Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [84]
He ate his rice, and went to sleep. And only slept.
When Penelope came back four hours later, he was curled on a mat in the hall. He looked almost as though he had fallen over, a map still loosely held in one hand. Penelope watched his slow breathing for a few moments, saw the tension gone out of his face, his hands.
It was remarkable that he was bearing up so well under the stress. The resilience of youth, or long years’ experience at the Doctor’s side? She suppressed an urge to stroke his hair, and instead checked her pocket watch. Five more minutes.
She wished, now, that she and the Doctor had not parted on such disagree-able terms. Even though she had been able to offer him some comfort before his death, and they had been reconciled, it seemed so futile to have wasted their time bickering.
At least she now knew the reason for the Doctor’s insistent interest in her nightmares. What was the meaning of their shared dream – herself, the Doctor, Mr Cwej? Why this common nightmare of enclosure, like a dream of being trapped in a coffin, buried alive? It was time. She bent to shake the young man awake. Chris’s eyes flickered open. He looked up at her. ‘I’ve been conned,’ he said.
169
Falling upwards
No luck. I fall back. Too much weight resting on me for me to shift it. I can’t even gasp for breath. Body calling up every last scrap of stored oxygen, enough to last me for a few more minutes at least, as long as I keep brain and body running on minimum. As long as I don’t make any more desperate lunges to get out.
Now would be a good time to go mad. If only I could figure out quite how to manage it. Just a short hop sideways from reality, they say, but I can’t seem to move in that direction either. Brain’s running so slowly now.
It would be such a relief if I finally did go insane, because then I’d no longer have to stay on constant guard against going mad. That weight would be off me. I’d be relieved of duty. Wouldn’t have to keep trying to keep control, make sure everyone plays the parts they’re supposed to in the plans I lay.
But it’s that control which the others want to lock safely away, because they’re afraid it’s another step down that road to megalomania. And it’s that same manipulation, that same prodding of people into position, which made me lead Chris into burying me alive.
The irony is killing me.
I’m not sure which is worse. In the Room there’s no hope, no exit, no slim chance of a way out. Right now, in this dark, there’s just enough hope that it sends you into an absolute panic at the thought of not being able to grasp it.
The last of the stored oxygen’s going sour.
What will it be like after it happens? A trial before a jury of my twelve peers? Six consecutive life sentences for crimes against my conscience?
They think I deserve this.
They?
We.
Let’s not mince pronouns here: they’re as much me as I am. I’m all in this together. I stand with all the other facets of me as they pass judgement on my life. We decided I’d gone too far.
We think I deserve this.
We?
171
I.
It’s all too easy to take the metaphors literally. But we’re not separate: we’re a chain of cause and effect.
I think I deserve this.
No.
Of course I think I deserve this. To be devoured, sacrificed, punished because I couldn’t save everyone, or because I let horrible things happen to those who deserved it. Of course I let horrible things happen to me. I thought I deserved it. But I don’t.
And I don’t have to put myself through this if I –
I moved.
Just a little, a slight twist of the hand, dirt trickling through my fingers.
Just a tiny bit scraped off the mass above me. Again. My hand pushing side to side, pushing the soil away around it, letting it fall beneath me. Other hand can do it too. Can’t push the earth up, but I can let it fall past me. Try moving my whole body the same way. There. It’s scraping against me. I can hear the dirt rasping against my ears. Flush it out of the way.
Everything that’s holding me down, let it fall away.
I can still feel my body beginning to die all