Listening Companion:
Ibredol—Melancholia
I woke in stages.
First, sensation—softness beneath me, warmth surrounding me, fabric against my bare skin.
Bare skin.
My eyes flew open.
Where am I?
White.
Everything was white.
The walls. The ceiling. The floor. All of it padded, quilted, soft—the kind of room they put people in when they couldn't stop hurting themselves.
An isolation cell.
I'd seen them during facility tours, always from the outside, always with clinical detachment.
Now I was inside one.
The silence was absolute.
No alarms.
No screaming inmates.
No music.
Just the muffled nothing of a room designed to swallow sound.
My own breathing seemed too loud, each inhale and exhale amplified in the padded quiet.
I tried to sit up.
I couldn't.
My wrists were bound to a bed frame—the only piece of furniture in the room—with soft cuffs. Velvet-lined, padded, not painful. But when I pulled, they didn't give. Not even a little.
No. No, no, no—
Panic clawed up my throat.
I yanked harder, thrashing against the restraints, my breath coming in sharp, terrified gasps. The bed shifted beneath me, and I felt the strange texture of what I was lying on.
Not blankets.
Not sheets.
I looked down and saw white canvas.
Buckles.
Straps.
