The Discussion Room
by Dexter Pahmer
It was around nine in the morning when the General realized no one had woken him up, that no one had come for him and instead that there was only silence looming over his overt peace and, reflexively, he stretched his hand towards the gun which was strapped to the side of his bed but now instead opted for the landline, which now when dialed emitted no sound and when he placed the phone to his ear produced no tone and when he tried to trigger the switch of his bedside lamp and saw that it did not light, then did he realize that the power had ceased and, set forth by hunger and worry, his feet then flinched on the freezing floor as he made for his velvet loafers and slipped on a long General’s overcoat over his black pajamas in the waistband of which he tucked the gun which he had so long carried and, then, for a moment, the General paused for a moment and ran his hand over his mustache and breathed, then he swung open the door, though as expected on its other side was only the empty hallway, which was long and narrow and colourless and at whose end stood a strengthened door separating the General’s quarters from the rest of the Palace but behind this door also it could be seen that the lights were off and as the General marched forth the soles of his feet echoed slightly, the only sound save rain melting onto the hallway’s several round windows which looked out onto the city outside and, peering out, he saw storm clouds drip into the horizon and that the grey tenements of the city were swaddled in fog and that the streets were resplendent and lonely and he shook his attention away from this and, gripping his pistol, called out to the guard behind the door: Hello! Where are you? You are here? and he thought he heard shuffling, or some electric hum, or perhaps even the sound of a hand covering a snickering mouth, but whatever was behind the door made no more noise nor reacted to his query and the General straightened his revolver and in a single rehearsed motion burst from the door and levelled the gun at the second hallway which also was empty, the barrel looking down on nothing more than more darkness and he was trembling as all he heard was his own heavy breathing and his still pounding heart and he felt foolish as he meandered further into the darkness, yelling again Hello! People! as he reached the antechamber at the end of the hallway, which also was unpopulated but otherwise had nothing unusual about its state except the slight creak of an almost imperceptibly swaying door which led to the Guard’s quarters which the General had never visited but now decided to, for the whereabouts of his entourage now worried him, and he walked through yet another hallway, passing several doors which had only staircases behind them until he found what he supposed to be a communal area, a white kitchen with a long white dinner table, whose cloth chairs still had slight dimples in their seats as if they had not yet recovered their shape, and in the kitchen sink was an unwashed mug wasting away half-empty into which the General dipped a finger to gauge its temperature, which was not cold but slightly tepid and thus spurred him to search the bedrooms, which he found to his surprise totally pristine, sheets of every bunkbed folded squarely and snugly, and the room’s central rug aligned with each of its four sides perfectly parallel to the four sides of the room itself, as not even a fruit-fly or a speck of dust could be seen by the General though there did linger the smell of juvenile deodorant and dirty laundry, regardless of which the General turned back and went down a flight of stairs and then another, until he found himself at the beginning of another long, interminable hallway which was interminable, whose white tile seemed to slope upwards and which he struggled to scale, breathing heavily, loping from side to side, silently swearing and sweating and swearing and sweating, still meekly setting his revolver upon the shadows ahead, yet through the sound of his own breath he faintly heard the sound of running water, the sound of drips hitting a tile floor, and ultimately as it ended the hallway debauched onto a small room in which there was a single empty toilet and a single overflowing sink whose tap was running freezing cold water splashing slightly onto the slippers of the General, who reached out and turned the tap off and then walked away slowly in the other direction, another tight hallway which let in no light save for the white pindot at its end, and as the General again called out Where have you gone? he heard only the echo of his own trembling voice through the tunnel that he still followed spurred by the conviction never to turn back, until, again stunned—stunned!—stupified!—by the light, he took up his pistol and flinched and a loud crack tore through the silence and reverberated in the expansive Hall of the Founders of the Nation, a massive block of marble whose insides had been hollowed out into a smooth cylindrical gallery, punctuated nonagonically with the nine pedestals and the nine busts of the nine original revolutionaries who had burned off the yoke of tyranny and united the peasants in a glorious revolution and built this monument wherein their proud faces all looked to one central point but not at each other, this monument at the top of which lay a blazing dome of light and under which the General now found himself, examining in passing the familiar statues as he made from where he had been, from behind the statue of the First General to the door which his bullet has found, which was also the door promising the Palace’s exit, the one behind the First President after whom the airport was named, but behind whom the pathway led the General to another short hallway where the light from a row of portholes cast a series of dots onto the opposite wall which repeated forever and, distancing themselves, merged together into a single line of flight which brought him to the heavy iron door which opened onto a deep spiral staircase which despite lacking any light was still visible from the white of its marble and he followed this staircase down until he reached the gallows of his own Palace, in which he had once been held, and which he had then filled with others, others who were gone, at large, now real only in the limp chains and fetid stains they’d made on the ceramic, brown splatter having been pulled and swirled by a sullied mop that had lacked the time to finish its job and a thin flood of rain water had glossed over these brushstrokes and the General did not dare walk among the fluid but instead stared at the stains which, as the water slowly flooded above them, seemed to pulsate and jitter under the refraction of the rising water which soon would overlay the basement entirely, but still the General left, almost fled rather from the smell of feces and blood which he had once loved, and following a short walk up several flights of stairs and a small pause at their apex which he took to gasp and weeze deeply with his hands pitched on his knees, he then again found himself in an empty antechamber, and from this antechamber he departed upon a second set of stairs, which were grimed and whose concrete had chipped in many places, and, though the stench of urine suffused the stairway, the final door opened onto another antechamber at the end of another hallway, which also was unpopulated save for a single plastic chair which was overturned and which the General put back upright but otherwise the room itself had nothing unusual at all about its state except the slight creak of an almost imperceptibly swaying door which led to the topmost opening of the luxurious and magnificent and beloved Reception Hall of the Palace, in which he had just the day before received foreign dignitaries and business magnates and representatives of the People and then too he had gloriously opened the gate and waltzed onto the massive oak-banistered staircase, felt himself glide on the red velvet of the carpet, aware and proud of the stately posture he projected under the Hall’s ornate woodwork, its elegant white statues of mythical heroes slaying mythical beasts, an avant-goût of his collection of everything, so big it could never be catalogued or appraised, and he walked down the staircase then as he had done the day before, hearing only the rain outside which saturated the windows and he stepped onto the vast empty quiet room and pained to imagine all the people who had been there only the day before and, tired, he at last opted to go outside, to brave the storm in search of people, but when he opened the glass gates to the outside, he only saw a dark tunnel leading downward back into the Palace and, baffled, saw that this was not in fact the Reception Hall at all but rather some other, similar hall, whose doors and windows were of an entirely different configuration, whose doors and windows only led to the Servant’s Quarters of the Palace, and so the General thought that the servants may have wanted to stay with him or had left him a cache of supplies before departing and so he took a stairway up to another empty antechamber inside of which the word Servant was written backwards, and from this antechamber he took another set of stairs whose steps were grimed and whose concrete had chipped in many places and he opened the door onto the kitchen of the Guard’s quarters, which the General had never visited but now did he inspect what he supposed to be a communal area, a white kitchen with a long white dinner table, and in the kitchen sink was an unwashed mug left half-empty into which the General dipped a finger to gauge its temperature, but when it burned him he jerked away and shook and squeezed the hand as he rushed out grumbling and muttering to himself Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. while he brisked down a staircase, waking in interminable circles until he realized he would reach the dungeon in which he had once been held, but which now held all of his opponents and deriders, though when he entered the dungeon he found it completely spotless, its white ceramic gleaming and smelling heavily of bleach as the sound of rain water rustled above the General’s weary head, and he crossed the white ceramic, leaving the faint trace of dust by his footprints, and tried to smell what the bleach had covered up but there was no trace of what had come before, and so he crossed the dungeon to the door at its far end, the only door in the dungeon which, as a joke, had been labelled Emergency Exit, but when he pressed on its push bar and heard the door unlatch, it only opened into a closet, his closet, from which he glimpsed the untouched stillness of his unmade bed, his unusable landline, and a mirror which reflected nothing, and before he left his room he put on a pair of wool socks to help with the cold of the Palace and when he opened the door to his room he proceeded again through the empty hallway, at its end slamming into the heavy iron door which opened onto yet another long spiral staircase which despite lacking any light was still visible from the white of the marble and he went up the stairs, as high as they would go, resenting the burn of the egress in his aging legs and in his searing lungs and in his hard-beating heart as floor after floor he spiralled ever upwards, until finally he reached a door made entirely of glass which he had not seen before and behind this door was another long hallway which seemed to spiral inwards as well, dizzying the General as he spun and staggered ever rightward through this new hallway, until finally he saw a slit of light at the end of this tunnel which as he walked into it blinded him and by this blindness he knew he had at last located the Hall of the Founders of the Nation, a massive block of marble from whose insides had been carved out a smooth cylindrical gallery, notched nonagonically with small arched doors and nine empty pedestals on which usually stood the busts of the Founders of the Nation who had built this sepulchure over which a great marble dome hovered and where the bursting white light now gave way to a matted grey as a far-away storm stole the sun and passed over the Hall and threatened to rain in it, forcing the tired General to make for a different arched door than he had previously, though now without any statues all exits looked the same and none had the mark of his prior gunshot, though the one he did choose led him down a long wing of clerk offices, where he saw identical typewriters set about on identical desks and saddled with identical chairs and which normally would be filled with identical workers until finally he reached a very tall steel door which he had to lean against to open, creaking and belching as it did, and echoing, and thus he stumbled slightly as he entered the Discussion Room: from a high up window light diffused narrowly onto the tribune where usually he presided and where his chair and desk were undisturbed and on which still lingered the pack of matches he had forgotten yesterday still at the oblique angle in which he had left them, and even his chair had not been tucked back under the desk, but still sat askew where he had pushed it to stand up, basking in the shaft of light through which miniscule specks of dust seemed to sprinkle down like white ash then disappearing into the rest of the hall which lay utterly dim and whose vaulted ceilings coated with darkness the rowed benches, sitting symmetrical and seried and arrayed like soldiers in the grave of an emperor, stretching and repeating until they degraded into the blackness at the end of which could not be made out the large iron gateway, though the General knew it loomed ready to catch the light of he who would bring it and thus he picked up and tossed the heavy crystal ashtray onto the desk and watched it spin and waver as it settled and as he settled into the soft velvet of the Presidential Seat he flicked a match and brought it to the tip of a domestic cigarette whose packaging lay in his other hand and on which he saw a watercoloured image of his own face with his cheeks reddened and mustache blackened and a face drawn stern that made the lone General redress himself as his own image appraised him, and then, squaring the pack on the table, the General and the image of the General sat together in the Hall smoking for hours until the skylight slowly dissolved to blackness—at least night still existed—and the empty stomach and overborne mind of the General both weighed through him and he fell asleep and unconscious, still hunched in his armchair undreaming, and it was nine in the morning when he realized again that no one had woken him up.
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COLD SIGNAL 