Stories: Making Change

 I meet with a few friend every other week to talk about our writing. We generally have a small prompt: 'something about a cat', or 'something about disappointment', or more recently, 'something that has the same structure as the book/movie Cloud Atlas'. 

This is a story I wrote for that final prompt, 'making change'. I think I may start to put my little stories on here, as I continue to explore my many faces as a writer.

Making Change


Samantha had waited forty four years to finally stroll through the home that she’d always dreamt of. It was a strange design (she knew this), and she had to seek out several different builders until Alastair agreed to build it.

“So let me get this straight,” Alastair said to her, looking over his small round rimless glasses, “six domes, nested inside each other, all connected by doors leading from one end to another, all meeting at one central point in the center?”

“Yes, from above it should look like a series of concentric circles. If you walk in the front door and walk straight you’ll pass into each dome, slowly going deeper into the center. Once you arrive in the center you’ll begin walking out. The last room you’ll enter is the other side of the first dome, the first room that you entered.”

“Okay…” Alastair said expectantly, “why?”

“Containment,” Samantha replied.

*****

Each dome was practically a world.

The first layer was yellow and was the only one that had windows to the outside (how else could it be?). Thus this first room is bright and verdant with plants and flowers there to relate to the sun through the windows. It was a perfect way to begin, Samantha thought.

The second was principally orange and it felt something like Fall. All soft browns and leather couches. As the room stretched around the walls were coated with vines, living leaves somehow permanently autumnal. There is a wood burning stove and many books, no windows.

A layer deeper, three domes in, and we meet soft lavender walls and deep purple shag carpet. This layer is peculiar in that a thin veil of fog seems to cover every surface. The curved walls of the room are lined with curved couches. On each curved couch a fully grown child lies curled up on the couch. If you choose to walk around the room you will find that their faces gradually and subtly transform from the heights of despair to the lows of rapture and back again.

One step further, one dome further, black. Nothing but black. In this fourth space nothing can be seen. Even when you open the doors to the surrounding, illuminated areas. The quality of the space simply does not permit the entry or existence of light. If one is brave enough to do anything other than move straight they will find a distinct path followed by indistinct organic material. One can stop and feel along the edge of this path and will feel leaf bone tooth brain hair slime blood shit. There is no odor, only indistinct masses of rising and falling organic material.

The fifth dome was a deep green and contained an overwhelming amount of life. Animals roamed freely. Plants were everywhere, something like a jungle, or what Samantha imagined a jungle to look like. Sometimes the animals ate one another but mostly they were provided for in ways that were hard to describe. Sloths dangled. Lemurs scurried and swung. A tiger or two napped. The animals seemed to be unaware of Samantha when she passed through. It took her a few passages to not be afraid.

The final room was the only room that felt like a dome. It was the softest blue Samantha had ever seen and there was a plate sized skylight in the center that let in natural sunlight 24 hours a day. Alastair tried to explain how he did it to Samantha. Something with mirrors and satellites. She didn’t care.

*****


On the way out things were the same, just in reverse. Things were also very different, somehow. Samantha had expected this, designed the whole space to induce this effect. But she didn’t think that it would strike her as deeply as it did. After all, it was her idea, her plan.

Her ability to imagine and anticipate this place did nothing to rob it of its strangeness and presence.