Ten Fifty-Three

The metal chair sat in the middle of the dimly lit room. This four-legged chair was old and had seen many years of abuse. As it sat, the chair seemed to lean, not flat nor stable. The chair was alone. There wasn’t even a table, just this dingy metal folding chair in the middle of this room.

“Where am I?” He thought.

The more he thought the more pain he experienced in his head. It was like a hammer into his skull when he reached back into his mind. He had been pacing this room for exactly two hours, thirty-seven minutes and twelve seconds.

“How do I even know that?” he thought, experiencing no pain.

He looked about the room. Still, four crumbling walls, a black glassed window, and a bolted metal door with no handle. The ceiling and floor where both concrete, yet the walls were some sort of reinforced cinderblock worn with time. He did know that the building was old, possibly decades old, yet the door and window were installed quite recently. He touched the walls. Bits fell as it chipped.

“Where am I?” he asked himself again. “Why am I … ” the question unlocked something in his mind. As he stood he looked down at his hands. Two hands, ten fingers. He wiggled them. He knew they were there but yet the feeling felt … new. Looking through his hands he saw his feet. A pair of black leather suede shoes. Oxfords he believed, but how he knew he couldn’t place it. He wiggled his toes. The feeling excited him.

He was dressed in a black two-button executive suit. Custom tailored, custom fit. His pants held only one crease. Underneath his suit, he had a fancy white shirt with a black matching tie. He glanced at it. He used his left hand to feel the smoothness of the tie while the right felt the knot. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did know that it was knotted with a Windsor knot.

“Did you say something? He spoke out loud. Shocked he had a voice. He looked up from the tie and directly through the blacked out a widow in the crumbling wall. There was a voice on the other side of the glass. He couldn’t make out who said it but he did know there were two beings behind the glass observing him. His sudden outburst caused both to let out a duet of gasps when he spoke.

Only silence was their reply. Yet, he was completely positive what one had said…