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One. The girl, we’ll call her Anonymous, Ann for short, sat indian style in front of the plain white wall. She tried to dive into herself, to uncover the dark secretsresponsible for her being in this place, however failing. Miserably.
It’s not politically correct to call it ‘indian style’ 
, an adult voice replayed inher mind. Probably a mother’s, or maybe a teacher, not that she could remember.
Howdo the voices remain?
She would wonder.
Why do the pictures and the storiesdisappear while the sounds remain crystal clear?
  The only thing Ann had left were the noises in her head, sometimes comingthrough as sounds, other times voices. It was all she had to hold on to. The rest of hermemories had dissolved away along with everything else, along with her whole self.But the noises, they rang loud and clear with a sound of hope. Hope that she
had 
maybe come from somewhere. Hope that maybe one day she could return.Of all the different noises and voices her mind would play for her, the soundshe loved most was the crackling. She couldn’t even decipher whether it was thecrackling of a fire or candy wrapper, but it didn’t matter. It was a wonderful sound, asound that brought her calming in a place designed to strain and torture, or so sheassumed was the purpose. When the sound was there she would replay it over andover in her head, clenching, trying to hold on to it for as long as she could before soon,it dissolved away with the rest. Until soon, she couldn’t even remember what is wasshe had been trying to hold on to in the first place.Sometimes though, she was lucky enough to replay the sound for daysstraight, or what felt like days anyway, there was no way of knowing for sure how long. There was no sense of time in this place, we’ll call it The White. Time didn’t exist.Nothing did, but her. No time, no smell, no tastes or color. There were no other peopleor objects. There was no beginning and no end. Just White. The only thing she everknew were the never ending bright white walls, stretching out in all directions. Andthey were the only thing that ever seemed to be alive, she certainly wasn’t.Sometimes she swore she could even hear the walls breathing. She would sit andlisten, fighting for a feeling of envy that she couldn’t even understand. Trying to graspfeelings that no longer existed to her, or in her. Trying to learn if they were ever thereat all. But The White wasn’t a place for learning.Ann spent all of her time in The White continuously staring at the wallssurrounding her, there was really nothing else to do. She would marvel at how perfectthey were, no texture, no difference in value. Sometimes she was even unable to tellthe ceiling from the floor, if thats what you want to call them.
Maybe I'm upside down
,she would often wonder. However, there was no way of knowing, as there were nodoors or windows. No indication of..anything.But she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t even confused. All she could feel was anacceptance of her current state. She was physically unable to feel any other emotion.She couldn’t even remember what the different options of feeling were, if they existedat all. With no memory of a past, or life, or of anything at all, she was ultimatelystripped of everything. It was as if there was never anything else but this. Just White.White and the beautiful noises that remained in her head. Her one life-line. The oneconnection to..something. There had to be something other than this. Some sort of past? But there was no way of knowing if she had a past beyond these six white walls,or what a past could even consist of for that matter. She couldn’t remember how orwhen she arrived. Or better yet, why. Being incapable of experiencing any real
 
emotions left her in the dark as to whether her confinement was a refuge, or somekind of punishment.And then there was the most puzzling question of all. Was there an end? If there was no time, if she didn’t age, if she didn’t need to breath, if she seeminglywasn’t ALIVE, how could she move on further to some sort of end? How could sheescape when death wasn’t even an option?But she hadn’t thought of escape in..a long time, it seemed. She had givenup on that notion, along with most other thoughts, long ago. With no memory, noemotion, it was difficult to think of anything at all. Once she came to the realizationthat there were no answers, she slowly began to loose sight of the questions she hadstarted with. And that was the moment she sat down, indian style crossed-legged, andstared at the plain white wall. Searching. Searching for..well, whatever it was she wassupposed to be searching for, with a knowledge that she would never find it. And timestood
 
still.* * *Her life, or existence rather (she couldn’t call this a life) remained this wayfor some time. She never needed to move or stretch or switch her weight off her legs. Just as she needed no air, she never felt any form of discomfort what so ever. Nothunger, or thirst. She was in a room full of nothing and she too had finally dissolvedinto nothing. That was until this day, we’ll call it Tuesday. Not that time could be brokeninto days in The White, not in a place where there were no seconds or minuets, justmoments. Precisely, it was the first moment of Ann’s life.It was seemingly just another unmoving, meaningless moment in The White.No different than any other moment. Ann sat staring blankly at the white wall. She hadeven given up searching, no longer able to grasp the reason why she had been in thefirst place. She simply and mindlessly admired the wall. It held her. In fact, she couldn'ttake her eyes off it. It was as if she was in a trance. She slowly began to lose herself inthe new-found wonder that it exhibited to her. She had never noticed before, but thewhite was so perfect, it really didn’t look like a wall at all. It’s sudden, previouslyhidden beauty was now so radiant there was no way it could ever be hard, or flat. Itwas far too perfect to be that ordinary of an object, to have such an average surface.She saw now that it looked more like a warm, luminous glow of light surrounding her,rather than a wall. And suddenly, she was drowning in the overwhelming want, the
need 
to touch it.It was a strange feeling, uncomfortable almost. She had never felt any urgelike this before. In fact, she had never felt compelled to do anything, at all, ever. Untilnow. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. She listened for the voices in her head. Shewaited, anticipating they’re stern refutation. She trusted them. When the voices cameto her she always listened, always trusted. Although she knew they were simply oldsounds replaying from the memories that had been taken from her, she felt as if theyprotected her. She put all of her faith in the voices, the noises that had kept hercompany in the torturously lonely White. But now, they were absent. They brought herno sense of guidance or disapproval. They had abandoned her when she needed themthe most, leaving her with silence. It was a silence so strong, so painfully loud, shethought she may need to cover her ears. For the first time, she felt she needed toprotect herself from the emptiness. She was no longer accepting of it’s company. But
 
as she waited, as she sat feeling more alone, more hollow than ever before, the silencebegan to roar. And though she was unable to feel any real physical pain, she imaginedher ears bleeding at the sound of the piercing emptiness. She cringed at the thought,and then something else. Her eyes shot open. She felt something, a real something. Itwasn’t one of the imaginary feelings she created in her mind. It wasn’t like all theother explanations she fed herself to explain the sensations she was unable to evertruly know. It was a real perception. A real feeling, bubbling at the end of herfingertips, slowly working it’s way up her fingers, spreading throughout her entirehand. The tingling exploded with an intensity that felt like flames beneath her skin. Itwas a fiery urge. An urge to touch, to feel The White that stood towering over her.She didn’t know why, but she felt very strongly that she shouldn’t, that sheshould keep away from the wall’s luringly deceitful glow.
I wouldn’t want to get it dirty,
she told herself. But that was lie, a cover-up, and she knew it. After all, she wascontinually surrounded for all of eternity by nothing but white. The last thing she was,was dirty. It was a flat out lie, a fabrication her mind thought up to trick her. To trick herbody. She felt betrayed. Until this moment, she had always assumed the two wereconnected. An “if- then” statement. If the mind, then the body. Her body always didwhat her mind told it to. It had made sense at the time, and it gave reason as to whyshe would sit motionless for so long, unable or wanting to move. She had easilyassumed that her body was merely mirroring her empty mind. How could she havebeen so wrong?
I should have seen this coming!
She scolded herself. Her mind andbody were not synced together harmoniously, they were enemies wanting twocompletely different things! And she was the battlefield, being ripped apart at theseams, naively blaming herself for the inability to decide what she wanted, whenreally, the decision had never been hers to make at all. She sat vulnerable andpowerless as she watched the two parts of herself continue their gruesome battle.Her mind tried to protect her. It wanted to keep her away from any actionthat had the possibility of ending in harm. However in it’s attempt, it had erasedeverything that she ever had inside her, leaving her hallow so that that she would feeland want nothing. It’s purpose was to protect her! But was it?On the other hand her body, young and curious, wanted her to feel, toexperience, to discover, even if the discovery led to danger. It wanted her to live.But her mind had always been stronger. It held her body captive for so long,keeping her motionless and empty, completely unaware that there was any other way.It tried to fill the void with noises and voices and it had almost won. It had almostconvinced her that they were good enough. But not anymore. For the first time shewanted something beyond what was in her mind. And for the first time, wantingsomething, merely thinking of wanting something at all, was a possibility. Just then, her thoughts were interrupted. She looked down and watchedeyes wide as her hands began to rise up, palms out, facing The White wall in front of her. She couldn’t control them, couldn’t stop them. She couldn’t do anything. Had herbody finally won? Had her mind now completely lost all control?
Is that the same thingas loosing my mind?
She wondered.
 Am I going insane?
She laughed inside. She was ina white land filled with nothingness. She didn’t need to breath or eat, she felt nothing.Her only companions were the sounds that her mind picked from memories anddangled in front of her teasingly, like a bone in front of a dog. Loosing her mind? It wasfar worse than that. Her hands jerked up further. She wasn’t sure if she liked this ideaanymore. She squinted her eyes and began to push, squeezing every muscle in herbody.
Oh please stop!
She screamed inside. But her hands wouldn’t listen. Theycontinued to move closer and closer to the wall, now almost completely outstretched.
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