An Angry Room

A man in an angry room, pacing, mechanically pacing, shuffling through stifling air, pausing now and then to lean against one or the other of the room’s two narrow windows, raising his hands to cup the sides of his face as he gazes through the accumulated film of dust and tobacco smoke, gazes at the faded brick of the decrepit building across from him, (perhaps a warehouse, perhaps a factory) so oppressively close that if either window were open he could reach, stretch and touch the pitted walls before falling to his death. But the windows are tightly shut despite the stifling heat and their ancient frames are wood, wood so warped that the windows stubbornly refuse to move. Unable to find relief from the monstrous heat, he can only gaze at this narrow canyon where a cool and alluring darkness, at certain times of day, seems to flow like a black whispering river. He hears the whispers, inside and outside his skull. Whispers caused by such bad air. Bad air and the terrible rancid odor that is everywhere; as if something had died, not long ago, not in the past. The temptation to break the glass is almost overpowering.

As if invoked by the violence of that impulse, a bird swoops down into the narrow canyon between buildings and seems to skim across the tide of darkness slowly rising below. The man has seen such birds before and they always inspire a peculiar loathing in him. They seem grotesquely misshapen; their heads in particular, ill-proportioned skulls with thin, almost translucent flesh stretched over the bone beneath. He watches, fascination and disgust equally strong, as it glides and begins its ascent from the darkness of the ravine, passing through the lower twilight and emerging suddenly into the brilliant and merciless sunlight beyond the windows. In this light the claws gleam wickedly with a metallic luster. They remind the man of shining instruments of torture while the albino face, glimpsed too briefly to be absolutely certain , seems to be a distorted human face, one of cunning and evil...the visage of a wizened hag on a black soaring body. He watches as it effortlessly claims a prize from the crumbling wall of the building opposite. He can hear the thin harsh shriek of the pierced victim even through his sealed windows.

At some point of time, he can't recall how long ago because of the grayness that has swallowed his memories, an infestation of a new kind of vermin befell this afflicted city. He has come to think of these newcomers as Scuttlers: spider-like, round as plates, large as a man's hand, pale as the ghastly faces of the rapacious birds that preyed on them. They would climb and scamper with amazing speed over the rough, uneven surface of the crumbling bricks in that abandoned building that may have once been a warehouse or a factory. The building's long, narrow and arched windows were sealed over with cement and brick, all painted a dead leaden gray, but one remained open like a dark inviting maw; and he has watched these Scuttlers crawl in and out of that blackness many times, sometimes exiting with glistening objects hard to identify, held above their bodies by a secondary row of appendages that resembled small tentacles. The thought of smashing the thin fragile glass of the windows and affording these thing possible ingress into the room is more than unpleasant...yet the heat is so torturous he considers it still.


But his attention is diverted, for he can hear the whispering now, not from inside his skull, not rising from the cool flowing shadow river forbidden to him, but clearly from the hall beyond his door, a black whispery buzzing, a herald of even more extravagant performances to come. For soon there will be a knocking upon his frail door. It will be barely audible in nature, so tenuous, a ghostly sound so pathetic in its impotence that it angers him. The soft whispers recede now as if to let this delicate plea for admission be heard. It infuriates him. He prefers the heavy banging, the thunderous demanding that will eventually replace it. Still, for the briefest of moments, he imagines answering. He decides against it, just as he refused to heed the brutal summons of repeated assaults earlier. He knows the sequence now. Pleas, demands, pleas, demands; they mean nothing to him, certainly nothing to an angry room.

Perhaps he was born here. Perhaps he has lived his entire life here, here in this angry room. It’s an amusing but bitter idea and one he can hardly take seriously. No, an utter lack of intimacy, of familiarity, mocks the absurdity of such a notion. This room was never his.

A phone, old-fashioned and corded rings. An unpleasant sound and he debates the wisdom of answering it. Why not, he thinks. Why not, the room seems to agree for the tone has become less unpleasant, less shrill, less like an angry voice.

“Hello,” he says clearly into the mouthpiece and waits for a reply.

“Can I speak with Rondo,” the voice inquires. It is a calm, cultured voice; not bestial this time, not in the least. He feels certain he has heard it before but finds it impossible to reconcile with a face or name.

“Sorry,” he replies, his manner brisk, almost defensive. “Rondo isn’t able to speak. Not at the moment. But he felt it might interest you to know a...package...was delivered--as promised some time ago--” He has no idea what those words mean but feels compelled to utter them. The word 'package', however, seems to evoke unpleasant connotations in his mind: he imagines one wrapped in brown paper; a slick and sickly bulging package...but of what?

There is only the briefest of pauses. “I’m sorry,” the cultured voice responds, no amount of emotion shading his words. “It's regrettable. He had interesting contacts you may not have fully appreciated. His loss was a blow to our Organization. Ah, well. Be certain to give our condolences to his loved ones…”

“Yes, surely...I’ll pass them along.” And then, very slowly, almost agonizingly so, he replaces the phone in its cradle. He knows that in the next few moments the phone will be gone, not to reappear until it's required.

And the room seems angry again. The carpet is beginning to show crimson, bleeding through, seeping through in spots. The blood is forming a symbol, something very much like a pentagram but considerably more complex. If only his memory could pierce the shroud of gray formlessness he might recall he had seen something very similar to this tattooed on Rondo’s chest...as he carefully, professionally, dismembered Rondo's body.

The blood seeps, the rapacious birds cry beyond his windows-- how ghastly the cackling sounds that issue from their throats!-- and the room seems stuffier than just a few minutes before. The temperature is rising again; soon the heat will be almost unbearable. If only the antique air conditioning system would work, this, all this, might be more bearable.

But amenities are few in an angry room.