They told him he was going to be the gatekeeper.
He has since thought that calling it that was just a cruel joke.
When it first started he had been in his room for about a day - it was hard to tell but about a day seemed right to him.
Outside the gatekeeper's room there suddenly showed the room opposite his shifting and another taking its place. He went up to the glass - or plastic - separating the two rooms. He was never sure whether the partition was made of hardened plastic or reinforced glass; he sometimes preferred to think it was one substance, sometimes another - in the end it did not matter but it gave him something to think about.
The other room opposite was around the same dimensions as his room but lacked the bed and books his did.
There was a man in this room,
"thank god!"
this man said.
"what's happening to me?"
The gatekeeper got up to the glass and said
"I don't know. They told me I was the gatekeeper"
The man kept on telling him that he wanted to get out and he had to help him.
The gatekeeper said,
"I don't know how to get through this glass, I'll see if I can do something"
After he said this the other room span round again to show yet another man in another blank room.
What this man said was similar to the first.
The gatekeeper tried to help the new man, he tried using a bed post to smash the glass but it wouldn't budge. The other man was there for about a minute and again the room revolved.
This continued, with a succession of different people saying they needed help and they didn't know what was happening and the gatekeeper trying his hardest find ways to help them.He was continually explaining that this had just started happening and they weren't the first and that they too would disappear after a minute.
This went on for several days, he couldn't be sure.
The gatekeeper grew exhausted of it. He cried, he screamed, he tried to explain that he could not help them. Each time he got the same message from them - the same desperate plea for help and each time he could not help, could not even adequately explain he could not help.
He gave up after a while and tipped his bed to the side and hid behind it.
He read and ignored the ones who cried out for his help.
He wasn't sure how long this went on for.
He grew bored. Where before he had tried his hardest to help the others now he played tricks on some of the visitors.
Sometimes he would jump out from behind the bed just as they were about to leave.
Other times he would tie his bed sheets up to form a toga and jump around his room chanting for as long as he felt like.
The others were never sure about this. The gatekeeper laughed at their reactions. At least they no longer asked for his help when he did this.
For great periods of times the gatekeeper would come out from behind his bed and stare into the other rooms.He would look to see if there were any clues in their blank surfaces, ignoring the shouts of the others, ignoring their gesticulations, just looking at the internal architecture of these continually shifting rooms.
Occasionally the gatekeeper would look for patterns in the people, in their voices, in their movements but he found none.
After a minute they were always whisked away, always replaced.
This was a long time ago now.
The gatekeeper long since stopped worrying about them.
Occasionally he wonders what he must look like them to them, sitting impassively reading his books next to the sign he wrote that reads
IM SORRY I CANT HELP
but mostly he doesn't notice them at all.
