Brutalist Stories #57

A woman walks into the room holding a large yellow ball in one hand. It’s a tall room with spiking concrete shafts that are split occasionally with slits of light, highlighting motes of grey dust that float through the air.

“Where are we?” a man asks, one in the crowd of ten or so, made up of both men and women, young and old, all stood about in confusion.

“Who are you?” a woman asks. She’s shivering, they’re all dressed in thin grey uniforms that offer little protection from the bitter cold in the room.

The woman carrying the large yellow ball walks past them and glares, giving them a quick ‘shh,’ holding the index finger on her free hand up to her mouth as she does.

“I’m not sure who I am?” the man whispers to the woman.

“Are you afraid?” the woman asks.

“I’m not sure what we would have to be afraid of?” the man replies, still whispering. He looks around at the rest of the group, huddled and shivering. They’re largely quiet, minute signals being shot across from each other, between the eyes, between twitches in skin.

The man turns to the woman holding the large yellow ball, following her as she makes her circuit of the room. She’s staring straight ahead, looking at nothing in particular, vacant with the hint of a smile.

“I’m going to ask her, her carrying the ball,” he says to the woman next to him. She nods and gives him a small pat on the back, for reassurance.

He takes a step away from the small crowd and towards the woman holding the ball. She turns to him with wide eyes, slowly, slowly opening her mouth, from which a scream starts to emanate, getting louder and louder. He doesn’t know what to do, he’s looking around the room, trying to catch the eye of anyone else, but they’re just huddling and cowering and holding their hands against their ears as the scream increases in volume and bass.

“Make it stop!” the woman he had been talking to screams. “Make it stop, come back, come back,” her plea patters out into a whimper, completely overwhelmed by the terror that’s bursting from the mouth of the woman holding the large yellow ball.

The man jumps backwards and as soon as he hits the concrete floor, within arm’s distance of the rest of the group, the screaming stops. The rest of them start to take their hands from their ears, looking around, tears streaming from their eyes, disorientated, weak, and cold.

The woman holding the large yellow ball finally stops her circling and turns to them. “This is a machine,” she says in a voice a world away from the violent emanation that had just come from her. “With this machine, we will try our best to make sure you are not afraid, not ever again.”

An old man, pulls himself through the small crowed, shaking and quivering with the cold, weak from age, his thin, frail body barely able to push its way out of the cowering people.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” he says to the woman holding the large yellow ball.

“For how long?” she replies.

“I feel like it has been forever,” he says back to her. He tries to smile, but only a weak twitch comes from the side of his mouth.

“We are glad to help you,” the woman holding the large yellow ball says back to him. “We will teach you, you no longer have to be afraid.”

Building inspiration: Nevigeser Wallfahrtsdom

Musical inspiration: Ryan Teague – Point of Departure