The Mansion

Part One

 Complete and utter darkness. Nothing could be seen. Nothing could be heard. The silence was deafening. Where was he? What was going on? Who was he?

He tried moving. Nothing. Nothing could be felt. There were no senses. There was nothing. So, when in the midst of nothingness, the man decided to do...nothing. And so nothing happened. Nothing was all that existed.

But if there was nothing, the man thought, then how could he be thinking? And anyway, in order for there to be nothing, there had to be something in the first place. What was nothing if there wasn't something to be there alongside it? What was nothing? Nothing was just plainly and simply nothing. But that's precisely what he felt.

After experiencing nothing for a while, the man decided to do something. He tried to move, but there was no sensation of moving. And of course, he couldn't see. Even so, was there anything to see in the first place? After hours and hours, the man mustered all the willpower he possibly could. The nothingness broke.

A split second of blinding light exploded before the man's very eyes and he slammed his eyelids shut. His eyelids. The man concluded that he did, in fact, exist. Eyes shut against the intense and seemingly infinite light spilling down on him from above, he tried to move. He writhed and fought with himself and eventually, feeling came into his body. He tried once again to open his eyes.

The light once more startled him, but it wasn't as bad as the first time. He could make out blurry and somewhat distant outlines of things he assumed had to be objects. But what were they? Over time and intense concentration by the man, things slowly came into focus and he began to gain full feeling. He felt his body start to work; he felt fresh oxygen flow into his lungs and his heart beat. He began to smell as well. Taking a whiff of the air, the man made a face. Or he thought he did. He couldn't fully tell. This place, wherever he was, smelled musty and old. The spot he lay on was oddly soft and not too uncomfortable. He was exhausted, and couldn't explain why. He wanted to just lay there and fall asleep, but he told himself that he needed to try.

He tried to move his legs. Looking across what he assumed was his body, he saw two close by objects sticking up in front of him. His feet. Using all of his strength, his feet twitched. They moved forward and wriggled around. He was finally beginning to get the hang of...whatever this was. Things were almost clear to him through his eyes. What before seemed to be an extremely intense powerful source of white light above him looked vaguely like a chandelier.

He looked over at his lifeless arm and put all of his strength into it. But, as it turned out, he didn't need that much. The arm lifted rather easily. He tried lifting both at the same time. It was hard, but excitedly looking from left to right, he could see the almost clear shapes that were his arms rise into the air and then fall back down at his command. He poised himself to get up onto his feet.

Wedging himself up using his now useful arms, he bent his knees and slowly lifted his body up into a sitting position, arms behind him and knees in front of him. From there, he pushed himself farther up and put the majority of his weight on his lower body, pushing himself upward with his legs. Reaching a weak standing position, he suddenly felt dizzy. His head lolled to one side and he wobbled around for a moment before he fully lost balance and crashed sideways into a table, which cracked under him. He tumbled to the ground, back where he started, helplessly lying on the ground, his body sore from smashing against the table.

With much less effort than last time (but done more slowly) the man got himself on his feet. He put his hand to the wall and took the moment to examine his mysterious situation. His vision was pretty much normal. At least, he thought it was. Then, it fully hit him that he didn't recall anything about himself. He racked his brain. No memories could be found aside from the ones he made since waking up. He didn't know his name, he didn't know his story, he didn't know why he was there or what he was doing there or how he got there.

Swiveling his head around, he found lots of old furniture. There were couches and tables and rugs and mirrors and a huge grand staircase and all other things of the sort—and they all looked like they belonged in the Elizabethan era. And they were all covered in cobwebs.

The man paused momentarily. Elizabethan era? How did he know what that was? And how did he know that this wasn't the Elizabethan era? How did he know what a couch was? What a table was? The man was frustrated. How did he know what all this stuff was, and yet not know who he himself was?

He put it out of his mind. He couldn't waste time wondering things when he had immediate problems. He searched for the exit, but he couldn't find one. Oddly enough, he was in what appeared to be an entry hall. It was a large room, with that huge chandelier that he saw earlier and a grand staircase leading to the upper floors as well as hallways leading to the other rooms on the lower floor, he assumed.

And yet, there was no door to the outside. Where there would have normally been a door in this type of entry hall was a large blank wall directly across from the staircase. Making sure he was stable, he hobbled over to the peculiar empty space where there should have been a door. It shimmered for a second. He ran a finger down it. To his astonishment, his finger seemed to flow through it as if it were some sort of liquid—and yet his finger was not wet when he retracted it.

His eyebrows raised and his jaw fell. He backed away from it and stared at it for a few moments, trying to process what just happened. He second-guessed it. He figured he was hallucinating. Even more slowly this time, he stepped over to the blank wall and poked it lightly with his finger. Once again, to his dismay, it went right through. It felt cold on the other side.

Cautious, he began to push his whole hand through, and eventually his forearm as well. Whatever was on the other side, it gave a cold, moist, unexplainable sensation that was foreign to the man. He didn't understand it, and yet, something drew him to it. He wanted—no, needed—to discover what this was.

After a deep breath, he backed up a few steps, and then launched himself forward to the mysterious blank wall.