The Reflection Room
Excerpt From a Novel
(2021)
The Reflection Room is a novel I wrote during a two week long isolation period in early 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The novel centres around the feeble, but well meaning character of Ramses, who, while searching for a job, is flung into a position of great power in a strange town, far from his own humble hamlet, where he finds himself the sole sane person in a world gone mad. The following is a chapter, taken from the novel.
CHAPTER 8
Ramses rushed to his room to collect his thoughts, the many twists and turns in the path to his bed having already been memorized. He felt broken, as though he had succumbed to their temptation, and had been led astray. Throwing his blazer against the wall, he jumped into bed, to wallow in his own self-pity. He couldn’t tell which bothered him more, the guilt of taking another life, albeit inadvertently, or the anxiety that, sooner or later, someone would discover how weak he actually was, and have the entire Administrative Palace turn on him. Ramses realized that if he wanted to live, he would have to kill his weakness. The problem is, he never had to do anything like that for himself before.
Growing up, he was always dependant on his mother, who, despite her protesting, would fix almost any problem for him. He never had to confront the harsh realities of life, and, in his isolation from reality, had lost the opportunity for growth. Despite all his talk of innovation with Mercurius, Ramses himself was stuck in the past, unchanging due to the constant homeostasis of his being. Never before did he ever had to question his choices, nor his convictions, the few he had. Now, confronted with harsh reality of life and death, and stuck in this pressure cooker environment, he felt as though the weight of years wasted, without growth or deepening understanding, had crashed down on him all at once. Despite his practical predicament, his now being undercover in a hostile environment, he couldn’t seem to shake the sense that this was somehow atonement for his impotence, as though being here was questioning his own moral fibre.
Though he was made weak by years of complacency and dependance, it wasn’t to say that he wasn’t broken by the world. He spent his life like a china doll left on display in a closed cabinet, the years of lacking meaningful relationships had left him a shell of the person that could have been, riddled with anxieties and insecurities. Although for years he was certain that the reason he never seemed very accomplished was due to his lack of potential, he began to realize that his own choices, for which he rarely took responsibility, were what had kept him from his own greatness. Though he may not have been the most intelligent, he watched as his classmates and peers, of equal qualifications as him, rose to the challenges of life and took opportunities when given, while he sat back. He thought that he was being wise, biding his time until the opportunity that was just right made its appearance, wether it be in form of a job, a friend, or a lover. But in the end, none ever came, and he realized that he had just wasted his time, like a fool on a mountain waiting for a sign from God.
Ramses grew angry, punching his pillows and biting down on his own tongue, frustrated with what he had become. He felt like he had began to see behind the curtain of his great delusion, and he was unable to even begin to understand what he saw. A whole world lay before him, new and unnerving, a hellscape of jagged angles, of broken bodies and minds, a landscape littered with the shattered remains of those who were unable to grow, to move or let go. He felt like a shark, and knew that if he wanted to make it out the other side of his own personal rebirth, he would have to keep moving forward. But the task seemed daunting, and Ramses realized that finding his own inner strength was not something he could do over night. He knew the steps he had to take to reach his destination, to finally rid himself of his crippling insecurities and constant feelings of inadequacy, but he found that the road meandered, and every new step seemed more difficult than the last. Though he hadn’t realized it yet, he lacked the gumption and wherewithal to stick to his mission, and he wished only to roll up in a cocoon and return to the comfort of weakness and dependancy.
Ramses felt like a child again, and wished only to run and hide under his mothers skirt. A wave of homesickness washed over him, and he yearned to return to his safe and cozy life, rather than face the arduous path of adulthood alone. In a panic, he jumped out of bed, and lunged himself onto the couch. Leaning over the coffee table, he tore away the layers of clothes strewn over it until he found what he was looking for; a telephone. Staring at the black bakelite rotary phone, he couldn’t believe his own stupidity, having not considered ending this ordeal sooner by calling for help. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, Ramses finally felt relief, knowing that he could unload himself onto his mother, who would undoubtedly organize some kind of rescue for him. His relief, however, was very short-lived, as when he went to dial the number, he noticed that the rotary dial was an optical allusion, painted directly on the bakelite. His heart began to race, and he felt a lump in his throat. “This can’t be the end!” He thought, certain that he was nearing death. In what he was sure was vain hope, he picked up the receiver, hoping that he might be able to speak to an operator, though he thought it unlikely for there to be a dispatcher in this neck of the woods. Lifting the receiver to his ear, he was shocked and overjoyed when he heard ringing. The phone rang three times, before a period of silence, ended by the sound of someone picking up the receiver. In the distance, he could hear the sound of a voice, though the connection was unstable.
“Hello?” Ramses whispered meekly into the phone.
“Hello” replied the voice, now loud and clear. It was the voice of a woman, her accent mid-atlantic, her voice deep and refined, and vaguely reminiscent of Tellulah Bankhead.
“Is this the operator?” Ramses asked sheepishly.
“Oh, heavens no!” She laughed heartily “It’s me.”
“And who’s ‘me’?”
“It’s me!” She repeated “Your best friend.”
“I don’t have one of those.”
“Well then who am I?” She replied in a teasing tone. Ramses was less taken aback by her claims, he’d become used to the constant gaslighting and absurdity of his situation, but rather by her voice. It was both alluring and intimidating, and he couldn’t help but be impressed by her diction and enunciation. Her voice felt more like performance than a natural way of speaking, and Ramses felt as though he was in an old radio play from the fifties.
“Well that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” He replied
“Oh how you go on! So, what do you want to confide in your friend? You did call me after all, the friend hotline.”
“Friend hotline?”
“Well, I’m your best friend, and you called me on a direct line. What would you call it?”
“Fair point.” Ramses conceded. He realized that, though she wasn’t the person he wanted to call, and was more than likely part of the conspiracy he found himself embroiled in, that she would have to do as a stand in for friendly advice. “After all,” he thought to himself “any port in a storm.”
“Lately, I’ve been reflecting” Ramses spoke in a pensive tone “on the point of it all. I feel like I’m always awaiting the punchline of the great joke. In fact, I feel like my entire life has been that way, the set up to a joke. Now I just want to know the punchline, so I can call it a day and get a good nights sleep. I feel like lots of other people get it. I imagine it this way; everyone is a comedian at an open mic night in a dingy comedy club. All the other comedians go up before me, and I watch them deliver great jokes with punchlines that land perfectly. But now it’s finally my turn, and I’m just setting up, constantly just set up set up set up, but when it’s time to give the audience my coup de gras, the punchline, I just flounder. Maybe everyones playing by rules I just don’t know. But somehow, I’m sure that the punchline is going to be on me. Do you follow me at all?”
“I think I might.” The voice replied “Could you tell me one these jokes?”
“Well here’s a joke. My entire life I was sheltered from the harshness of reality. I never got into trouble, I was never picked on, nor pointed out as different, and grew up knowing nothing but love, and yet I feel like, somehow, I’m traumatized. The boy who did nothing is so filled with trauma he can’t even speak up for himself. Isn’t that a joke? Nobody ever listens to me, and that’s because I never make them listen. I am unable to connect to my fellow man, and yet none of them seem to dislike me for it, they just wave their hand, smile and nod as they go past, and leave nothing behind for me. And I, in my own way, wished I could reach out to them, to hold on to them, to grab them by the shirt collars and say ‘Look at me! Look at me and see me!’ And yet I do nothing. Because I am unable, the part of me meant for connecting to others is broken, the site of trauma. That’s the set up, now where’s the punchline, huh?”
“What do you want other people to see?” She asked. Ramses was shocked to find she was listening, and even more shocked that she sounded completely engrossed.
“What do you mean see?”
“You said you want people to see you. What is there to see?”
Ramses was taken aback by the frankness of her question. He wanted for so long for someone to care enough about him to ask, and yet now that the moment has come, he found himself at a loss for words. How was it that an operator of a friend hotline now understood him better than anyone else before? Perhaps she truly was his best friend.
“I want people to see that I am an individual, I guess. I feel comfortable in the middle, the anonymity of mediocrity. Nobody ever hurts me, there’s nothing to criticize. I’m like a tepid spring day or a glass of water, perfectly adequate and yet never the inspiration for anything great. But sometimes I wish there was a way out. I want to experience the ups and downs of the human condition. I want to hurt, I want to cry, I want to feel. And I want someone to care. I want it to be about me, all the time and every day. I want to live in colour, no longer relegated to black and white. I want to spring into action, galavant, and swashbuckle. I feel like a caged animal, asleep in its enclosure, perhaps a lion in a dome made of glass. People smile and look for moment, but immediately after their departure, all memory of me leaves them. And I’m scared of that. I’m scared that, if I don’t live in anyones memory, did I ever live at all. When I leave a room, do I essentially stop existing? I want to break through the glass dome, and shatter it into millions of pieces. I want to leave a huge mess everywhere, so even after I leave, people will know that I was there and I did something.”
​
“Do you think there’s a way out? Or will you just slowly rot inside the glass dome, never having achieved the great mess you described, never landing a punchline, simply fated to remain a relic of a thing that was, and is no more?” She asked. Her tone felt entirely too cheery for the subject of discussion, and Ramses began to question the sanity of his conversational partner. His so-called best friend seemed to relish in his own emotional suffering.
“Do you ever suffer?” Ramses asked, trying to turn the conversation on her.
“The greatest suffering is the pain and the uncertainty of attachment. No matter how attached you become to another, you can never know truly what they’re thinking. For this reason, I am in constant suffering. The problem of other minds haunts me, for, despite your best efforts, wishes and prayers, you may never know if the words others speak to you are true. Much like the way you can’t tell if you exist, for you’re merely the reflections of yourself in the mirrors of others, I can’t tell if I know anything, for everything I’ve ever been told could very well be a lie. In that sense we are both survivors of a shipwreck, lost in an endless sea, in a place that is neither here nor there, uncertain if there’s an end in sight.” She said, her voice growing shaky, as though she had only just remembered the deep darkness which lay within her. “But now, I must pose you a question. Who cares? What does it matter that you can’t find the right punchline? From an objective point of view, it’s all hilarious! I can’t stop laughing! Death, life, forgetting punchlines, drowning alone in a deep sea, buying a dog and eventually putting it down, it’s all so pointless I can’t believe that anyone gets anything done at all! If I could, I’d spend my whole life laughing!.” She began to laugh, a light delicate chuckle, so ceaselessly she began wheezing for air. Ramses couldn’t help himself from giggling either. It was kind of funny. Maybe this whole misadventure was just a joke! But just as he began to let go, he felt the black inky tentacles of self-doubt wrap themselves around him, and he found himself once again in his lion enclosure, living life in monochrome.
“So,” He asked, as her laughter began to die down, “why don’t you spend all your time laughing?”
“Because, silly, when would I have time to talk to you?”
He sat in silence, dumbstruck at her incomprehensible yet infallible logic.
“Well it’s been nice talking to you. Do ring me again anytime, darling. Thank you for calling me, it gets lonely here on the friend hotline.”
Ramses could hear the sound of her puckering her lips, as though she was blowing him a kiss through the telephone, followed by the click of the receiver being gently put down on a hook switch. He was alone again.