Stuck in the Courtyard; An Avant-Guard Lighting Observation

Prompt: If you wrote this more like a creative writing piece, what would it be like?

It’s one o’clock, and I have found myself in the Modlin courtyard. I don’t know how I got here. I can’t…I’m locked out of the building. I tried all the doors, but none of them will open. They should be open because it’s one o’clock in the afternoon… I’ve banged on the windows, but no one on the other side can hear me.

The courtyard is very bleary. It’s a bleak, rainy day. The sky is just one shade of gray. One earie, uniform color of light gray. The light in the courtyard is…unnerving; cold and white and it feels very abandoned, very empty and foreign. Uninviting. Vacant.

The ground is wet from a recent shower. The puddles glimmer in the ambient light a little bit. There are no shadows except the shadows that linger right under the benches and the chairs. They give me my first sense of unreality, like something unnatural is going to happen. Like I’ve been placed here in a cage – a cold cage – with the columns as my prison bars. … Maybe I’m stuck where nobody can hear me calling and yelling, and I’ve been forgotten by the whole world.

It’s cold. The air is cold, the light is cold, I’m underdressed. I try to sit down on a bench, but its frigidness and dampness is unwelcoming and unforgiving, just like the rest of the courtyard.

.  .  .

Someone else has come in the courtyard. It’s a girl, and she’s talking on her cell phone. I try to get her attention, but it’s like she doesn’t see me, it’s like I’m not here. She just keeps on talking, and she looks past me.

It feels like something is coming for me. I’m here, but I’m trapped and in a different plane than everyone else is, a different plane of existence almost.

The sky is…blank.

I wonder how the girl sees the courtyard. For her, is it sunny? Is it a normal day?

Now that I think of it, I don’t even remember what outside looked like before I stepped into the courtyard. Was it sunny? Was it rainy? Windy? This courtyard is my only reality. There’s nothing else but this courtyard, right here, right now.

I’ll see if I can get through the door once the girl leaves, but somehow I don’t think I’ll be able to.

.  .  .

It has started to rain, but the rain is passing right through me. At first I had ducked under one of the arches to escape it, but I realized the rain wasn’t hitting me anyways. I walked out to the center of the courtyard, and even though it’s drizzling and the rain would have hit me, it didn’t. It passed right through me or made a void in the area where I was standing. I ran around the courtyard, and I’m still as dry as a bone. I didn’t want the rain to hit me, but now I’m wishing it did… It would at least verify my existence – my presence – in this courtyard right now. But the rain won’t give me the satisfaction.

The girl has gone inside to avoid the rain. She went through the door, and I tried to slip through behind her. But there was a barrier that I can’t penetrate that blocked me from escaping.

The rain is coming down. I’m starting to think I’ll never get out of this courtyard.

.  .  .

A man in a dark suit just came out to the courtyard. He has an umbrella. He comes to me, comes to the center of the courtyard, where I was standing, looks me in the eye, and says “Come with me.”

I have no choice but to follow him. I’m glad to leave this dreary, unnerving, cold place behind, but what will come next? Who knows? Maybe I’ll be wishing I was back in this courtyard, but I really have no choice but to follow him or else I may be stuck here for the rest of my life…

He leads me through the door, and I pass through seamlessly, and leave behind the courtyard where the rain continues to fall.