The darkness crept on him long enough for his tongue to taste it. It had begun to intrude upon his throat, and that was when Duckworth knew he had to leave.
He shut the heavy steel door, leaving the ominosity of the dark room behind him. The taste still lingered though, hallucinations, nothing more. Duckworth was a scientist; light had no taste, he knew that, less so the absence of light.
But why was it that his lips shriveled at even just the thought of the room. The mere thought of being inside it. He shook his hands to make sure they were still there. To make sure he was still there.
He was, barely. Survivor’s guilt, was that what this was?
Dr. Amaru leaned by a pillar. He looked at Duckworth knowingly. He knew how it felt, the room and its darkness. “Has the ground opened yet?” the doctor asked.
“No, not yet,” Duckworth replied. “When will it open, do you think?”
“Unsure.” Dr. Amaru straightened his lab coat. It had a jagged tear by the right pocket that the doctor never brought to fix. “But it will. I know it.”
Duckworth wondered if the doctor didn’t sew the tear on purpose, or if it was for some other reason he did not know. His own lab coat had tears too, from experiments long forgotten, though not one as big as the doctor’s.
The next day (or night; inside the bunker, it was impossible to know), Duckworth checked the room again. Nothing new. It was still the room, still desolate, still dark, still choking. It was cold, but not on the skin. The cold dug much, much deeper. When Duckworth exited the room, Dr. Amaru asked him the same question.
He gave the same answer, “no, not yet,” doubting if the ground will ever open.
The day after that, still nothing. And the same went for the day after, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after. Yet on the eighth day from when he tasted the darkness, Duckworth found something new. A crack had formed in the middle of the room. It was impossible to see, but he felt it with his heel, and it was a feeling that had not been there before.
He told it to Dr. Amaru.
“A crack?” the doctor asked. “Good.”
“What do we do?” Duckworth patted his coat. He’d left the room in a hurried excitement, so much so that he’d given his coat a new tear.
Dr. Amaru put a hand inside one of his coat pockets and brought out a small zipped-up plastic bag. He handed it to Duckworth. “Plant this.”
A small seed rested inside the bag. Duckworth wasn’t quite sure how long it’s been there, but he didn’t ask.
When he woke up the following day, Duckworth took a hand spade to the room, only to realize that the crack wasn’t large enough to plant anything in. It was far too small, far too narrow, and far too shallow.
With fear that he might have already been overstaying his welcome, Duckworth left, only to find that Dr. Amaru was already outside, waiting. “I can’t plant it,” Duckworth said.
The doctor clicked his tongue. “I like to think, that at every opportunity, there awaits resistance. On the brink, will you let resistance stop you?”
Duckworth understood what he meant, so he closed his eyes, took a long, heaping breath, and went back in. For a moment, he felt his heart stop beating, but he pumped his fist to his chest and he felt it thump, and that was good enough.
He left the room that day with new tears on his lab coat. He had broken his spade (and a finger) by breaking the floor. Yet, beneath the floor, though Duckworth had not seen, lay soil. He had felt it, though barely, since the darkness sapped most feeling. But he had planted the seed there. That day, he had planted the seed.
The next day, Duckworth wanted to observe the seed but Dr. Amaru stopped him. “Do not open that door.”
“Why?” Duckworth asked. “How could the seed grow without water? Without light?”
“The seed will grow, or the seed will not. It is only one or the other, and it is not for us to decide.”
Duckworth was puzzled. He had dirtied his hands, ripped his coat, and endured the darkness for what? The seed will not grow without care. No seed grows with no care, it did not take a botanist to know that. “Then what do we do?”
“We will wait.”
So they waited. The days rolled into days, and in each of those days Duckworth would ask, and each time the doctor would say, “we will wait.”
So they waited. They waited and waited and waited. Weeks came, then months, and the steel door remained closed. Duckworth did not miss venturing into the dark room. Frankly, he was quite relieved. The room clamped him. Every time he went into the room, the darkness would tie a rope around his neck and tighten its hold with every step, every venture.
It baffled him more than Dr. Amaru when Duckworth protested. “I should go in.”
“We will wait.”
“Why?” he asked. “We wait and do nothing, so why? Why do we wait? Our cameras can’t see inside the room. We know this. None of our cameras work inside there. We need to check it for ourselves.”
“If you open the door, you will kill the rose.”
“What? What do you mean ‘kill the rose’? We killed it the moment we left it alone.”
“No,” the doctor replied. “Now it is either dead or alive, and neither of both. As long as you do not open the door, it will remain that way.”
Duckworth wanted to say that Dr. Amaru has lost his mind, but it would not be done. Not, for Duckworth respected the doctor, and the doctor knew more than he.
So it was in that night that Duckworth did not sleep. He remained still on his bed, underneath the sheets and the covers, until he found it ample to move. He sneaked to the entrance of the dark room, Dr. Amaru nowhere to be found. And it was then, for the first time in months, he opened the door.
Inside the room was a rose. It was the only thing he could see. It had not grown on the soil that Duckworth had carved for it. No, it created its own crack on the concrete.
Duckworth neared it and saw its stem stand strongly and unwavering. Its petals spread like a free bird’s soaring wings. But it had no roots. It had given all its strength just to bloom.
It was in his instinct to pluck it, but he stopped himself from doing so. To simply even just touch it would be a gamble. Was it a rose he could trust? Was it a monster for growing in a land so tepid and deprived?
He left the room with no new tears on his coat, but on his cheek he had one. A tear had fallen. Dr. Amaru waited for him outside. “What did you find?” he asked.
“A rose. It lived.” But Duckworth wondered for how long it could last. On how much more it had to give.
“It has strength to overcome its destiny.”
“It was magnificent.” But Duckworth wondered for until when it would be. “How did it live?”
“It is a prisoner to the room that conceived it. Does it still live now? As we speak? You can open the door and answer the question.”
Duckworth wanted to. He could very easily open the door. He had his hands still on its metal handles. But he would not open it. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. To see it broken would break him.
So Duckworth hung his head and walked away.
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