The Room

He looked at an empty frame. “Why was it empty? Who keeps an empty frame?” he muttered to himself.

There was something peculiar about the room. The room was filled with books and magazines but did not have any place to sit. It had a big clock that looked lost in time and too old to function properly.

“Only if I could see someone, I could ask for some tea or water or even a place to sit,” he thought.

The place was sealed with silence.

With steady steps, he approached to one of the stacks of books. He tried to pick it up to read.

“Ah! Marvelous,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s no book, they are chairs.” He inspected every stack. The ones to the east of the room were chairs and the ones to the west were all readable books.

“That’s something uh! The person wants you to sit and read by the daylight.”

He took one of the books and cautiously placed himself on the artistic book chair.

The room was now losing its glow and the clock started to tick faster. With his eyes set on the book, he hardly noticed this change. He was deeply immersed in the book.

As the night grew stronger, the clock ticked louder. In that dark room, the only thing that was clear – was the heart beat of the running clock.

The sun made an announcement of a new day as it gently knocked at the east window.

Everything was back to normal. The clock gave a tired look from the previous night’s run and the books and the chairs were camouflaged as one. The room – prim and proper – had everything in its place, except for the outsider.

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