WE THE PURPLE

The T.V. screen blips and then cuts to black for a split second. This drastic change causes your body to spam and your mind to draw to immediate attention. Your vision is now consumed with the image of an entire audience of children screaming with excitement. The high-pitch of their fervor is enough to pierce your ears and cause your face to a grimace. Panning into the screen, in an unnaturally close close-up, you see a jubilant face painted like a clown brandishing a large and toothy smile.

“HI KIDDOS!! YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS??”

The children heighten the sharpness of their cheers.

“THAT’S RIGHT … PSYCHO BILLY’S HOUSE OF SLAUGHTER!!!”

As you brace yourself for more audible impact the children’s cheering is nearly unbearable for you.

“OKAY BOYS AND GIRLS, I WANT YOU TO GIVE A NICE WARM WELCOME TO THE PURPLE PLAYER!!!”

The cheering continues its jarring drone and the clown waves the tops of his fingers at you in a coochy-coo manner.

“HEYA PURPLE PLAYER, IT’S TIME TO WAKE-UP NOW … ugh, why do they manage to sleep for so long?”

He rolls his eyes in an exaggerated way.

“WAKE UP!!! BECAUSE YOU ARE MY GUEST ON THE BESTEST GAME-SHOW EVER TO GRACE GOD’S GREEN EARTH. Purple, I always liked purple, you know when I used to play board games I always went for the purple, probably woulda picked purple stuff over Sunny D … WELCOME PURPLE PLAYER!!! WELCOME TO MY HOUSE OF SSSLAUGHTER!!!”

There is calliope music that begins to play in a wonky way as its exasperated and muted notes compete with the hellish high-pitched voices of the youthful audience. The camera pans back now and you can see that this clown is certainly middle-aged but has a certain limber quality to his movements. Around him lie large objects of primary colors set onto a white background.

He takes a great deep exaggerated breath while he makes time for a dramatic pause. Then rapidly leans back to his uncomfortable close up to mumble:

“listen up purple player, it’s all quite simple, quite easy to get really, find those items, find those fucking items no matter what, and you will be free, you will be on course to me, think of those few things as everything, your rights, what you are entitled to have, your LIFE, your LIBERTY, your PURSUIT TO HAPPINESS, and all those other things you gotta get along the way … you want what’s yours, you wanna own what is coming to you, you wanna be all that you can fucking be? ”

“I SURE FUCKING HOPE SO!!! fer yer sssake. I am the one that not only brought you here but essentially created you, I am you’re alpha and I am gunna be your omega so you see you oughta just stick with me and trust me your gunna have a GRAND! OLD! TIME!!”

His face has busted into an intimidating excitement and he inhales again exageratively.

“So yer gunna be a good contestant and stick to the game and give us a good show right?? Yer gunna play this thing through like a fucking Shakespearean comi-tragedy right to the fucking last scene getting them all in stitches, huh?? Yer gunna sing and scream bloody murder all night long??”

It is during this brief pause that you notice the children have stopped their incessant drone but you are not certain for how long it has been dropped.

“ALRIGHT, WERE BACK!!”

The children’s chorus of pain begins sounding again assaulting your ears from either side.

“OKAY, WELL WE HAVE GONE OVER ALL THE RULES AND THERE IS ONLY ONE THING TO ASK …”

The children and the clown scream in an ear-drum battering unison

“ARE … YOU ... READY???”

The final word is left with a pause lasting longer than the previous pauses in this conversation. You have a sick feeling in the bottom of your stomach as you feel you are being watched.

The television has grown silent and motionless besides the clown’s subtle sway and blinks. The pneumatic tube hisses and continues to slide in its downward motion. Your pulse throbs from the center of your chest and outward pressing at the very things strapping you in.

What do you do?

BLUE TOOTH

You have waited patiently, unobservable yet very aware.

LET THERE BE WHITE, AND HE SAW THAT HE WAS GOOD

You managed to continue down the hall way past a strange submarine-like metal door on the wall across the hall from you. You could get a closer inspection now the light has resurged. Otherwise, you can now see a avenue of directions to go.

GREEN LIGHT FLASHES, THE FLAGS GO UP

You see not a room but another hall with perhaps a bit of metal door

THEY CALL THEM RED AND YELLOW, QUITE RIGHTLY

You two are currently staring at one another ... the silence is broken as the hum of your pneumatic tubes begin to give a soft glow of light again

Well that might slow me down

I suppose that the darkness we've been plunged into is intended to scare us. There are things in the darkness to fear, for sure, but the darkness itself won't slow me down.

I pause and listen down the hallway.

Now I'll just have to use my other senses.

I'll continue creeping along the hallway, with one hand on the wall.

THE COLOR PURPLE

At first, your mind is blank. You don’t remember anything about your past but you know that you don’t know about your past. It is as if you are aware of something you cannot comprehend. It feels like you are being reborn from the womb of some alien mother. You know nothing of this new world save a vague feeling of familiarity. Everything has a surreal quality to it now as your eyes begin to function.

It is as if you were the chrysalis and now you cannot remember ever being the catapiller. You feel rather like something forged from previous material. Yet in all this you feel brand new. There is nothing beyond your base material assigning you as who you are other than the ever elusive situations of here and now. Both of these you are certain are happening for the first time and thus through some intuitive thinking you conclude, that you must be conscious for the first time. Like aroused from some fictitious dream, the sleeper awakens.

From a milky white wet-eyed blur you begin to pull your visual surroundings into focus. You can hear hissing all around you and you know that you are enclosed in cold metal. You can only tilt your head a few degrees in each direction and your arms and legs are strapped into place as if you were standing up straight. You feel as though you are vertical but that you had been horizontal for a long duration previous.

A small television screen sits uncomfortably close to your face. It is about half-a-foot squared with rounded edges and it is jammed up so close to your face it takes up nearly all of your immediate view. It has the intrusive quality of an aggravating conversationalist yet displays the simple phrase: “Please Stand By …”

A light static of elevator music is barely audible from its single speaker. You practically have to hold your breath to hear it. The melody is strangely recognizable and almost primordial as if it were the tune your mother would hum when you were a child. You know you were a child, but again as you try and recall your childhood, you draw a blank. There were words to this song, you remember that much. The part coming up, this is the part that you remember. The words come hauntingly each one the harbinger of the next.

“Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
'Relax,' said the night man,
'We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!”

The speaker is playing musack of The Eagles song Hotel California. How odd, you think but the truth is you really have no idea why.