Arax’s cell was bitterly cold. Being stuck in this windowless room had driven him to the brink of insanity, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before he would be incapable of rational thought. He hugged his legs close to his body, but it was futile; his thin robe was barely enough to keep him from freezing. A week before, in an anger-fueled rampage, he had ripped his only good cloak and bed covers. The Man hadn’t bothered to bring him new ones.
In fact, now that he thought about it, The Man hadn’t talked to him in nearly a week. Food was slid to him through a narrow opening in the bottom of the door, along with a bowl of water, but Arax never heard footsteps approaching. As each day passed, he lost more weight and his hair grew longer. On good days, his voice was hoarse; other times when he tried to talk to himself as though he had company, no noise came out. Before, the lights above Arax’s bed had illuminated the stark white room. Now they flickered, and occasionally they stayed off for hours before coming back to life.
But one noise was nearly constant. It was a loud humming sound that seemed to be coming from all around him at once. And it was getting worse; Arax hadn’t slept in days because the noise pounded in his head. Arax had asked The Man about it over and over, but on each occasion, The Man shook his head, smiled slightly, and said nothing.
Then there was Arax’s mattress, scratchy with lumps throughout. After several nights of trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep, Arax decided it would be best to sit in the corner until he could nod off. That way, he could save the bed for when he really needed it.
Arax’s lone table seemed to embody the young man, sitting alone, cold to the touch and unmoving. He occasionally used it when he had a reason to pull out the pack of cards that had shown up without explanation on his bed, late one afternoon. Arax couldn’t stand playing blackjack, because no matter what he did, the dealer always triumphed. He fared no better with poker. He decided to test his luck with solitaire, the only card game he had ever won. Even then victory was rare. It seemed that each time he replaced the cards in their pack, one would mysteriously disappear. First it was an ace, then a queen, a three, an ace again, and finally a five. He figured he didn’t have many more games left with only 47 cards, so he saved the remaining ones for special occasions. Some nights, for example, The Man brought a fresh loaf of bread and milk. Arax was so happy on those nights that he would pull out his cards and play, always careful to count how many cards he placed back into the package when he finished.
One day, Arax realized that he had finally lost track of the outside world’s time. At the beginning, The Man used to tell him whenever he asked, but now The Man had stopped responding to Arax’s questions, and he was left with no sense of whether it was day or night, which day of the week it was, or which month it was. Arax had tried to measure the passage of time by counting off each minute of each hour, scratching tally marks into the wall using a broken spring that he had fashioned into a sharp point. However, it became harder and harder for Arax to concentrate, and he gave up trying to keep track of time.
But on this particular day, Arax heard an unexpected sound. It was no ordinary sound, not like a voice or the humming that drove Arax crazy. It was something entirely new and distant, a sound of something moving and shifting that echoed around the room. Startled, Arax knocked over his deck of cards, spilling them onto the floor. A couple of cards slid right under the door, some fell on the bed, and the rest fluttered to the ground. He scrambled to pick them all up. When he arose, returning the cards to the pack, he froze.
The massive metal door to his room was open, emptying into a white hallway, its lights flickering. Haltingly, Arax stuck his arm through the doorway. Nothing happened, no force grabbed him and thrust him back or beat him down. The Man was nowhere to be seen. The door was just open. He peered out of the chamber that had kept him prisoner for weeks, or months, or years; he didn’t know which.
Arax stumbled into the hallway. After a few steps, the lights flickered once more and then shut off. He stopped in surprise, wondering why. The hallway ahead was pitch black, but he could hear the strange shifting sounds and knew they were coming from that direction. They sounded like huge doors being locked and unlocked, over and over. Behind him, his room was still open, the lights shining, brighter than before. He dashed into the cell and grabbed up his pack of cards, pulled them out and counted.
“Forty seven, forty eight, forty nine, fifty, fifty one, fifty two… they’re all here,” Arax whispered to himself. He noticed that the rasp in his voice was gone. He sat down on his bed but felt himself sinking into plush cushions. He jumped back up, not understanding what was going on around him. He didn’t feel as cold as before, and his clothes were as good as new, his cloak sitting clean and folded at the foot of the bed. Last of all, the terrible humming sound which had haunted him for so long had stopped.
For the first time in what seemed like years, Arax was comfortable. He thought about sinking into that plush bed, enjoying the warmth, finally getting some sleep. But as he took one step toward his bed, he stopped himself. He knew he couldn’t stay. Arax dropped the cards to the ground and sprinted through the door and out into the darkness, toward the strange mechanical sound. As Arax ran down the hallway, he once more began to hear a low humming noise behind him, emanating from his room.