I enter a room. The tiles on the floor are black and white and blinding. There is a sound reverberating through the air, like a drill or a noisy drone of bees. The sound cuts into my skull. I wince. The room is a giant optical illusion: you can’t tell where the walls are, and everything is tilted.  I must be wearing some kind of dressy shoes; each step I take goes click-clack, click clack, sonorous echoes amidst the dismal ringing static. The more I walk the louder the buzzing gets until it’s more like a scream and the walls seem to close in on me and everything is black and white and suffocating and I’m dying, dying as I become one with the mesmerizing diamond patterns swirling around me like stars. 

The screams stop, and everything is silent. I sit up in bed, surrounded by my blankets and the moist summer darkness and breathe. My eyes whiz back to reality where there are soft, comforting shades of grays and greens and blues. I breathe again and try not to remember the room of harsh black and white. 

I hug my knees and try to forget the room that swallowed me whole.