The Plain White Room Read Free

seen. He sat up on his bed and stared at it. Trying to examining it without tilting the jar. So that the scorpion slipped back into the back of the jar out of sight.
    Its pincers shone in the moonlight. Its tail was curved, making it hard for the young Lepus to keep it against the edge of the glass. If he didn’t hold the jar steady, it might slip behind the velvet inside the jar so that he couldn’t see it. So far he’d never seen the same figure appear more than once.
    He tried to lift the jar above his head, fascinated by the thing but, as he did, it slipped back into the middle of the glass jar. Lepus was so frustrated he began to shake the jar. The unusual figures he saw bobbed in and out of view.
    A small silver wizard with a blue robe, a silver cross, a spider figure and other iconic gothic trinkets and a black Svetovid sun circle symbol but Lepus thought it was the piece for a trivia board game. But no matter how much he shook it the tiny scorpion did not come back. Lepus hopped out of bed and placed the jar on the floor. Then rolled it across his floor. He hoped it would cause the heavier items to separate from the light, causing the scorpion to present itself. It didn’t work, and the little jar showed Lepus a myriad of goods. All were spinning and twirling in a dazzling array of colours and mystical items. Lepus picked up the old toy and threw it out the window in frustration as his mind registered what it had done. He heard the smash of the glass on the pavement outside, as the jar shattered, just outside his front door.
    He scrambled into bed pulled the blankets up close to his face. There he lay in silence, tryingto hear if his parents had stired. Worried he would soon be in trouble. He heard nothing but a dog barking in the far distance. The house was still there was echoing silence from outside.
    Lepus squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to force himself to jump out of bed and run downstairs to check the carnage of the impact. He imagined large chunks and small shards of glass everywhere. But he was too scared to move, in case his parents were out of bed and realised it was him who had thrown the jar.
    He clenched his eyes shut and tried to wish undone what he had done. A loud crash echoed up from the cement and a thunderous roar from the skies a beat after. Lepus began to hear a rattle on the roof of his house, as it began to rain.
    He kept his eyes closed, listening to the rain, as he drifted to sleep. He dread of the morning easing into a peaceful child’s dream. 
     
     
    ***

Chapter 2
Milton
    Lepus stared at the fresh stitches on his left wrist. They looked so clean to him; he didn’t understand how they could be so clean looking, he searched his entire arm and not a speck of blood. Just lines and black stitches like the gaping wound was never there. Lepus turned over his wrist and found a dot of blood. He stared at it, not knowing what it was from.
    Then he realised that it had been spilt from the hypodermic needle when a nurse had taken some blood. It surprised him that they had drawn the curtains, supposing that the sedative was going to make him woozy. They shouldn’t have worried about him. Boots shuffled under the curtain and standing next to the computer console designated this bed clicked away. Lepus began to wonder what it is they were doing and tried to sit up but felt a pain in his stomach, just before passing out. He awoke soon after, with a man shaking his shoulder. The man was around sixty, dressed completely in blue. On his chest pocket, there was a gold and red insignia.
    “The paramedics” he sighed, “finally.” Behind, the elder man was a younger looking guy wearing the same uniform. He had a surfer look to him, his bleached blonde hair poking out from under his cap. On the other side of the bed, a male nurse stood with a clipboard. He was also quite young for a nurse. He smiled, but Lepus couldn’t tear his gaze away from the nurse’s piercing on his clavicle. He was a hip