The Endless White

THE ENDLESS WHITE

Are you afraid of the dark?

I have always wondered how pitch-black darkness scares people so much when blinding white is clearly more terrifying. For this realization, I blame the President for using the media to send out messages hidden in his speech to awaken me. Sure, ordinary people won't read through words, but there are exceptional geniuses in the World's Hidden Intelligence team who would.

It all started on that random evening when I returned from work. The preceding confusion and memory fuzz made sense now. I have been hyperalert ever since. I heard the bird breathing in its sleep on the third tree along my street and knew this was the same infuriating charmer who chirped me awake even on weekends.

Well, this white prison I am now in is bizarre. I stare at it and can't even tell where the roof and walls meet. Seven days here make me feel seventy and I still haven't figured the shape of this room. The officer spawns with a tray of meals, then vanishes. And yet, this white space has my spine. I hate the other guy who is chained to the far-left corner. He never speaks, not even about how he left for days and came back only to randomly leave again. Diana is also cursing him for such rudeness. As beautiful and intelligent as she is, it's only when she curses him that her elegance drops and somehow, she is still gorgeous. It gets suffocatingly crowded here at times but when they all stare or walk towards me, I truly can't breathe. The officer speaks so softly in the noise as I yell to be heard in there as if mocking me. I am forced to wonder if the noise was better than this deafening silence when it subsides.

Well, I'm bored and so is Diana. Phil is also here now, and the place won't be moving anymore that's why, we finally can. Today we passed through the medieval town. Tradition is crazy, you know? I overheard the French woman bound to wear the crinoline pitying a Japanese woman who wore punishment in the name of sandals. Diana was hysterical when the Japanese girl saw the crinoline and pointed its resemblance to a birdcage innocently. I choked on my laugh when I saw it was white. The ball gowns symbolize royalty, no wonder. When the corset tightens, pride swells with the chest and comfort shrinks with the waist. Freedom dies a little each time.

Phil hated when we entered Darwinian's time square the other day. The place where females were yet to be classified human, but apes already had evident ties. We thanked the lord as we departed without encountering any female apes and male humans.

The next stop was at the Fantasy town, and tons of beauties flaunted their prince. I mourned the emptiness of arrival when my salience flickered at the lone woman. Phil being the woman's man had her reveal the tale. Turns out she was a villain when her betrothed replaced her with the "kinder” woman she fought for stealing her fiancé. Diana rolled her eyes saying she'd prefer to leave than watching the crowd cheer for the “kind” woman who got consoled with marriage. I loved that about Diana. She was brave and I wasn't. That made me realize bravery was independent of one's karyotype. I was fighting the growing cheers until I almost ripped my hair out and stillness followed.

It was too crowded and noisy again. I was getting younger in the void because what else would explain my trembling like a scaredy cat instead of mature handling after decades of imprisonment? I asked the officer where the lady from the other day was. He actually responded for once. I told him more and he laughed, I added a thing or two she had said, and he laughed more, telling me that lady was him. Now laughter scares me as much as cheering had.

I took that cocktail of calming pills again and used my pen to draw around the milky void until the next stop. Phil returned and watched the caravan I had drawn without intending to. My stomach fell to a pit in me I had never known existed. Not ever since my insides got upside down and whether its fatal is a different story. Then, he spoke with that smirk in his words, rubbing me wrong.

"You'll do anything to rid yourself of the white, won't you?”

My jaw clenched but Phil added, "Would it be less scary if it was endless yellow, for instance?”

That bastard... he knew I loathed yellow and wouldn't survive it. Giving ideas to the Keepers. But then I thought if endless of any color would be equally terrifying. Imagine red or blue. No. Blue is calming, think of the ocean or sky? I was only thinking of the same blue turning terrifying for someone lost on sea with no direction and survival supplies and the skydiver whose parachute didn't work but Phil lit fire bigger than the one sparking in my mind by yapping, "You say you hate yellow but the sun is yellow, you live the days just fine you liar... Even your skin is kinda yellow...”

I was on the verge of hating the sun and my skin and whoever said anything good about traveling companions. Diana showed up like a savior, and I flipped like people do.

We left again. One town to another, big cities, villages, valleys with each having a stop in the white continuum. So, the earth is round after all. The walls kept filling with my art, but it is still shapeless.

Wait; is traveling about time? Distance? Destination?

I thought so hard, I couldn't tell whether I was visiting places, or they were visiting me. Regardless of who moved, it always folded back to the same white abyss.

The scenery kept changing; I didn't. It was so frustrating, I wanted to beat up the man chained on the other side of the room over it. He was lucky that I was chained as well.

I went to the park to think about what crime landed me here. The greenery was insanely vast. I imagined the vines growing into shackles and wondered who trimmed the grass. It struck me like a punishing paradox that this park here was nicer than many distant places I visited, but every pretty place had the potential to ruin. I added it to the meanings of beauty, right beside ’tragedy,' 'discomfort’ and ‘ease'. That's when the gentle breeze reminded me, I was originally thinking about what got me in prison. Maybe the officer can tell me?

I walked deeper into the park. It got wilder, so I figured it was a forest now. The waterfall had barely soothed my ears when wails of mourning humans from one home after another echoed. I arrived at the celebration of the hero who had killed the resident of each and come home as a brave survivor. In a loud bang, I stood alone in the carnival of the celebrating dead. The entire walk made me wonder if what I hated most was the noisy mankind or this ghosty silence.

I was fuming when I was back in the white. Vandalizing the walls with curses. Diana pressed her lips and I thought she was suppressing her anger until the tears flowed down her cheeks. We concluded that the brain being a cage was why standards were too. I feel wiser with each trip even if it always ends with some hair loss. The dark strands on the white soothe me only second to a steaming cup of tea.

Diana and I went to China; we celebrated the spring festival. Cherry blossoms lasted less than our stay. Two old ladies near us plotted slandering the catty woman for gossiping their beloved niece to isolation. A yawn distracted me and they were already weeping for some saintly TV soap heroine being a clown slave. Diana and I nearly gagged. In my head, I had gone to the old ladies and politely repeated, "If I ever go crazy, you all are to blame,” fifty times.

I remembered swimming in lava, flying through the sea, and diving into the sky. Every trip ended with being swallowed by that enormous white dog before I could even pet its snowy fur. I almost found dark spirals in the white when the officer told me Dr. Zai was here again. I was still regretting the unsaid "Who's a good boy?” while Diana, Phil, my journey were all hiding behind the metal desk between us in the meeting room. Each time Dr. Zai was here, this happened. Or whenever this happened, Dr. Zai showed up. Her presence explained why the metal table was drilled to the floor and I was handcuffed to it. But every time she left, I was thirty again. Just the other day I was seventy and then I was a baby again. I will have lived ten lifetimes when I turn thirty-nine but I'm not sure when I will die. So, I wanted to get out of here and go home because I should be bailed out. It's not like I'm a madman or something...