The Second Room
The second room was identical with the first though enlarged at various edges—scattered about with nooks or alcoves or curtained spaces or doored. They may have been corridors or side-rooms or full annexes; whether empty or full of things you did not know. They were spaced at intervals the mathematics of which, assuming some governing and regular mathematics, was not obvious to you, either at that time or at this.
The space, with your shuffling, with your coughing of little coughs and your spluttering, seemed dampened or blanketed, as though full of soft furnishings and hangings. You do not know, you did not see them. Beyond the muffle was a chop, the same sound shortened, perhaps in the largeness of the table or the scattering of the chairs—these at least partially visible—all heft and hard edges.
You know nothing of the architecture of this place; you have not seen or cannot now call to mind having seen the exterior of the structure, if structure it can be called, since only two of these interior spaces, also assuming that, have so far been encountered, or can currently be remembered, examined briefly and under crisis. Yet the details of the things you saw, or believed you saw, seemed patterned after some intent, an architect’s intent, assuming there was one. The table in the centre was all spindles and arms, a very strange table—purposeful, if a table might possess a purpose—and unique if not for its partner in the previous room, which was yet unlike it. Had you been more spatially-minded you may have reflected on its orientation and placement, the disposition of its various planes and their contents before you lost sight and memory of each.
None of these things were thought by you then, there was no supposition of purpose, not consciously, there was no reflection on motive or character, on their being revealed through table construction; you were barely aware of a table at all, were still too focused on the violence of moments past. They have formed latterly, a gross and steady accumulation, despite your distraction, from the general sleeting of impressions, the sticky grits and pollens of appropriately-shaped facts and misconceptions which have fallen through your complimentary eye and ear and nostril holes; none any more consciously registered than was the terrible and strenuous working of your jaw; the loudness of your breathing; the trembling of all your limbs while you thought yourself still and calm, as you observed what you were able of the scene before you.
You flexed and unflexed your hands, at your whim, and threw your arms open; you smiled with all of your face and similarly reframeable attributes as you turned your head and eyes toward the man sitting on the far side of the room, apparently terrified.