Pact

15 Minute Write

“ Why are you here?” The voice was stern, bordering on angry.

“ You shouldn’t have chosen this way “, a statement, but softened with a touch of sympathy.

Jane hadn’t consciously chosen this path — or so she told herself. The red had pulled her in like a dog to another dog’s rear. She was not entirely sure where the voice came from - looking around, there were no speakers, no one in front of or behind her - was it an inner voice? No. Surely not.

“ Go through the skull and get your note — 9-74. If you must be here, make yourself useful. “From sympathy, the voice turned to irritation.

The skull turned out to be a pair of doors, opening in the middle, with a skull painted across both. The eyes were round portholes, and the long, thin silver handles sat between the hollows where the nose would be, looking like enormous staples. After touching the handles, she pulled her hands away, instinctively looking down at her palms and finding them wet and blue with cold. What lay beyond this skull that could be at such a low temperature?

She reached out again and tugged the doors with a vicious jerk, sending them flying. While the doors were swinging, she managed to duck through. In front of her, a set of cubby holes made from metal, arranged in a rack format, was attached to the wall. Ten shelves high, there looked to be many, many boxes, as the whole unit ran to more than three meters. A clock and a sign that she couldn’t make out were on the far wall in front of her,  but her mind was on the ‘note’. By luck, more than chance, she took the lower left box to be row 1 and box 1, and this proved correct. Nine shelves above and 74 boxes right was a box with the number 9-74.

The box had a notch at the top to be able to place two fingers inside and pull to open, and as she did, it opened out as a drawer, inside of which was a folded piece of paper. The words ‘Your answer’ were drawn in a fluent, yet untidy, script, in pencil, on the front. 

This was when Jane noticed the small geometric shape in her vision. She shut her right eye, and behind the lid could see the small bright object spinning. She opened both eyes and then closed the left, and there it was, the same shape was visible in both eyes. As she observed these shapes, they started to grow bigger - what was this? A stroke? Her eyes finally packing in? Was she going to be blind?

She looked down at the piece of paper, which she had now plucked from the drawer and could not make out a single letter. She reached for her glasses and put them on, but this made no difference; she watched as the letters grew more out of focus, her vision as a whole blurring out. She felt a sick worry start to churn in her stomach - she couldn’t go blind - she was an artist, how could she ever work? What was being taken away from her? She opened the folded piece of paper and watched as the illegible words started to move snake-like and dance; they would not stay still.

A noise behind startled her, and she felt the temperature drop as if the door to a freezer had opened. The drop in temperature must have done something to her physically, as her eyes began to grow brighter and more focused. The words on the note began to slow and form a line of text which read, ‘It will be Saturday, 6th June 2046 - and now for your part of the deal ’

Amsterdam, May 2025. Nikon Z8