The Conversation
William woke up gasping for air. As his lungs filled, he fell out of the chair he’d
been sitting in.
He couldn’t remember how or why he was sitting in a chair.
He couldn’t remember the last thing that happened to him.
He steadied himself on his hands and knees, struggling to breathe properly. Tears
spilled down his cheeks as his breathing normalized.
As his breathing steadied, the smell of the room came into focus, a mixture of an
old bookstore and his grandmother’s moldy basement. He wiped the tears from his
eyes with his sleeve and stood, using the chair to steady himself.
He noticed two doors with faded red paint at the end of the room. He wondered which
one led out.
He sat down in the chair to regain his composure and then saw him.
An old man sitting behind the desk. The man, balding with gray hair on the sides,
wore a blue sweater vest over a dress shirt. His glasses were slightly too large
for the size of his head. The man reminded William of his old high school guidance
counselor.
He stared at the man as he flipped through a few more pages of whatever document or
files he was looking over.
“It's nice to meet you,” the man said without looking up from the paper in his
hand. “Mister Further.”