I was locked in the room for a week before the door finally opened. At least that’s what I had figured by watching the clock on the wall. At times, though, I wondered whether or not there was some kind of short in the batteries, since it would seem like hours had gone by and it would be only a matter of seconds, and vice versa, the hours seeming like minutes, but the clock saying otherwise. The room itself was perfectly white, almost sterile, smelling of that hospital issue disinfectant that never failed to make me slightly nauseous. However, there was something…off…about the place. Almost as if someone had just painted over the dirt that covered the room, hiding its secrets under layer after layer of matte white. The clothes I woke up in that first morning were also white—a knee length dress with a flowing kind of skirt, completely useless, but, admittedly, aesthetically pleasing. I had never owned anything like it in my life, and its existence somehow managed to unnerve me more than the fact that I had no idea how I ended up there.

The room was scarcely decorated, holding only a small twin bed (white), and an end table (also white). On the table was a tray of white food—mashed potatoes and marshmallows, cauliflower and rice. There was a large bottle of water, and a white vase holding a white daisy. There were no windows and one door, dead bolted and chained seven times with seven locks, all of them stuck fast, even though they were all bolted from my side.

I felt like I would go blind from all the white. There were times I was convinced that I had.

The first day, I screamed until my throat was raw. I banged on the door, I pulled at the latches. I toppled the table, threw the tray of food at the walls. I tried to push over the bed, but found it too heavy. I kicked it, instead, almost breaking my toe in the process since whomever decided to provide me with the useless dress had failed at giving me shoes. I made as much noise as I possibly could, praying, hoping, begging for someone to hear me and find me and tell me what the hell was going on and where I was and how I had gotten here and oh god, I just wanted to go home.

If only I could remember where home was. But I would worry about that, later.

The second day I decided to take a more reasonable approach. Though I had heard nothing during my fitful sleep, sometime in the night someone had straightened up the room, replacing the end table and tray of food (this time the spread included white bread (the crust cut off), sliced turkey, and more marshmallows), and painting over the marks and dents I had made in the walls and door, pretty much cementing my previous idea that the dirt in the room had merely been painted over, not removed, though that still didn’t explain the disturbing disinfectant smell.

I spent the day canvassing every inch of the room, approaching the situation like one of those silly time wasting flash games I used to torture my brain with while procrastinating from doing my homework at three in the morning. “You’re trapped in a room with no windows and one door. Do what you can to get out” the instructions would read. The difference between the games and the real world, however, was that, in the games, there was always some hidden puzzle, or clue, or key that would help you solve the mystery and leave the room. In my white little world, however, I found only a few scattered dust bunnies the cleaning fairies must have forgotten, and half of a broken paperclip which I promptly snapped and lost within the key hole below the door handle on my first attempt at picking it. Whoops.

The third day I spent in bed, the white, down covers pulled up over my head. I heard voices in my dreams, snippets of sound and conversation, though I couldn’t make out any of the words.

The fourth day I was famished. Up until then I had been dutifully ignoring the ever present, ever changing tray of food that lay on the bedside table, determined that it had to be drugged or poisoned or some combination thereof. However, my body was reminding me, rather loudly, that it needed food, and who was I to argue with rather noisy internal organs? Again, the food, like everything else in the room, was white, and, though it was slightly cold, it was magically delicious.

The fifth day I scratched dirty limericks into the walls with the remaining piece of broken paper clip. They were gone in the morning.

The sixth day I managed to break a leg off of the bedside table and wandered the room in haphazard circles, banging it against the walls and door as hard as I could, singing every rude, disgusting song I had ever learned at camp. When I ran out of songs I switched to “The Song That Doesn’t End” from that old Lambchop show, hoping to annoy my captors into letting me out. I ended up with nothing but a headache and an assortment of splinters for my trouble.

The seventh day I awoke to colour. Sitting in the middle of the tray on the bedside table was a brilliantly red apple, almost glowing amongst the stale, sterile white. It almost hurt to look at it, my eyes forgetting what it was like to process colour after so much white. My first instinct was that it was some kind of trap. It was too perfect, too beautiful, too tempting. I spent the better part of the day sitting with my back turned to it, trying to ignore its presence, which, somehow, caused me to think of it even more, its visage hovering behind my eyes every time I closed them. The image of it was burned into my retinas, the idea of it burned into my mind and, almost before I knew what was happening it was in my hands and I was taking a bite, relishing the sweet yet tart taste and then everything went dark.

Damnit. I knew it was a trap.

When I awoke on the eighth day, I could hear birds. I sat up from my position on the floor where I had fallen the night before (the cleaning fairies must have taken the night off because the apple, now slightly brown where I had bitten it, still lay on the floor beside me) to face an open door, and beyond it, lush green forest. Sitting beside door way was a pair of soft white ballet slippers, which were, like the dress, completely useless in a practical sense, but beautifully crafted and better than going barefoot so I slipped them on, and, taking a deep breath and a final glance at the vacuum that had been both my prison and home for the last week, I stepped out of the doorway and into the woods beyond. Somewhere behind me the door shut. I could hear the seven locks click back into place. For a moment, I was frightened. I wanted to rush back into that white room, hide under that white bed, but that path was closed to me, now. Now I could only go forward.

And so I did.