The Crying Room (Chapter One)

The Crying Room is a sound-proofed out-building in the woods. No one knows who built it or exactly how long it has been there. It has just always been a fixture of the neighborhood – somewhat of a legend, especially among the teens at the age when they spend a lot of time in the woods, smoking, looking at dirty pictures, or making out.

In my day, it was situated on land that was technically owned by a Mr. Cristlicht, but he had never been seen on the property and it’s not like anyone actually surveyed for property lines back then. Those woods were in the center of several neighborhoods and they were ours as far as we were concerned. Anything found in them was fair game – first come, first serve. In any case, ownership of land seems so abstract that it borders on the absurd. It doesn’t really apply to The Crying Room anyway. That was different.

Paths entered the wood from many directions, but all convened to one eventually and ended formally at the little shed, where the path became paved with flagstones and moss. It was a single room, rustic and cabin-like from the outside, but quite modern and finished inside.

The room was only big enough for one person. A single wooden, yet comfortable chair was in the center of the small space. The chair was carved ornately from an ancient tree stump, which grew right up from the dirt floor. It was dead in the sense that it never grew much in the enclosed space, but alive in the sense that it never decomposed. The solar tube in the ceiling let in just enough light to allow small suckers and branches of greenery to thrive and stay green – even in the dead of winter.

The walls were stucco or cob and seemed organic – no sharp corners or edges. They were painted a layered blue, green, and yellow that was applied in a way that made the walls seem three dimensional – almost see-through.

One way that it achieved its sound isolation was because it was basically a room within a room, complete with a double door – one for the inner room and one for the outer shell. The thick, wooden outer door had a heavy, carved latch to hold it closed from the inside. The inner door possessed but a single dead-bolt and otherwise looked just like a wall.

There were no windows in the walls or door and the whole structure was built into the side of a steep hill such that the only thing that really showed from the outside was the door. Lush vegetation had grown all around as if being watered by the years of tears that flowed so readily while inside its walls.