Therapy Bits

Thanks Missy for the challenge!

Missy’s MAD Challenge # 053 – M.A.D. Works

Our challenge phrase this week is:

“Waking up in a strange room was not something he expected”

Here is my take…

Waking up in a strange room was not something that he expected.

The ceiling above him was high and domed, painted in swirling constellations that shimmered with a light that didn’t seem to come from any lamp. The air smelled of lavender and something metallic—like rain on copper. As he sat up, the soft sheets rustled beneath him, warm but unfamiliar, stitched with patterns of leaves and eyes.

His name was Cole, and yesterday—he was sure of it—he had gone to sleep in his apartment on the twelfth floor of a very forgettable building in a very forgettable part of town. A single lamp on, laptop open, half a sandwich on a plate.

Now there were no walls, only tall curtains that moved even though there was no wind. The bed sat in the middle of a circular platform, and strange devices hummed gently on floating shelves—one shaped like a clock, another like a glass teardrop filled with smoke.

He stood, bare feet on polished stone, and felt no draft despite his surroundings. It wasn’t cold or hot. It simply was, like the moment before thunder.

A voice interrupted the silence. “Ah. You’re awake.”

Cole turned sharply. A figure stepped through the curtain—not from behind it, but through it, as if the fabric had decided momentarily not to be solid. The figure was tall, cloaked in something that flickered like a reflection on water. Their eyes were too dark, and they didn’t blink.

“Where am I?” Cole asked, trying to force steel into his voice.

The figure tilted their head. “You are in the Atrium of Arrival. A temporary space. Between things.”

“Between what things?”

“Between the world you knew… and the world you must now remember.”

That made no sense. Cole took a step back. “I think you have the wrong guy.”

The figure gave the faintest of smiles. “You all say that, in the beginning.”

Cole’s heart thudded. The constellations above him began to shift, spinning slowly in the dome. And in one of them, faint but unmistakable, was his name.

“Cole Mercer,” the figure said. “You chose to forget. But the time for forgetting is over.”

Cole shook his head. “This has to be a dream.”

But a prickling sensation ran down his spine—one he remembered from childhood, once, just once, when he’d touched something in the woods he couldn’t explain. A stone that pulsed. A whisper that came from beneath the soil.

And as the stars overhead rearranged themselves into something older than maps, a door—round, black, and silent—opened in the floor beneath his feet.

He didn’t fall.

He descended.

And with every foot of darkness that swallowed him, something in him whispered back: Welcome home.