Some shared reading

I wrote this two years ago in my English class. I thought perhaps it should be shared.

Enjoy.

The Chair




The marble chair stood in the middle of the room. No heat emanated from the cold, black stone. The armrests, ornately carved, end in slender, feminine hands. The back, carved comfortably, was an effigy of a fair maiden. The chair was so deep a black that your eyes would refuse to focus on that dark chair. It seemed as if the chair was looming at you, with the white figures outlined in the deep night of the chair.

The room containing that cold, foreboding chair was in was just as torturous, but in a subtler sense. The room was silent, so silent it would drive you insane. But one thing, just one thing made it unbearable. A metronome sitting on a stone desk is the corner, seemed not to break the silence, but to exaggerate the muted atmosphere of the murky room. From the ceiling hung a lantern, enclosed in black filters, which bathe the room in a sort of black light. One portal, a stone door, led away from the horrible place.

The man sitting in the chair looked calm. But at a closer look, you could see that his eyes were wild, akin to those of a badger. His knuckles, white from gripping the stone in his pale hands, shuddered in hysteria from the eternal silence and sparseness of the room. His face, unshaven and pale, looked as if daylight had forsaken him. Although he wasn’t bound by any physical means, he felt compelled to sit in that chair. Forever.

As the stone door slid open, a tall, terrible man entered the room. As he did so, a radiance of calm flew out of his being into the man in the chair. The new comer was clad regally, with purple jacket and burgundy trousers. A black steel blade was strapped to his waist, the jewel encrusted hilt showing from the black scabbard. But even though he was clothed in riches and his blade was made of a rare and invaluable material, his face was want completed his form. The man’s face was showed no emotion, it was cold and plain. The utter lack of feeling in the man’s face made the poor person in the chair feel ever more distressed. His face had been altered by his masters to have that very effect on the slovenly man in the chair. As the torturer entered the room, he knew, as he had always known, that this was the man who made his life a misery.

‘Ah, Mr. Thompson, I see you haven’t tried to escape again… hmmm? Well, its not as if you could get any further than last time. And to think of what you did to the guard. I’m still trying to get the stain of the wall. But, no worries, I think our new friend is going to help us out today.’ The man in purple turned to the door, and motioned forwards. Two surly looking men, carrying a ‘barrow of cages came through the door. They left the wooden transport in the middle of the room, and left. The man in purple took one of the cages in the ‘barrow and peered into it. Inside was a large rat, the size of a small dog. The man gave it to Mr. Thompson, and told him to hold it over his chest. Mr. Thompson looked blankly at the regal man, but complied. The man in purple took a brace of rope from his side and began tying down poor Mr. Thompson. Soon, his arms were completely bound, and his arms similarly so. Then, the regal man strode over to the metronome and struck a match on it.

As the match fizzled to life, the man in purple walked back to the terrified man, and then, subtly let the match catch a light on the wooden cage. The rat, terrified, began to burrow through the wood and into the poor man’s chest. The rat continued to burrow until he reached the man’s ribcage, and then the man in purple reached in and withdrew the gore-covered rodent. He dropped it to the floor, and with one fluid movement squashed the rat under the heel of his boot. He then looked towards the hardly breathing life in the chair, and nodded, cruelly. The man in purple began to leave the room, as he was done with that man for the day, and hoped he would get information off of him the next. As he left, two women, dressed in medical uniform came rushing into the room, and began to tend the quickly dying man. As the door slid shut, behind the leaving man, all they could hear was the ever so often squeak as the man’s bloody heels scraped the floor.