The Plain White Room (15 page)

Lepus’s eyes began to droop as the sweet, soothing Valium wrapped his body. He had been in the hospital for weeks. Or it seemed like weeks; he had stopped looking at the time, the date and even his emails or any outside contact in ages. It all seemed irrelevant to him. He lay relaxed, trying to meditate like they had taught him in class. Although with the Valium kicking in that was somewhat pointless.

He opened his eyes again, and he was standing, with grand sprays of ocean waves lapping at his face. His hands gripped a metal banister and lifted his head to see a dark, dim sea. The fiery sky seemed to stretch out forever. It was contorting and waving faster than clouds would usual move.

Lepus looked down at his clothes, he stood straight in a three-piece suit of maroon and drew pocket watch. It had no time on it the hands seemed to only unreadable symbols. The slowest hand to tick from a snake towards a scorpion.

Lepus realised, as the waves sunk away, that he was aboard the top of a rising submarine. Straining his eyes and looking forward Lepus began to see a blur appear in the distance. Yet at impossible speeds it became land. Then close enough to distinguish as a vast landscape. A dense forest came right up to the shore. He braced himself against the banister and ducked down. Clenching the railing for safety against the gaining speeds. Above the forest, in the background, stood an almighty snow-capped mountain. It stood picture perfect. The dragon raised its slow giant head over the treetops. Lepus saw it only for an instance as the submarine pounded into the shore. The force launched Lepus into sand dunes at the edge of the forest. To his surprise he surfaced unharmed. Sputtering from the sand lodged in his mouth, he fumbled to stand. He turned around and watched the great machine which had charioted him. Slip back into the vast calming sea like a creature of the night slipping into the shadows.

Lepus took only a few seconds to stare astonished at the majestic crashing waves. Knowing how impossible it was for a thing of such size to move in such a way. He stood and dusted himself down, drawn into the dense forest. As he stumbled through the straight, beautiful trees, Lepus saw a large white sign with strange markings. As he got closer the only part of the sign that could be made out said ‘your life is a precious gift,' and he had to lean in close to read it. The light of the sun hit the forest floor, blocked by the thick foliage of the trees. The ground was a maze of slippery rocks and roots. It was a dark, eerie foreboding place, but with an underlying tone of quiet beauty.

There was no movement, unlike most forests brimming with life, not even a leaf dared to fall.

Lepus stepped over a log, past the sign and began staring up at the sky, his eyes trying to catch a glimpse of the sky past the forest trees. Trying to see his dragon through the sea of dark green trees. The trees were strange and straight but with intricate interconnecting roots.

Lepus heard a distant rumbling and began to walk towards the noise. As he approached, a pile of large fallen trees blocked his path. Scuffling up them the pile seemed to get larger and larger. He began to ascend the pile when there was a crack, and his leg whooshed right through a hollow tree. He scrambled trapped by the tree. It began to groan under his weight. A crack formed from the hole, and the husk started to separate.

Lepus stared down into the deep hole and saw darkness. He felt cold staring into the hollow. He heard a hissing behind him and twisted his neckto look. There brush and mounds of leaves around the tree seemed to fall from forest green and autumn leaves colours to grey then black. Lepus kept still, hoping the tree would hold as he noticed a soundand gathering mass underneath the foliage. Lepus placed his hands on either side of the cracks and tried to raise himself up. His leg, which had been stuck, emerged, and Lepus climbed up to get away from the crack. Stepping on to a live tree which seemed to grow out and away from the pile. Glanced back to the emerging creature as it seemed to manifest itself. Not from under the dead looking leaves they blended and gave form to a sleek black snake. The snake moved up the pile of rotting trees towards Lepus.

Lepus climbed higher up the strange winding tree. It was green, covered in moss and slippery to the touch. The trunk seemed to contort and bend. Until it became an endless path twisting rough the forest with spiky branches sticking out of it in all directions. Lepus picked up pace as the snake seemed to get closer and closer to him. Growing larger and into a shiny blackness. It started snarling and snapping at his shoes as he ran. The tree twisted and seemed like an endless climbing path. Lepus lost his footing and grabbing onto the branch. Looking down he could see only darkness as the forest was too dense and the tree too high to see the ground. The snake descended on him and opened its mouth unhinging its monstrous jaw as its head loomed over him. Its breath was cool and smelt clear, almost like the ocean.

The forest went silent, but Lepus seemed to hear a whisper from above. An ominous indiscernible sentence. The snake’s hind seemed to squeeze the tree as it coiled loser. Lepus screamed in fear, knowing the snake was too large for him to fight and too close for him to run. The dragon’s great mouth crunched into the tree, picking up the snake.

It squealed as Lepus fell through the trees. Lepus saw the snake began to shrink as the tops of the trees left his view. Crashing into a pile of leaves and mud Lepus rolled into a large flat area. As chunks of OD all about Himont too far away the snake fell, still shrinking in size. Lepus’s legs ached as he pushed himself away from the creature. It started to grow. Gnashing its claws as it approached and it legs scuttling up to Lepus. It became a shiny black scorpion. As it continued to shrink, it climbed his body and crawled into his nostrils. Lepus moaned with agony, trying to stop the creature. Then screamed as he fell it scuttling under his skin until it settled in his brain. Lepus leant against a large tree, panting, trying to regain his breath. The dragon, now the size of a dog, landed at Lepus’s legs. Nuzzling his leg, the dragon squeeze tight its eyes and shuffled its rear. Lepus felt the trickle of blood drip slowly to a stop, and then the plain stopped. Without warning, the dragon's wings started to flap, and it lifted off the forest floor. It hovered in front of Lepus’s face for a moment, its tail swaying below it, almost touching the forest floor. They stared into each other's eyes. Lepus was confused and scared, but the dragons soothing confidence starting to calm him. His heart stopped racing, and the dragon seemed to fade away. Lepus was alone, leaning against the tree. He slumped to the ground, amongst the leaves and dirt pressed against the tree. Lepus was alone. The forest was quiet, except a bird’s faint singing in the distance.

***

Scorpius whipped his tail at Dragoon, on the side of his giant belly. They tossedand tumbled, each one seeming to grow and shrink in size as one had the upper hand over the other.

Lepus watched, shocked and confused from his bed, scratching at his arm where the sedative needle used tobe. Dragoon shrieked in horror, as Scorpius pinned him to the floor, somehow now more giant than the dragon. The mighty Scorpius now around the size of a large man, and the dragon lay pinned screeching like a pig.

“No,” Lepus called out, his voice hoarse, and sounding like a desperate child, “don’t!”

Scorpius let out a booming laugh; his voice was distant. As if thrown from him. The great black creature had no mouth; words seem only to emanate from him.

“The child doesn’t want you dead… what’s wrong old man?” Scorpius’s seemed to be leering at the Dragon.

“Had your last day in the sun?” Scorpius called out through more echoed laughter; there was a knock at the door. As the dragon continued to shrink and became the size of a ferret. He slipped from the Scorpius's claws, as someone called from the door.

“Lepus, are you awake? It’s your attending nurse, may I come in?”

“No… just… just a second” Lepus called out. He knew that if she stepped through the door, that she won’t last long before being thrown into the violence.

“Hey wait,” The scorpion called out, as the dragon slinked away from his massive claws, making a speedy move to the bed. The scorpion began to make chase, becoming smaller, and smaller as he did. By the time the dragon reached the bottom of the bed, t scorpion wwas the size of a small terrier and the dragon hadshrunk to the size of a tarantula.

“Lepus…” the door creaked open. As the dragon ran up to Lepus’s neck. He leaned back, confused and tense. The dragon continued to shrink and crawled up into his ear while the scorpion scurried up his chest, neck and then into his nostril.

“Hello Lepus, how are you feeling?”

“Much better now,” Lepus said feeling muddled, and looking around the room, “I like it here.”

“Ah good,” Says the nurse, “Okay then, I’ll let you get some rest,”

“Good-bye,”

The door closed behind her.

***

She placed flowers next to Lepus’s chess board and frowned solemnly. He looked up at her with a pleasant smile, “Hey there,”

She sniffled; the room was cold and making her nose run.

She wipes her face as she whispers “Come back.”

“But I like it here, I want to stay,” Lepus said with a pout of his lips.

“Everyone misses you, we all just want you back,” she says, sighing

“Well they can just visit me whenever they want, can’t they?” Lepus says, chuckling

“I’m happier here; everything is simpler here. I don’t have to stress about who reads my thesis. They awarded me my doctorate on the work I had already completed.”

“I’ll… I’ll never forget you.” She chokes through tears. He smiles with deep concern,

“Why would you ever forget me? I’m right here,” He places his hand over hers, smiling “stop being so dramatic,” Lepus sighed and looked out the window to the beautiful clear sky. “I can read here, write, play music, I’ve learnt to do a handstand too. I love it here,” His words soothing her. Even though she didn't seem to listen to him.

“I’m not going anywhere.” He laughed again at the thought of people missing him. When he is available anytime for visits “Come one, I’ll see you out,”

She stood up and started to walk towards the exit. “now that I’m a voluntary patient they don’t mind what areas I walk through.”

Lepus followed her, just behind her and to the right. Matching her short strides, walking past nurses and other patients.
They know that if I leave, I will have to discharge myself,
he thought. There would be paperwork and procedure for day trips out so that people can visit family for a few hours.

If you do that, you have to stay in their company at all times. Another patient Lepus knew was telling him all about how she went to see her daughter’s clarinet recital.

Lepus walked straight past the admin area and back to his room. His plain white room.

The Excessive Shrew’s scrappy little paws fumbled around, finally finding the secret latch under his desk. As they did he heard a booming thud echo through the house, as badger finally had knocked down the front door. Shrew breathed a great sigh as he slinked into the tunnel, only large enough for him, and maybe Otter, who was of a similar shape and size. As Shrew finally reached the end of the first part of his little tunnel, his heart began to slow, the hatch firmly shut behind him and locked, and he began to search around his little cavern trying to find his most precious bottle of wine. A thud echoed from above over frantic curses and growls as the townsfolk toss about his furniture, enraged by his possessions and lush lifestyle,as they search for their felonious embezzler. The Shrew stuffs his wine (an 1811 Chateau d'Yquem) into his prepacked bag and scurries to the end of his secret cellar. Kicking in the wooden planks and falling head first into the mud on the other side of the hill. He stands upright, and suddenly remembers he didn’t take the bonds or gold from his secret safe deep in the cellar.

His little Shrew head darts back and forth. To his right, the sun is bright in the sky, although his bag has some valuables in it, mainly clothes, a few trinkets and enough coins to get him to his friends in the next town and a boat to a distant shore. Of course, also the bottle of very fine celebratory wine he had been keeping for a special occasion.

To the left of him, however, back a difficult scuttling difficult climb back up to the cellar and a moment to open his safe. His mind thinks sharply about than anger in the towns folks eyes.

The shiny dirk that Badger always carries in his belt is glinting mesmerizingly. Shrew imagines them all berating around his home. What if one of them has flipped the desk, what if they are searching for a hidden doorway passages, how Shrew could have suddenly have vanished.

Badgers dirk was undoubtedly already drawn. Shrew shakes, imagining papers and documents floating through the air as the townsfolk throw whatever they find of hiscarelessly around. As Badger stood growling in the middle of the room, pedantry and meticulousness, his paws whitening as they choked the dirk in his hand with impatient anger.

What if someone has flipped the desk in a rage? What if they have uncovered his secret panic room hovel and are frantically bustling around it, trying to fit in? What if one has already realised that Otter alone, or (now Shrew realises it) Mouse can provide? What if they have given him a dagger, and have sent him down to fetch their traitor?

Shrew’s breath begins to deepen with panic. Reflecting on his life, he starts to weep. It’s not like he smoked too much pipe tobacco as Owl does, or was ever a gambling man, like Fox. It’s not as if the cards had stripped him of his reputation and he had had to live as a vagrant. Or even that he was ruthless, evil and a murderer as everyone suspected wolf to be.

He had simply craved a particular kind of lifestyle staring at the broken wood and ominous dark hole, which tempted him with the possible promise of gold and the wealth he had worked so hard to steal, but possibly certain death. He shivered with fear. All his worldly possessions gone, bare a bottle of the finest wine available and the clothes in his bag.

For the first moment in his short animal life, the Shrew turned. Then walked away with his head high, and his tiny light duffle bag under his arm. Starting his first steps on the long, arduous journey away from his home, and towards a distant land where he would be safe and free. In his safe he thought, a smile slipping across his face as he began to fully realise what he had done.

The town’s folk would find more money than they could ever have dreamed. All that he had taken from them, selfishly, of course, he had been continuously reinvesting and growing for a lovely fat retirement for himself. That would be all theirs now. Otter, with the loyal hand of Badger, would ensure everyone got their fair dues. The town would flourish and prosper like never before.

For generations to come, all would call this time ‘The Golden Age; Of Merry Town,' from the day the Shrew, a mysterious banker, had slipped away quietly, a mysterious dark hero. In the songs, they would one day sing of him, and as time passed eventually, none would ever call him. The Excessive Shrew, but only The Mighty Brave Shrew.

As Shrew ascended his friend's boat a few weeks later, he was beaming.

For he, was alive.

The End