Colored Curtains

Alright so two years ago I met a man who’ve been stuck in a room with a red and blue curtain. The room was a perfect square, about 4x4 meters big and built without a door. He didn’t know how he got there. It’s just all of a sudden he woke up in the middle of the room, with almost no memory of anything. I don’t know whether it’s real or not, but you got to believe me. I heard it from the man himself. Well, not directly. I overheard him when he was telling it to someone else.

It was June two years ago. I was in a café studying for an upcoming exam while I caught the conversation from the table beside me.

“When I woke up, I got nothing.” Said the man in a deep flat tone. “I mean, like, nothing at all. It didn’t feel like someone had messed around with my head. You know, sucked the content dry and stuff like in one of those science fiction movie. No. It’s just that…” the man stopped to think. He sip his coffee. “It was just, like, when I look inside, I found nothing.”

The man was with a woman. A pretty woman. Her hair tied up. She had on a red cardigan over white shirt. Jeans, and flat shoes.

“But, you know what, my body felt well. The room had no bed, so I guess I’ve been sleeping on the floor all night long. But, hey, believe it or not, I felt great. The room wasn’t too hot nor cold. No back pain, no headache, no hunger or stuff. The morning sun was shining and the birds were chirping. It was your typical nice day. There was just one single thing that was wrong about the situation: I got a void.” The man pointed his temple. “Right here inside.”

The man shivered a little. His eyes moved to his fingers. Like he was carefully checking the dirt between each nails.

“Like, I opened a drawer and it’s empty. Then I opened another drawer next to it and it’s empty too. Then I opened another and another and another, and I still got nothing. It felt really strange. I can’t explain it properly.”

The woman kept her quiet. She was listening without saying anything. Her expression showed no judgment nor suspicion.

“Anyway, I opened the curtain and looked over the window. I saw a flock of birds flying across. The sun was already high, I’m guessing it was nine in the morning. And I was standing about fifty meters above ground.

“The room I’ve been stuck in was high high up in the sky. I could see people walking down the pavement below me. They looked like little dots with legs and colored clothing. To the east there was a train station, and in the far south there was a small city covered with fog. There was no building around the room. Only trees. Ordinary, short, trees. I couldn’t see anything else. I couldn’t tell whether the room was a part of some large building or was it just floating in the air like an eerie ghost. I was okay with both, it didn’t matter much to me at the time. The fact that there is no way to escape worried me more. The room could be a part of a gigantic flying octopus and I wouldn’t bat a single eye.

“I closed the curtain, sit on the floor, and stared straight ahead. With back against the wall, I tried to concentrate my mind. The curtain in front of me stayed still—the entire room stayed still, as if backing off to make some space.

“And then shortly after, something came to mind.”

The man took another sip of coffee. It was black. He didn’t add sugar nor cream in it. I imagined it must’ve been bitter.

“It was the color of the curtain.” The man continued.

“A gleaming red and blue. The color was vivid, almost breathing to me. The red was dark red and I could see a quality of gold shining behind it, and the blue wasn’t much like blue it’s more like a light green or somewhere in between. The combination was fascinating. I held my breath to give myself a little time to appreciate the beauty, and the more I looked into it the more it came to life. It was silly, I mean, It was just a curtain right? A silly little curtain in a door less room high above the ground. Yet I was looking at it for dear life.” The man laughed a sweet, small laugh.

“So how did you get out?” Said the woman, finally.

The man closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened it. “I spent all of my time in the room just looking at the curtain. It took my soul away. I thought that if I could figure out something about it, my memories will came back. Night comes and I would slept on the floor. When sleep ended I would wake up and continued staring at it. I felt no hunger, no headache, no pain. Days passed by, the sun rotated around and around, the birds flew back and forth. And the people and the trains and their tireless legs. Time moves and the world flowed yet I cared for nothing except the color in the curtain. I don’t know how I did that. Probably it wasn’t me, but the hope did it for me.”

“Hope?” The woman responded.

“A hope that, as the curtain sucked my soul away, it will give my memories back. Something like that. That it will scrape the surface of my consciousness and, once it went deep enough, I hope something will sprout to existence. So I can drink the delight and feel the gratification of some long reunification.”

“What are you talking about?”

“But then one day I woke up in my house. On my real bed in my real room. Just like that.”

“What?”

“Just like that.”

Probably the time is up, I thought to myself. Then the man sipped his remaining coffee, only to find his cup was already empty. He nervously tapped to the table. The woman observed his face, getting no clue. The man was deep in the sea where there’s no light and no sound.

Then the woman said. “So did you get your memories back?”

Did he get his memories back? Yep the woman actually asked the man that question. The very question. I mean, what a question to ask, right? I almost gave her a standing applause. She got no clue. Not a single clue. He was sitting right there in front of her, clear and real as the day, and she still managed to ask that question somehow.

Yet the man looked up, set his eyes on the woman. He forced a polite smile to his face and said, “I’m not sure about that… How about you? What do you think?” I could see the man was starting to tear up. “Have you seen my memories around these days?”