Prompt- "He positioned the ladder directly below the
window and started to climb."
Another round in what is turning out to be my "the silent room" prompt series...
(Number 11)
(Number 11)
He found himself sitting in the middle of a grassy lawn in
front of a rather unique two story building. It had no windows, a front porch
with a railing but no roof, and two doors set one above the other in the center. In looking to the right
and the left, he found that in every other direction were flat plowed fields as
far as the eye could see. No people working. No faint blush of new growth on
the ground. Only tilled rows of
turned brown earth running east to west.
At first he was a bit disconcerted to find himself in such a
strange location. He didn't remember having ever been here before. He'd never been out of the city a day of his life, he was sure. Inside the green
circle closed in by fields, there were no cars, no bikes, and no other people visible. Not even a good farm road led up to the place as far as he could
tell. Without actually standing up, that is. Only this rather odd two story
building in front of him. Then it dawned on
him that he didn't even know his own name, so the chance that he would not
recognize what something was, or remember why he was here, was probably par for
the course.
Why is it, he thought, that I don't know my own name?
Glancing down at his clothes, he found a series of numbers
stitched into the heavy fabric of his gray work coveralls. 11- X72H109. Hmm. Perhaps his name was all
those things? Or maybe he was just the
first part? And the last part was his surname? Were names usually made up of numbers? Somehow he didn't think so. Shaking his head, he decided it didn't matter for
the moment. He’d call himself Number 11 for the time being, and he set himself to
start studying the house and field around him more closely by first getting
himself to his feet. Maybe that would help this strange empty vacuum of
memory.
Standing turned out to take a great deal more energy and
coordination than he would have presumed. First he had to try to get his arms
to hold his weight so he could shift his legs underneath him. When he
finally had mastered that, his legs became the uncooperative bits. First his
left leg went out, then his right leg. At long last he got his feet solidly
planted and his legs under him so that he could stand in a straight, if rather
swaying, position. He braced his elbows and hands as tightly against his waist
and legs as he could to steady himself, and closed his eyes to hide the great
leaping swoops of house and sky that were now shimmering before him. That helped, sort
of. When the world finally stopped tipping, he opened his eyes
slowly one at a time.
The first realization that struck him was that the first floor
door, which had been partially blocked from view by the broad front porch and
its railings when he had been sitting, had multiple two by fours nailed across
its bottom half. He huffed softly and then looked up at the door on the second
floor. Well, door frame, he amended, as the door on the second floor was completely
missing, and stood out against the pale yellow paint of the building like the
black gap in the mouth of a seven year old when he'd lost a tooth. Vaguely,
Number 11 wondered if he knew any seven year olds with gaps in their teeth. He
didn't think so, but if he didn't, why would he think such a thing?
After pondering the likelihood of a seven year old appearing
shortly to help him out of his predicament (none appeared), he decided to get on with
matters. Why was he needing to decide
something anyway, he wondered? Why couldn't he just do something? Too many
imponderables, again.
He managed to lift his right leg forward in a semblance of a
step. Then he repeated with his left. That
took all the energy he had for awhile, and he stood swaying and staring at the
door. For a minute he thought about
sitting down to take his rest, but then the thought of standing back up.... He
stayed standing. After a awhile, he made
another attempt at walking. This time he managed about six lifts of his legs
before he had to pause and rest.
When eventually he got to the steps, he decided not to climb
them. They were too steep for his current leg lifting abilities. Instead, he
continued on around the house to the right. The fields on that side of the
house ran a different direction to those in front of the house, he noted,
and ran north to south. Or south to north, depending which direction he was
walking. Besides that, there was nothing but the neat patch of grass around the
building (dared he call it a house?) except for a few straggly weeds along the
foundation.
By the time he got back around to the front, his legs had
begun to work in what he considered a more normal "step-step" rhythm. This time he climbed the
steps without much problem and made it at last to the blocked off front
door.
Up close, he could now see it was a metal door with an inset lock and no door knob. That
looked even less promising. He gave it a push. Nothing. He heaved at it with his
left shoulder. Again nothing. He took a few
steps back to the edge of the porch and gave it a full out running leap of a
shove, letting the entire left side of his body slam into the door. All he got
for his troubles was a bruised hip (where he had jumped too low and caught the
top two by four with it) and a goose egg (where he'd cracked his head against the door in whiplash from the jar to his hip). On landing, he slid rather gracelessly to the
porch floor like a sack of potatoes tumbling down in one long
thump, thump, thud. Slumped on the floor, he stayed where he landed for a long time, only taking a moment after awhile to shift over slightly more onto his back, and stared up
at the blue sky and its drifting white clouds. Thinking nothing. No one came. Eventually, he noticed that the shadows of
the place had begun to change and the light to dim. He sat up abruptly.
Sitting outside for the night, or alternately, finding a way into the house after dark and being stuck inside without knowing what was in there in the daylight, neither sounded too nice. Climbing down off the porch, he took two
more turns around the house, looking for... anything. On the second round, he
found it. A ladder buried in among the weeds at the foundation on the left side
of the house. He wondered how he'd missed it earlier. With hard pull to get it free of the grass, he hauled it out and brushed it off.
Carrying it back to the front of
the house and up onto the porch, he set it up against the wall below the open
door frame. It stopped about three inches below the open door. Doable, if it a
bit dangerous. He rocked the ladder back
and forth to see how stable it was on the porch floor (and to get his courage up; heights were not his favorite thing, he was sure) and was shocked to feel
it slide into the porch. Looking down, he discovered there were two neat
grooves carved into the porch floor that he had failed to take note of earlier.
Excellent.
Nothing for it now then, he thought, and putting his right foot up upon the first ladder rung, he began to climb.
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