What happens now?

What Happens Now?

Page sat down at the edge of the chair, a cold glass of water gripped in one hand, and a pen in the other. Slowly he stared at the walls.

Yes, the walls stared back. In a staring competition, they'd never lose, Page knew.

And yet he still tried. He still tried to beat them, because he knew that if one day, he did, then the whole rules of human existance could be rearranged around this one little victory. He knew that if these timber walls would one day suddenly cower from the challenge and retreat into a long lost wood.

Ironic, isn't it? They must be revisiting their friends.

So Page came into this room to while away his pointless existence. For hours at a time he'd stare. He'd stare in all different ways – from the ceiling, with a glint in his eye, with glasses on. Still, there was no retreat. Both the wall and Page seemed unrelenting in their desire to win this seemingly eternal staring contest.

Well, the wall did have an advantage, it was kind of nailed to the floor. And even then, it was nailed to one another. Backing away from this little contest would prove rather hard to it, even if it wanted to.

Yes, Page could have brought a chainsaw into the room with him, and the thought had crossed his mind many a time. But that would make the game way too easy. There'd be no challenge if the walls had suddenly come crashing down as a result of their foundations between driven to splinters by the constant and ever so painful rotation of tiny little blades with what had been termed “nasty, pointy teeth” by Page's friend Stephen.

Page was always up for a challenge. Even a seemingly impossible one.

And, of course, he did take into consideration the feelings these pieces of wood would have. What use would putting them into little splinters be? Imagine their poor families, Page often lamented! “They'd come home from school one day, sit down to eat a nice dinner of dirt, and the larch policeman would knock on the door. The mum, who undoubtedly would be a mahogany plant, would go up to answer it, leaving the children to cheerily munch away at their little dinners. When she came back, the tears would slowly erode away at the ground, leaving her to despise both the cruel nature of deforestation and the relative poverty in which trees lived in.”

And upon hearing this, Stephen would slowly back away for a moment.

I mean, sure, his friend was strange, Stephen noted to himself, but this strange? Maybe there was an effect that had been made by the little decisions in life. I mean, what could have happened that would drive Page to have some eternal staring contest with what is literally a solid wall.

Unless you chomp into it with a chainsaw, he added, and then noticed that he had forgotten to utilise the correct punctuation for the above thoughts.

Of course, Page wouldn't give in. It wasn't in his nature. From the age of five, when he had built this majestic little sandcastle in the pits at playschool. It was an amazing castle, to be sure. Full of pits and moats and murder holes.

But when the bell had gone to go inside for the latest lesson in this strange design of life (“Art”, Page recalled), he refused to move from his position – the figurative fort of sorts. And so he sat. And refused to give up his position.

For thirty five hours.

“An impressive, marathonic feat.”, Stephen recalled.

“What?”

“Nothing, I was thinking about that time when you were five and you built that sandcastle at playschool and it was full of pits and moats and murder holes and you wouldn't go inside for your art lesson and you eventually stayed outside for thirty five hours in an attempt to maintain your little dream.”

“Oh. Is the wall moving yet?”

“No.”

“Shut up then.”

And so the contest would continue on. Page would continue staring at the wood, encaspulating it's fine grain within his glance. The wood would continue to stare back at him, encaspulating his skin tones within it's glance. Stephen would sit, extremely bored extremely bored extremely bored extremely bored extremely bored extremely bored extremely bored.

Even to the point where he'd intone these words quietly, softly, underneath his breath. And they'd gradually become louder and louder, to the point where Page would hit him for talking too loudly.

“IT BREAKS MY CONCENTRATION!”, his eyes would scream.