Excerpt: Working Title

-What will this place look like with the fog gone?-

“Like... gray stone walls. Like in a castle,” said I, “maybe like a maze?”

Damp, white clouds blew past my face and I began to see faint gray around me. My watch beeped.

-9:11 A.M.-

I looked at my watch again.

-Are you unsure?-

“What?”

-Stop asking questions. You are the author. Tell me, is it like a maze? Or is it not? Do not ask.-

Yeah, yeah, I thought.

-Is it like a maze?-

“Sure! It’s like a maze. Now leave me alone!” The fog rushed past me faster. Cool clouds rushed like dust away from a fan. I could see the walls clearly now, they were strongly built of large stones and mortar in varying shades of gray. There were no other features to the place around me. No doorways, no windows, not even a ceiling. Just a heavy wall resting in faintly glowing white. There wasn’t even a floor.

I looked at my wristwatch. It said, -Describe it, then.-

“Describe what?” I asked.

-The floor. The ceiling. Are there doors? windows?-

“The floor is made out of stone, too,” I said, “and I’m sitting on a rug.”

Gray showed through the white beneath me and the faint outline of a rug appeared.

-Describe more, Author. Give an idea of what the rug looks like.-

“It’s red, and kind of oriental-looking. It has little gold dragons on it.” I said. “The dragons are part of the design,” I said. The dragons that had begun to take shape quickly melted into the rug’s pattern. The rug was a deep red with touches of plum and of course, gold dragons.

“The ceiling is...” I hesitated. “The ceiling is... a far way up. So far up that you can’t see it.”

-Why can’t you see it?- Read my watch, after a beep.

“Because it’s so high up, you stupid watch!”

I thought for a moment. The walls around me still only faded into a dreamlike glowing white.

“Actually, the walls just seem to go up forever. As they get farther away they are more and more in shadow until I can see nothing but black.” The clouds blew away, though they were too high up to move past me, I felt the soft wind that blew them. At first I was left with walls so high they reached to the clouds. But as the clouds higher and higher left, I found myself staring upward into a chasm. The sight made me dizzy so I looked back down at my dragon rug.

My watch beeped. -Nicely done. Now what happens?-