Aaron discovered the room by accident, or so he thought.
It appeared one morning between his kitchen and study, where only a blank wall had been the day before. The door was unmarked, slightly ajar, and humming with a low, rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat muffled by thick velvet.
He should have been working. A deadline loomed like a storm cloud, and his editor’s emails had shifted from polite nudges to curt reminders. But the room called to him.
Inside, the air was warm and heavy with the scent of old paper and lavender. The walls shimmered faintly, as if coated in memory. There was a desk, but no chair. A clock, but no hands. And in the center, a mirror that didn’t reflect him, but something else entirely.
In the mirror, Aaron saw himself writing – not the article he was supposed to finish, but a novel he’d abandoned years ago. The words flowed effortlessly, his face serene. Behind him, shadows moved like thoughts not yet formed.
Each time he entered the room, time outside seemed to pause. He would drift through half-formed ideas, forgotten dreams, and fears dressed in metaphor. He met a younger version of himself once, who asked, “Why did you stop imagining?”
“I had to be realistic,” Aaron replied.
The boy only smiled and vanished into a cloud of ink.
Days passed—or maybe hours. The real world tugged at him with increasing urgency: buzzing phones, unanswered calls, the weight of expectation. But the room offered something else. Not escape, but negotiation. A place where his subconscious could speak in symbols, and his conscious mind could listen without judgment.
Eventually, Aaron returned to his desk outside the room. He opened a blank document—not the article, but something new. Something true.
The room never disappeared. It simply waited, patient and pulsing, for the next time he needed to remember who he was beneath the noise.
Let’s try wrap this up nicely…
