Impressions 2020-21

Page 21

Short Story Davio Badalamenti

No windows, one door, a chair, and a table. The train ride to my work is awfully bleak. As a worker for Superior Tech, I’m not allowed to know the location of the lab. I am picked up by a train that only has one stop. I’m fidgeting in my seat the entire time. I get to be the first to try out a new piece of equipment that is going to change the world! I get to work and am greeted

the headsets, she told me that she is going to be with me throughout the whole experience and will be communicating throughout the evaluation.

She also told me

I waited for what seemed like hours, but was most likely only twenty-five minutes. Suddenly, the door slowly opens and a woman walks in. I can feel my body stiffen as she approaches the seat across from me. The woman places a medium-sized, all-black suitcase on the table and asks me to state my company ID number. Then, she opens the suitcase which reveals some sort of glasses and a headset. She hands them to me telling me to put them on. I can hear her talking through

I ever want to leave the experience to simply say “pineapple” and she would end it. Before she begins the experience I ask what I would see once I’m in there. A smile spreads from ear to ear on her face, and she says that it’s a simulation where you experience your greatest fears. They feel real but they can’t hurt you. I go to ask a follow-up question and before I know it I’m not in the room anymore. I have no headset on and no glasses. I am in the same chair looking up to what seems to be the sky. I look down at my feet and feel my heart drop. I may be in the same chair that I was in when I was in the room, but the room is not there. Instead, I’m at the top of the Empire state building, teetering off the side, at any moment I could be like a bug on a windshield, but instead, it’s me on the sidewalk looking like a piece of modern graffiti. I scream at the top of my lungs, hoping someone will hear me, and then I remember the safe word. I yell pineapple over and over again, I feel like I sound like a broken record. All the sudden I am back in the white abyss. The woman is sitting across from me, and I am fine.

40

41

by a short lady with red hair who looks no older than thirty-five.

She tells me to follow her, which eventually leads to a room. The room is a white abyss; there are only a table and two chairs sitting across from one another.

She tells me to wait until the operator comes

in, then promptly opens the door and slowly shuts it behind her.

that if


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