not leaving this time. No. I don't want to! This time I’m staying. I'm not afraid of anything here. And I don't care about anything, neither my parents, nor school.

            I'm staying.

            I'm staying!

            ‘I'M STAYING!’ shouted Fred and looked at the door through which he still could return.

            He laid down on the floor and curled up in the fetal position. It's so good in here, it's always so good in here! Who in their right mind could forego it?

            Yes, there might be a lot of beauty in the outside world, but it's not accessible to all. And no matter how hard you try, you'll stay down in the dirt forever, reaching for the beautiful, but being rejected by it.

            And here you got everything a human being needs. After all, everyone seeks peace. The room immerses you in it. It always knows what you want, what state you seek, and grants it to you. It is the best of all possible places.

            I've made up my mind this time. I'm staying.

            But in a moment Fred opened his eyes abruptly. He found himself struck with a pain in his chest. All of a sudden, his heart felt as though it was in a vise, so he sat down, but could not breathe in.

            What was that? WHAT'S GOING ON WITH ME?!

            The pain intensified. Clutching his chest with his right hand, Fred struggled to get on his feet and looked around. Everything went black and he couldn’t feel his left arm. Frightened, he bolted to the door, but suddenly it vanished right in front of his eyes, so he hit a dead wall and fell on the floor again.

            What's going on?..

            Appear. Appear, I need help! he pleaded in his head.

            But the door didn’t appear.

            Unable to utter a word, Fred laid on the floor and stared at the light bulb shining under the ceiling.

            What does it mean? Is it the end? he thought, trembling. Has this horrible reality snuck in here?

            Fred screwed his eyes shut.

            It shouldn’t be this way! It shouldn’t be this way!!! That reality is powerless here... here… it’s different... Everything is supposed be different here...

            Suddenly it felt like he got hit in the chest. Tears rolled down the boy's cheeks. All covered in sweat, he began to repeat mantra in his head–a quote from the book that he had read about six months before.

            We exist in eternity, we are eternity, whereas space-time is just a tiny grain of sand, just a stencil in which a small part of eternity looks like a human body. Don’t fear death, there is no death and it will never be.

            We exist in eternity, we are eternity, whereas space-time is just a tiny grain of sand, just a stencil in which a small part of eternity looks like a human body. Don’t fear death, there is no death and it will never be.

            There is no death and it will never be. There is no death and it will never be…           

            In a moment, it felt like he had been stabbed in the heart. He felt pain throughout the whole body, especially in his left arm and neck. The boy was all tensed up.

            HE WAS ALL TENSED UP!

            Then the light bulb exploded with a loud pop, and the room was immediately plunged into darkness.

hello, fellow alien. i'll be happy to see you there:

instagram: alex.a.gray

twitter: Alex_A_Gray