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- Herausgeber: Francis Rosenfeld
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
A man finds himself in a sedate and empty lounge bar with no memories of his past. Hidden doors disguised by beautiful wall marquetry panels take him on disjointed adventures through alternate versions of his life, none of which he recognizes and where he feels like a imposter pretending to be himself, a stranger to loved ones, life events, likes and dislikes.
His philosophical struggle, fueled by guilt and a deep sense of futility, ends anticlimactically when he is forced to choose a particular version of his life.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Francis Rosenfeld
The Room In Between
Table of contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
© 2016 Francis Rosenfeld
Cover Design © BeeJavier at SelfPubBookCovers
Chapter 1
Sunlight
The room was large and not brightly lit, a feature that had obviously been designed to create a relaxing ambiance and induce a meditative state.
Its calming features worked in concert with the soft muzak tunes and the cozy leather chairs, whose generous width and soft cushions cradled the body into a state close to sleep.
On the back wall there was a bar with under-lit glass shelving and strange looking bubbly bottles in unusual shapes and colors. They were all filled with liquids that looked better suited for a chemistry lab than for cocktail ingredients. The dark wood of the bar was topped with a bright white marble slab, streaked with deep green and bluish veins.
Oriental carpets, which looked a little worn but definitely expensive, covered every inch of the floor, overlapping in places, so there was no telling what kind of flooring lay underneath.
Here and there, on dark wooden side tables, generic ambient lights, elegant but subdued, cast a gentle glow.
The walls were the only element in the room that seemed designed to draw attention.
They were covered in intricate wooden inlay panels, not dark like the furniture, but in a range of warm golden oak hues, no two designs the same and with no discernible theme: exotic blossoms and twirling vines, geometric motifs, circular labyrinths, grids and landscapes, trompe l’oeils, flower garlands and abstract art.
The entire wall was lit from the floor with wall washers, the way they illuminate important buildings and monuments at night and with the same eerie effect.
High up close to the ceiling where the light of the floor lights was fading, the motifs seemed to come alive in the flicker of the buzzing bulbs, in an illusory motion so distracting that one would forgo even the slightest curiosity about what lay above.
He couldn’t remember how he got there. He just knew he’d been in this room before, more than once, judging by the familiarity he had with its features. Without hesitating, he downed the oily turquoise cocktail in one gulp, ignoring the fact that it gleamed in the low light like it was radioactive, he placed the glass on the side table next to his chair, got up and went straight to the wall on his left. He took a few minutes to pick one of the design patterns and pressed his hand against it. A perfectly concealed door in the wood paneling creaked open and a burst of cold air rushed in, carrying with it the scent of barren leaves, mushrooms and rain. He shuddered, displeased by the bone chilling ghostly breath, and took his hand off the panel, which slammed shut, revealing no trace of where the door used to be.
He sighed, dejected, poured himself another drink, a weird bright pink concoction this time, picked another chair close to the newspaper stand and smiled in anticipation of a half hour of enjoyable reading.
He didn’t reach the chair before the light levels in the room dimmed so much that they made reading impossible, so he threw the newspaper back in the stand, frowned at the lights that were continuing to dim and walked towards the other wall, irritated.
His hand had barely touched one of the patterns, one which he hadn’t actually had time to choose, when the lights dimmed all the way down and the room was engulfed in inky darkness.
The familiar creaking, accompanied by an enticing coffee scent, marked his path through the void clearly, even in the dark.
He cussed under his breath at the absurd choice in front of him, very much like that of Adam choosing a wife, and walked begrudgingly through the dark opening, a little comforted by the scent of coffee.
“Honey,” his wife raised her voice on her way to the door, without turning around, “could you be a dear and pick up a parcel from the delivery locker? I’m so busy today I won’t have time to breathe!”
“What parcel? Which locker?” he uttered in her wake, confused but loud enough to be heard.
“I left the note on the kitchen counter. Love you!” she replied, consumed with the anticipation of daily events, as she closed the door behind her.
He took a moment to figure out where he was and whether he’d been there before. It only took one quick glance to realize he hadn’t. He went for the ultimate test, trying to guess which one of the many cupboards in the large and fancy kitchen was holding the coffee cups, picked one that seemed to him like the best candidate and found it filled with cloth napkins.
“Darn!” he frowned and gave up on the coffee; he grabbed the note from the counter and his face lit up with relief when he saw the name of the city: Juneau, Alaska. “Earth! Nice!” he thought, walking towards the door eager to take in the sights. It was the middle of spring at the height of the morning, but the sunlight hadn’t breached the horizon yet and he walked halfway to the delivery locker under a pastel-color sky filled dotted by the brightest stars. The Northern Lights were putting up quite a show.
Encouraged by the familiar surroundings, even though he’d never been to Juneau before, he charted with ease the simple grid of the streets. It made him feel at home somehow. Random fragments of memories about this place flashed inside his mind for fractions of a second and then dropped back under the surface of consciousness before they had had the time to imprint themselves on his brain, like a dream forgotten in the morning.
He took a turn down the main street and the comforting warmth that was still running through his veins, compliments of the familiar city and the turquoise and pink libations turned to ice in an instant.
Rising above the horizon, glorious in its splendor, a ringed sun glowed aqua blue, bedazzled by an unknown number of visible satellites.
“Not my Earth. Let me guess: the parcel contains fire dragon eggs,” he commented, bitter, dragging his feet to the delivery locker, drained of hope.
The clerk at the front desk was particularly cheerful, chewing gum and talking up a storm into a phone she held flat, like a plate, over the tips of her fingers, to a person one had to guess was her boyfriend, about deeply personal matters that held absolutely no interest for a stranger.
She stopped for a second in the middle of the dialog to acknowledge his presence and greet him with a “wonderful weather we’re having today”, smiled and went back to her conversation.
