11/28/19

In A White Room
By Dave Ludford


On one wall of the white room you see trains leaving a station with no destination, passengers waving goodbye at windows though they’re not really leaving. How could they be when there is absolutely nowhere for them to go? The white room creates images and lets your mind fill in the blanks.

“How did I get here?” you ask.

“You didn’t,” comes the reply in your own voice. “You never left where you were. Where you were is here. The white room creates illusions” it added unnecessarily.

“Why, may I ask, am I seeing these illusions?”

“You are seeing your own life and the experiences contained therein. But the illusions themselves are illusions. Fleeting, transient ephemera. False magic. They signify nothing because reality is nothing. There is only the white room and your own imagination.”

You take a while to come to terms with this, and then a thought occurs:

“But I didn’t imagine trains leaving a station and people waving at the windows.”

“No, but somebody else did.”

“Somebody else? Who? I’m not alone here?”

“One can never be alone in the white room. Others, like you, will always come across this place. Call it fate, whatever.”

You are then witness to further illusions created by others you cannot see or sense in any way: soldiers marching into a battle that will never happen. Endlessly marching. A woman giving birth to herself, ad infinitum. Dolls within dolls all exactly the same. Athletes running backwards on a track away from the starting line that will never become the finishing line.

“Tell me…my life…it hasn’t happened yet?”

“No, and may never happen. Birth, life and death: the cycle of life. All illusions.”

“Which would suggest that I too am an illusion?”

“Yes. The white room is the only reality. A reality that exists absolutely nowhere at any point in time or in any physical place. It just is; or isn’t, to be more accurate.”

“Perhaps the white room too is an illusion, therefore, conjured by my own imagination.”

“Yes,” you reply to yourself.

“I have one final question. Am I God?”


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Dave Ludford is a writer from Nuneaton, England, whose works of poetry and short fiction have appeared at a variety of venues in the US, UK and India. His horror collection 'A Place of Skulls and Other Tales' is available now from Parallel Universe Publications or via Amazon.