The Room (quick prose)

The wall directly in front was painted blue, slopped over old wallpaper. It met the white ceiling unevenly, here and there a streak of blue invading the white and farther along, the white intruding carelessly on the blue. He studied it carefully. Perhaps the bumpy blue was over compensating for coming second in the land of wall decoration. Perhaps. The white was arrogant despite covering less. It was, after all, above. A few drips had, in some past era when white was new, fallen to the floor far below. There they offered a sense of possibility to the worn floor boards. They not only could see and worship the white far above, they could touch and be touched by white here, far below. This was not always possible as an old bed with a broken frame hid part of the floor from view. The bed did not care about the walls, the floor, or even the white ceiling. It felt its age and rested uncertainly on three legs. The fourth had broken in the age of the titan and lay sideways some inches under. The bed and another wall were watched unblinkingly by the mirror. The mirror had at one time hung straight and true on the wall opposite the bed. Now it hung askew and was grimy but still able to watch the bed in its decay. There was no door and only a small window. He had not thought about that before, the lack of a door, that is. The window was not really a window. He thought of it as a window because it had a window shape, but was blocked with bricks, laid badly so they allowed light to enter but not enough to see out. He had run his hand over that brick many times. His fingers delighted in the rough contours. One time he had rubbed too hard and his fingers bled, the blood adding a new experience to the white paintlets on the wooden floor.