its like tooth decay in a bottle

[thirty-three]

Sitting alone, they were in their own seats. The air smelled thin like shallow water in a swamp, with a small hint of chemicals. It smelled too clean, red roses scrubbed white; scalpels disinfected to hell. The air was almost too toxic to breath, but it was safe. They said it was safe. Everyone was at their own seat, sitting, sitting and waiting.

The seats themselves seemed just awful, just wrong. The handles were cold but the bottoms were stiff and warm, as if someone had sweat their entire body's worth of water and it was now infusing moist heat into the bottoms of the new sitters. For everyone had to sit, everyone had to endure it.

And it didn't get easier. It didn't get warmer or colder or dirtier. It didn't get anything as expected. The walls were still that dim blue colour that resembled the colour of the ocean as only the moon sees it, and they slouched inward over the sitting body of people. The room seemed like a sneeze: tight, loud, and messy. The seats were neatly sitting closely together, elbow to elbow, knee to knee. As uncomfortable as it was, no one was talking. The noise was coming from behind the door.

The door was dark brown wood, looking heavy and solid. It stood in the middle of one blue slouching wall facing the sitting people. From it howls, beeps, and a low crumbling speech dripped insecurity into the laps of those who were aware of its existence, and the pressure sliced fear into those insecurities. The door was large, and the door was important. The door was everything.

So the people sitting were in silence, but they were not unaware of their future beyond the door. No one had come in or through since they all had arrived, and yet they sat. Lambs for the slaughter? Probably not, kittens for their milk is more like it. They were waiting for acceptance, they were waiting for the assurance, they were waiting for the grade.

The grade, it was that simple: They were waiting to know if that which they had been working hard for, working towards their entire little lives, would pay off. Although it seemed so unimportant, they waited still. There were no clocks, no watches, no cell phones, no computers, no technologies no internal clocks no intuititions. This timer was set to go off like a pop quiz: without knowledge.

Lips bitten raw red; wrists wrung until bruised blue; eveys exhausted yellow; the door reflected a rainbow on the waiting body. The feeling of the unknown was shared, was a unifying notion between. Shivering with worried cold sweats they were still holding out, holding on, holding with the idea that they could be-

A crack, and it opened. It was EXIT red, bright red, blood red, blood ripping red. The light that was cast into the dinging, worried room was broken red. It was a soul searching red that took a bite an inch deep into the soul of those sitters and chewed it up. It tugged, tearing at the goods and bads of each person.

Tearing up, ripping through the sins and deeds, the A's and B's, the loves and lusts, the departed and the stolen, the loved the loved the important. Everything and anything to make up one's self, was taken, swallowed, digested, and then sweat out again for them to ostracise themselves. If one thing was good something else wasn't good enough. If something was too bad to make anything else better, the light went dark.

the light went dark.

The red light, the red light, the red light.

Turned to green. Green is for go.

February 2, 2011 - Jess :]