The Quiet Room

T

he Quiet Room measured at –20 decibels, silent as the night packed in snow, though even then, the air could whisper. Lola opened her eyes. She didn’t remember lying down and, for a moment, wondered if she was, in fact, standing. But no—the weight of her body pressed against the floor, her hair sprawled out, her eyes sat anchored in their sockets. She heard the unmistakable rhythmic beating of her heart, and each time she noted the sound of it pumping, she felt dizzy.

Lola raised her head and heard a soft pop. With each movement she made to get up off the floor, her body rang out with echoes of life encased in the suffocating silence of the room. Her lungs felt too large for her small chest, and with each inhale and exhale, they fought against her frame, ready to cut through and float out like newly inflated balloons.

Is this what it meant to feel alive?

Lola had been numb for so long, and now the pendulum had swung in the other direction; her body’s basic functions screamed at her that she still had a long way to go before dying.

The dim light prickled at the edge of her eyes and threatened to cut out altogether. Moving to one side of the chamber, Lola propped herself up against a corner where two walls met and looked out at the square space, her eyes blinking to adjust to the encroaching darkness. The patterned slats of fibreglass jutted out from all around, and Lola felt trapped. The ceiling, walls, and floor all looked identical. She could have been walking on any of those surfaces and not have known it. She could’ve been standing upside down and would’ve believed it, would’ve understood why her ears were ringing.

Lola remembered the text and felt a bubble form deep within her belly. She forced a laugh to shake it off—to shake him off—but it came out a weak chirp that fell dead at her feet. He was, after all, the reason she was there in the first place. When she first read about the Quiet Room, Lola wanted to rediscover Minneapolis after the particularly bad breakup. Her boyfriend had left in the middle of the night with a brief text saying he had decided to take a job in another city and wasn’t capable of—or interested in—a long-distance relationship. When she tried to call him, her number was blocked.

Lola now imagined herself floating deep within a black hole, slowly being torn apart by the absence of matter and light.

She thought she was ready for a metamorphosis. She had always been fascinated with space but now wondered if she was equipped to handle a silence only rivaled by death. Lola now imagined herself floating deep within a black hole, slowly being torn apart by the absence of matter and light. She envisioned the air pulsing around her body, pumping until she flattened to be transformed from a speck of human dust to a rough-edged diamond, the room spitting her out all new but barely shining.

Lola thought about the insulated steel and concrete just outside the fiberglass walls, remembering the doors she walked through to get there, and her face grew hot.

Another sound, but this time it wasn’t ringing; it was too soft, too subtle. Not crammed in her head like a loud bell or an alarm. A soft whoosh came and went. Her eardrums thrummed, straining to hear the sensation, to pinpoint where it came from.

Lola bent her head to better catch the din. She twisted it one way so her left ear pointed toward the ceiling, then turned the other way until her right ear was aimed upward. Or downward.

The whooshing teased her; it sounded so familiar. Louder and softer, and louder again, like waves lapping up the shore before retreating, regrouping, and rushing in once more. It sounded like water running through the pipes behind a wall when someone flushed or took a shower in the next apartment over. Lola strained her ears until she finally picked up on the sound at its loudest, emanating from her core, from her own body.

Long rivers twisting and intertwining and breaking apart again—the sound of her blood pumping in endless, dizzying circles made Lola feel lightheaded and a little queasy. She grabbed at her torso and squeezed the soft skin of her belly to muffle the disorienting sound; she felt the uncomfortable pinch and imagined her guts and stomach twisted up inside. 

She took a step and her body felt like a liquid-filled sack, unstable and ready to brim over. Her insides swayed heavily within the confines of her vessel, and she realized—for the first time—how her body was much like the chamber itself: walls within walls until you reached the soft, fleshy organs operating in darkness, despite the ongoings of the outside world. How stupid it seemed now that her heart was so clearly working, remembering how she thought it was breaking when her ex left.

Lola’s eyes were closed when the heavy chamber door opened, and at the sound, she thought it was her body finally splitting in two. She imagined herself as a purse, ripping at the seams after too much wear. For the first time in weeks, she felt at peace.

The Orfield Labs’ employee led Lola out to the surface, and it wasn’t until they neared the front entrance that she felt her body withdraw and quiet itself. Her footsteps thudded across the thin carpeted hallway, their impact reverberating up her body when they had been muted just moments ago. At the desk, the phone rang. A car honked in the lot. How effortlessly the world hummed on the outside—filler noise, like static on the AM radio.

Though Lola could feel her heart’s subtle beat, the sound of it remained buried beneath the layers of her body, suddenly feeling so far away; her skin a thicker, safer barrier than the thin membrane of an eggshell it had just been moments ago, ready to crack open.