The Green Room: The Terror of a Hijacked Memory

The cold of the linoleum struck the back of my neck like a metallic slap before my eyelids even managed to peel apart. There was no transition, no placid half-sleep preceding wakefulness; merely the abrupt leap from absolute nothingness into the center of a headache that felt as though it were drilling straight through my frontal lobe. I snapped awake, drenched in a thick, cold sweat that glued my shirt to my ribs like a putrid second skin. Disorientation slammed into me with the violence of an ocean wave crashing against a cliff, emptying my lungs in a single blow. Where the hell was I? This certainly wasn't my bed. That cramped, claustrophobic room reeked of a nauseating blend of stale dampness, old cement, and, above all else, the corrosive, clinical reek of bleach. A methodical, almost surgical disinfection, meant to scour away any trace of whatever had transpired there before my arrival.

I pulled myself upright with infinite caution, my legs trembling with the pathetic clumsiness of a newborn fawn caught in the midst of a storm. The walls, painted in a pale, heavily flaking shade of green, seemed to gravitate toward me, contracting with each of my breaths in a muffled effort to crush me. A single bare bulb hung from a frayed, swaying cord, bathing the cubicle in a sickly, spectral greenish light that blurred the corners. “Shit”, I thought, feeling panic begin to coil like a serpent through my chest, tightening its freezing rings around my heartbeat. “This looks goddamned terrible”.

I. The Cell and the Absence

I shuffled my feet across the uneven floor until I found the only exit: a solid sheet of metal, painted the same filthy green, entirely devoid of any knob or visible lock. I shoved it with an open palm, pouring every ounce of force my terrified body could muster into the gesture, but the steel didn't even flinch. It didn't yield a single millimeter.

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—Hey! —I howled, startled by the harsh, fractured tone that broke from my throat—. Someone open this fucking door!

The silence that answered my call was dense and sepulchral, broken only by the monotone, distant, and mechanical hum of some engine throbbing in the bowels of the building like an artificial heart. I was trapped. Questions began to batter against my skull like maddened moths against glass: A kidnapping? A macabre, tasteless joke? My mind spun in the void, desperately trying to cling to a logical explanation, but the scaffolding of reality had crumbled. My grandmother used to say life always gives you surprises, but this was no capricious twist of destiny; it was the absolute fracture of the line separating the known world from the abyss.

"There are thresholds that, once crossed, turn the past into a maze with no exit and the future into a pending execution."

In the darkest corner, an old dresser of worm-eaten wood and lame legs drew my gaze as if possessed of a dark magnetism. I approached with my heart hammering in my throat and began to open the drawers, one after another, with clumsy fingers. Empty. All except the very last one, located at the base. There, curled in the depths like a secret shameful secret, rested a photograph crumpled by time and handling. I took it with extreme care and brought it closer to the green light of the bulb.

The face staring back at me was my own, yet endowed with an insolence and a youth I thought were long gone. I was smiling, an arm draped over the shoulders of a woman with blurred features whose identity eluded the frayed edges of my memory. Who was she? And, above all, what the hell was I doing holding this proof of a life I barely recognized?

II. The Penumbra and the Echo

Terror, which up until that moment I had managed to keep at bay thanks to the stupid inertia of denial, broke loose inside me like a pack of starving beasts. I had to get out of there; I needed answers before my own mind completely disintegrated. I began to pound on the metal surface of the door with my knuckles reduced to a raw, throbbing mass, screaming until my vocal cords tore.

—Help! —I howled into the void—. Somebody! —I struck out with blind rage—. Get me out of this goddamned hole!

The hysterical flickering of the bulb caught in my throat. A second later, the filament gave way and absolute, compact darkness devoured me. I froze completely, holding my breath and swallowing hard as the drumbeat of my heart threatened to shatter my sternum. And then, piercing the silence, I heard them: footsteps. They were slow, heavy, deliberate, dragging with an inhuman cadence down the outer hallway. They stopped just on the other side of the metal panel.

A screech of rusted hinges broke the stillness. A thin, yellowish thread of light slipped across the floorboards. And from the shadows of the threshold, a hoarse, metallic, deeply distorted voice threw a question at me that froze the marrow in my bones:

—Do you remember yet?

I stood petrified, struck with the paralysis of a predator caught in car headlights. Remember? What the hell were they talking about? The photograph of the woman, the blank void in my temples… It was all part of a macabre equation my brain refused to solve.

—No… I don't know what you're talking about —I replied, with a thread of a voice that barely managed to cross the space between us.

—Bad, very bad —the voice retorted, distilling a cruelty so cold it felt as though it had descended straight from the atmosphere of outer space—. We'll just have to refresh your memory.

III. The Awakening of Consciences

The door swung open violently, crashing against the inner wall with a dull thud that made me recoil viscerally. Two bulky, immense silhouettes devoid of defined features stood out against the brutal glare of the hallway. Their bodies radiated a physical threat, tangible and heavy as lead. One of them held a device in his hand that flashed with metallic glints under the light from outside.

—Who are you? —I whimpered, stumbling backward until my back slammed flat against the cold wall—. What do you want from me?

—We want you to remember —the other pronounced, in a tone as flat and sharp as a razor blade—. We want you to remember exactly what you did.

The companion stepped forward, raising the object he carried. It was a syringe of industrial proportions. At the tip of the needle, a drop of thick, iridescent liquid of an unnamable origin shone with a life of its own, as though it were breathing.

—No, please… —I begged, my eyes wide and unhinged by the delirium of panic—. I know nothing, I swear it on my life…

—Time's up for excuses —the lead voice rumbled from the hallway, a shiver translated into a strict command—. Either you remember the easy way, or we'll help you remember. The hard way.

They descended upon me with the relentless precision of a sewing machine. I tried to struggle, to kick, to bite, to howl with all the fury of desperation, but their strength was monstrous—the strength of things that knew neither weariness nor mercy. They pinned me hard against the concrete floor; one of them crushed my arms beneath his knee while the other locked my left forearm in place.

—Please… —I stammered, feeling the icy contact of the needle's bevel pressing directly against the epidermis of my vein.

—This is going to sting a bit —murmured the man with the syringe, with a composure that promised horrors far beyond mere physical pain—.

—What… what exactly is that shit? —I asked, my voice shattered by a terror that could no longer fit within my throat.

—We call it… the conscience alarm clock —whispered the voice from the outer darkness, before the plunger descended and liquid fire began to burn my veins from the inside out.

Do not extinguish the light yet...

If you have had the courage to make it this far, we have other dossiers that will test the limits of your sanity.

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