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W is for – Where it all began

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The view from inside the small room was of four off white walls, a stained ceiling with a small camera and blinking red light in one corner, and the green metal door with a hatch and small closed window.

I was lucky to have a bunk with a thin vinyl cover to lie on so I could spend the time alternating between staring at the roof, the door, and the walls.  Time now to contemplate my fate, a fate no one was sharing with me, at least not yet.

There were two thoughts uppermost in my mind right then.

The first, that cryptic phone call from an anonymous caller, no number displayed, no clue who it was, other than it was female, though these days even that could be manufactured, saying, “They’re coming for you.  Run.”

That was it.  Nothing about who was coming or why.  My life up to that point had been probably the most boring on the planet.  Janet had made that perfectly clear three years before when she left.  And took every cent of our life savings, and sold everything else.

Everything.

So, having nothing, being that boring person, who on earth would want to come for me?

The second, the only question I was asked by the interrogator, and middle-aged, well-dressed man who had secret service written into his DNA, after my ‘arrest’ and the silence from all those involved, following the recitation of my so-called rights to the seat in the interrogation room.

I watched him come into the room, glance up at the blinking red light, probably a feature in every room in that complex, then sit down.

He glared at me in his most intimidating manner, which almost made me laugh, then asked, in a voice that sounded like the result of a fifty-cigarette-a-day habit, “Where is it?”

Of course, the only answer to that question was, “Where is what?”

Another minute of intimidating looks, he shook his head, stood, and left the room.  Three minutes later, two big men came in and escorted me to my current residence, one ‘helping’ me through the door with a hefty shove.

So, I had two pieces of information relating to my fate.  One, I had obviously, to someone at least, done something worthy of needing to escape, and having not heeded the warning, done something worthy of being arrested, imprisoned, and interrogated.

Something that no one was willing to share with me.

That meant I had to go over everything that had happened, at least since Janet left, because before that, I doubt the life of a lowly untended university tutor whose subject was eighteenth-century social history would interest anyone other than a Jane Austen enthusiast.

Perhaps the first day of the rest of my life was when I decided to go to see the pyramids in Egypt.  That wasn’t a reason or anything significant in itself. It was just one of those things that happened on the spur of the moment.

It had been the usual scenario, I thought Janet, the love of my life, had suggested dinner, over which she was going to tell me some great news.

Being the eternal optimist, I thought she was going to formalise our relationship, but instead she said she had been offered a job in the United States, more money, more responsibility, and what’s more there was room for me.

It sounded like an afterthought, and as much as it sounded great, it wasn’t.  She packed, gave me the option, I declined, and she left.

Relationship over.

Two days later, I was on a plane heading for Egypt, oddly enough, anything but heartbroken.  It was like Janet never existed.

But…

I was staring at the slowly rotating fan regurgitating the already hot air in the room, and every movement made me feel hotter and more languid.

It was the fourth day of a five-day tour, with a group of twelve ancient Egyptian enthusiasts, on a lesser-known and cheaper tour.  Cheap meant no air conditioning and enough time to regret not putting more thought into who I selected.

I’d seen as much of the pyramids as anyone could want, realising the reality was not quite on display in the tour brochures, and the heat, dust, and crowds were the final straw.

I had the airline page up on my cell phone and in the middle of checking the flights and costs involved in changing the dates, when there was a knock on the door.

Not being a five-star hotel, perhaps stretching the three-star self-rating, and the only other time was a concierge delivering a carafe of iced cold water and a glass that had seen better days.

Perhaps one of the hotel’s benefits was ice-cold water every four days.  I dragged myself off the bed and over to the door.  It didn’t have one of those spy viewers in the door, so it could be kidnappers, not unheard of, and one of the warnings given to us by the guide on day one

By that point, being kidnapped might have been a welcome distraction.

It was, unfortunately, an American girl, Mary Anne.  I say unfortunately, because we had all had the benefit of her mother’s opinions, often loud and brash, and who took particular delight in humiliating her daughter.

Like a scene out of an Agatha Christie murder mystery film, one of the other tourists said, failing to realise we all fit that description. All we lacked was the murder, though several had expressed their desire to murder Mrs Murgatroyd.

She smiled wanly, a prelude to an impossible request.  “Mother is ill today and won’t be going.  May I come with you? I do not wish to find my way to the office by myself.”

I should have noticed the less apprehensive expression.  I had to say the request surprised me, and she had been cultivating a friendship of sorts with another single male passenger who was more her type.

“I was seriously considering staying in the hotel myself.  I’ve seen enough pyramids, sand, and people, and the thought of going to the museum would only be to take in the air-conditioning.”

“Oh.”

She seemed disappointed, though I was surprised that anyone would be, but that might have had more to do with Janet’s rather abrupt departure, and if viewed very bluntly, abandonment.

“But in this case, I think I can make an exception.  It’s the last day, and it would be a tragedy not to take in the last of the sights.”

“I don’t want to be an imposition.”

“Don’t take any notice of my disposition.  It hasn’t been a great few weeks, and I’m not handling it very well.  Just give me a few minutes to get ready, and I’ll see you down in the restaurant.”

That imaginary fan was still rotating in my mind, and those thoughts of Mary Anne had resurfaced, not because they were memorable, but because they were a catalyst for getting me out of the sea of self-pity I’d been unconsciously sinking into at the time.

She was the sort of girl no one would notice, not exactly a plain Jane but the sort who didn’t put herself out there, dressed unglamorous and didn’t follow fashion or makeup trends, not like Janet.

In fact, she was a polar opposite.

Perhaps that’s why she came back now.  Once I dug deeper into those memories, I could see that she was, under that carefully constructed exterior for the rest of the world to see, she was very beautiful.

I’d not thought about that at the time, and now it was only because I was looking for answers.  Surely, she was not part of the current predicament because our interactions were fleeting and insignificant.  Perhaps, like any man, I was momentarily flattered by the attention of a woman.

Beyond that trip to Egypt, there had been little excitement in my life, just the usual stream of students looking to bolster their grades and the occasional cross-examination by a budding author who wanted background for their eighteenth-century romance novel.

There were no other romantic attachments, several dates set up by a dating app and those were monumental failures, leading to a somewhat half-considered study into becoming a monk at a remote monastery, and vacations at obscure and remote seaside towns out of season, where I was lucky to meet anyone else.

And yet I obviously had, whether consciously or otherwise, or was so forgettable that I could not remember them.

All this driving into the past had given me a headache, and I tried to get some rest.  It was clear I was not going to be leaving my cell or the facility anytime soon.

Someone once told me there was little difference between a dream and a nightmare, only the outcome was different.  You could wake up happy or scared half to death.

Others said that one or the other could be the result of a past experience, whether conscious or not, something that happened to you that you were unaware of at the time, or spooking a premonition of what might happen in the future.

On rare occasions, it might be the resort of a desire, like getting to be with the woman of your dreams, that was quite often totally unavailable.

I wish that were the case.

It was not.  I woke, now screaming, but covered in sweat and yet cold as ice, absolutely terrified.

I was lying on a gurney in a very brightly lit room with two figures, dressed completely in green, faces covered by surgical masks and goggles, one of whom was standing over me, asking over and over, “Where is it?”

And it was very, very real.

Not a premonition, I had a feeling it had happened recently, and I could not remember anything about it.

It was then I realised what my mind had conveniently shovelled into the ‘I don’t want yo remember that experience’ basket.  Three weeks ago, after going out for a drink with work colleagues, I woke up two days later in a hotelbroom, by myself, with no memory of anything that had happened, and when I asked my colleagues they simply said I’d had too much to drink, and one had helped me back to the hotel where I said od booked a room.

Why was I remembering this now?

Why hadn’t I thought more about it at the time?

Who was the colleague who helped me?

Suddenly, it felt like the walls in that small room were closing in on me.  Then I could see someone was in the room, dressed in green, and I began to panic.

I could just hear a voice in the background or perhaps just above me.

“Hurry.  He’s going into cardiac arrest.”

I think that’s where I lost consciousness.

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©  Charles Heath  2025