White Ceiling

You open eyes. White ceiling. Why are ceilings always white? You once saw a black glossy ceiling - almost black glass — and the room felt twice as big. Like a mirror, except the reflection sat a little in shadow. Probably, dead people do not think about ceilings. So: are you dead? Is this a morgue without the drawer - just the vibe of one? Or a military hospital: white light, anonymous walls, that fake-gentle violence people call "we saved you"? [[Lie there and keep staring at the white|OnlyCeiling]] [[Try to move|TryToMove]] [[Listen|ListenClose]]

For a bit there is nothing but you and the surface above you. No story hooked in your ribs yet. No calendar. Nobody who have a task for you. It is almost embarrassing how easy it is to lie there with zero thoughts - you, the ceiling, and the fact that you exist. If that is "the essence of being," you are not sure you hate it. Then your face rudely reminds you it exists: a deep, dumb throb, right where you chew. [[Go toward the pain|JawAndThoughts]] [[Refuse it and keep watching the ceiling|JawAndThoughts]]

You try to lift a hand. It shows up late, like a text from another timezone. Your tongue is a sandbag. Your mouth tastes like pennies and amnesia. You swallow. Your jaw answers with a clean, surgical ache - the type that makes your brain immediately write a disaster movie. [[Test your jaw carefully|JawAndThoughts]] [[Turn your head and actually look|JawAndThoughts]]

You listen past your own breathing. There is a thin electronic whisper - not cinematic, not heroic - just a machine doing its work while you do yours, which is: be confused. Farther off, slow footsteps - rubber soles on a polished floor, the kind of sound you get in a clinic corridor when someone is doing rounds. [[Open your eyes wider|JawAndThoughts]] [[Try to say something|JawAndThoughts]]

The pain pins itself down. Not your whole skull - your jaw. Detonation, shrapnel, you are the grunt who just lost the lower jaw in the wrong blast. Only the jaw ripped off? Still a disaster, but you can picture worse. No hands would actually end you. Ears - take them, they were never doing you favors. If the bottom jaw is actually gone, you are looking at a life of blended meals through a tube and a face that makes strangers switch to that careful, careful tone. The pity tone. You hate pity. Pity and condescension - same shipment. People only pity you after they have put themselves above you. You are not crawling for that. You do not want to be a war story. Unless you are. Unless you died and they shoved your consciousness into some other body because the presence technologies figured out how to do it. [[Hunt for a mirror|StrangerInTheGlass]] [[Touch your face first, then look|StrangerInTheGlass]]

There is a mirror across the room, the kind that has seen ten thousand faces and learned to keep its mouth shut. The kid in the glass is tall in a stretched, hungry way. You do not fully recognize him. Cheeks hollower than you await. Eyes still young enough to get carded. It is clear - you died, they uploaded you, welcome to the shiny future where they sacrifice teenagers for "the mission." And of course you want to be the hero who got the new body. Of course you do. They could have picked a better chassis for a soldier-hero than this lanky scarecrow - but fine, better than death. Then the mean question is: what did this kid do, this young, that they burned his personhood so you could squat here? Or did he volunteer? For what? For you? You want whiskey. One swallow. Just to wet the throat. [[Lean into the space-opera nonsense|LightSpeedFantasy]] [[Force the room to stay boring|GroundThePanic]]

You imagine faster than light travel, stations in orbit, a language you do not speak yet. You picture your real memories still rotting in an old skull somewhere - sentimental trash - while "you" keep going as a copy in a stolen face. You want whiskey again. No clinking glasses. A drink for the kid. The daydream runs out. You are still in a room. Your jaw still hurts. You need to look around at real things. [[Look for hard evidence|ScanTheRoom]]

You name objects like you are casting spells: wall, cabinet, paper cup, tubing taped down by someone who does this every Tuesday. No triage tent. No evil lab. No dramatic blood spatter that matches your internal monologue. The stranger in the mirror still does not make sense. Your head is not running at full resolution yet. [[Look for hard evidence|ScanTheRoom]]

Desk: gauze, a folded handout dense with small diagrams you are not ready to read, a pen with a logo your brain almost grabs. Wall: a clock, insisting time still exists. Your body feels wrong - heavy and hollow at the same time. [[Stand up fast|PanicStand]] [[Check the window|WindowView]] [[Listen to the hallway|VoicesInTheHall]]

Escape feels morally correct. Your legs file a formal objection. The floor tilts nice, then mean. Your knee finds a rolling stool. Your shoulder finds a tray. The universe is offering you a menu of stupid deaths. Pick your flavor. [[Grab the tray|EndOnTheTray]] [[Grab for the stool instead|EndOnTheFloor]]

You look down through the glass. The street below is a smear - green, grey, blocks of color that could be anything. Your stomach locks onto something simpler: you are high. High enough. The pane is cold against your forehead. Not orbit. Not a space station. Just a building that decided vertical was a personality trait. [[Freeze while voices get closer->VoicesInTheHall]]

The door opens. The hall is darker; two silhouettes hang in the frame. One silhouette says, too polite, "Please - after you." A stocky guy steps in - middle-aged, gym-built, friendly in the wrong context. Military police, questions you cannot answer, wrong planet, wrong war? Too calm, looks like he is going to torture you. [[Scream:“You’ll never take me alive!”|EndElevenFloors]] [[Stay put, shaking|EndChampionMorning]]

He keeps smiling. Composed. Confident. A kind face - the kind that can read either as a unhinged sociopath or as... D... ...Dad? "- Get up, champ," he says. "School tomorrow." " - ..." " - They pulled your wisdom teeth out," he says. "You'll sleep the rest off in the car. I'll get you to the door." A word fights up your throat. " - …Dad!" He laughs once, relieved:"Yeah. It's me. You're okay." You try to say something else. It comes out thick, half your face is still offline: "Fanks, doc. Dad... y'know, I fink I wan' a black glossy ceiling in my room..." ''THE END'' [[To the beginning.|WhiteCeiling]]

You launch for the window before your brain gets a vote. The shards of glass shine so beautifully in the low morning sun. They will stay with you to the end. The way down from the eleventh floor is long. How do you know it is the eleventh floor? Down there, in a flowerbed, flowers spell out the emblem of the Tall Peaks district hospital. Your treating dentist sees patients on the eleventh floor Memory - why does it come back only two feet above the sidewalk tiles? Nice pattern on those tiles, by the way. Really pretty. Worth a last look. ''THE END'' [[To the beginning.|WhiteCeiling]]

Your hand finds metal. The tray tips. Little tools scatter with bright, offended noises. Something sharp says hello to your palm, your forearm, the brachial artery. The pain is insultingly simple, plain and stupid. At least your death is beautiful: a white room, a bright red puddle, and in it the pale white body of a young kid - a body that had already stopped feeling like a stranger's. ''THE END'' [[To the beginning.|WhiteCeiling]]

Your foot hits something slick. You miss the tray and introduce yourself to the floor. Your head finds the edge of a cabinet on the way down. Fast crunch - like a corn kernel went off next to your ear and turned into popcorn. So fate does not get fooled. What has died must be dead. ''THE END'' [[To the beginning.|WhiteCeiling]]

Footsteps outside. Two voices, still muddy - then a few plain words start to separate: "he" … "you" … They sonds suspicious and danger. [[Try to hide outside the window|TryToHideOutside]] [[Stay strong and wait|DoorwaySilhouettes]]

You work the narrow vent window open. The cornice is a bad joke - too thin, slanted wrong - but the column is almost close enough. You can tuck behind it. You will make it. Probably. Perhaps, walking a cornice is probably like crossing a bog: you check every spot before you put your weight on it. Too bad it could not hold one small, fragile body. You have no urge to scream like in a movie. By then everything is already obvious. Simple. The grass coming up is indecently green this spring - wet, bright, almost smug. ''THE END'' [[To the beginning.|WhiteCeiling]]