Hannah Adkins is an author, born and bred in Birmingham, UK. An avid blogger, poet and reader,
The Room (Perfection is through that door, but at what cost?) is Adkins' debut novel. When she isn’t
writing, Hannah is a training yoga teacher and lives with her family, chickens and cat.
The Room is a thriller set in the not-so-distant future, and subtly questions how technology and its
ability to control the human mind can affect life itself. We join Jasmine at the brink of devastation; her
life is certainly not going the way she'd like, and she intends to do something about it.
She is saved by a job offering at a place named only as 'The Room'. But as she unveils the mastery
of this mysterious place, and the people who created its intense abilities, is it as wonderful as she
initially thinks?
The Room gives you perfection, but at what cost?
You can find Hannah on Instagram @Hadkinsauthor
You can buy The Room at Amazon, here.
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Prologue
“...and then, in dreaming, / The clouds methought would open and show riches / Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked / I cried to dream again.”
―William Shakespeare, The Tempest
At the end of the street, just far away enough from where the body of a woman lay like a discarded rag, and where a police cordon stemmed the tide of a curious crowd, a Birmingham News Today channel van was parked up. The back doors were wide open, giving way to the strain of stacked wires and cable spools. Burrowed deep in this mess of snaking technology, a makeshift desk was the only clear space; a laptop sat on the plywood, glowing white against the night’s sky.
Michael Powers was sitting on the tailgate of the van, leaning forward in what was once a well-pressed suit, his elbows on the tops of his thighs as he adjusted the cuffs of his shirt to make them frustratingly even. He’d become so good at this he barely looked at them anymore. This time was no different as he stared down the busiest street in the suburbs; a frown trenched deep onto his face.
Busy for all the wrong reasons, Michael thought.
He allowed the haphazard flow of townhouses to direct his gaze and then thread through the other channel vans irreverently parked on the street thrown into excited confusion. Beyond the vans, all he could see was an unsettling mesh of bodies talking animatedly, and the punishing blue lights from the ambulance service.
He didn’t need to take down any more than that visually. He’d seen all this before, and frankly, it bored him to bloody tears. While the Head Reporters were grabbing stories on murder mysteries and features on the entangled party system, he got the fluff. He got the traffic accidents, the idiotic animal stories, the potatoes that looked a little-like-Kim-Kardashian. And tonight, he should be oh-so-gracious that he got a sodding suicide. Admittedly, he thought, one that had caused quite a turnout. But, to Michael, it was still a fool throwing themselves off a building; someone who couldn’t be arsed anymore and wanted to be slightly more dramatic than swilling down some pills and alcohol in the comfort of their own home.
There was a crash from inside the van and a loud ‘Oh, bollocks’. Michael sighed audibly. As well as the “fluff ” assignment from Jennifer, he’d been given a babysitting job for the clumsy intern.
The sound of a helicopter overhead cut through the night. He strained his neck to see it. ‘Looks like they’ve called out the big guns,’ he said.
‘Say again?’ Zach walked steadily around to the back of the van carrying the camera like it was a suitcase. He placed it gently on the floor and then crouched protectively around it.
‘Never mind,’ Michael replied, not bothering to look up from his cuffs. He was now intent on the natural matting of black hair on his tanned wrists. It splayed out from under the crispness of his white shirt; Michael thought it looked like spiders were creeping down his arms. He shuddered sharply.
‘I’m sure I’ve visited this place in my nightmares,’ he added as he laid one final tug on his cuffs and stretched to his full height. He stepped around to face Zach who, rather annoyingly in Michael’s mind, sprang to his feet with the camera already perched on his shoulder. ‘And you were there,’ Michael continued, pointing to Zach, ‘and you were there too.’ He pressed a finger into his left ear.
‘Very funny,’ the voice in his ear retorted.
Zach sniffed loudly and looked quizzical until Michael met his gaze and motioned to his earpiece. ‘And in my nightmares, I have voices in my head, too,’ Michael continued.
‘Trust me, Michael; I’d rather be in bed than in your ear right now.’
‘Saucy bitch.’
‘You can’t see me, but I’m rolling my eyes.’
‘Mr. Powers, shouldn’t we be over there where the action is?’ Zach asked.
‘Did you hear that, Harriet?’ Michael pressed his ear again and lowered his voice, ‘the clumsy intern, who is so graciously my cameraman because the real ones are on the bloody important stories, actually used the phrase “where the action is”.’
‘And he called you ‘Mr.’,’ Harriet said. ‘You better hang onto him.’
‘You take all the fun out of this job. Besides, I don’t have to take this from you. You’re only my assistant.’ Michael reached into his front breast pocket and slid out a thin mirror. He immediately spread his thumb and index finger across the top of each eyebrow. He tilted his head back to check for stray hairs from his nose.
‘Yes, until Jennifer says otherwise.’
Michael replaced the mirror and straightened his tie. He reached for a slim tablet he’d left just inside the van then returned to his mark. ‘Of course. Where is our Commander-in-Chief anyway? Doesn’t she know they have the helicopter darting about?’
‘She left for the night. Probably in bed-’
‘Probably fucking someone over.’ Michael studied the writing on the tablet.
‘I was going to say probably dreaming up new nightmares for you.’
‘Same thing.’
‘Wow! You really hate her, don’t you? Are you ever going to tell me what she’s got on you?’
‘Maybe.’ Michael coughed lightly. ‘Harriet, I’m reading these notes. What do we have on ‘The Room’?’
‘Next to nothing. All you see there. Woman face-plants from the roof of what seems to be a café. Only three stories high, so she must’ve fell nastily, or really meant to do herself damage. No I.D. on the woman yet, but that shouldn’t take long. In the meantime, get creative.’
‘Gee, thanks, I can work with that.’ Michael said, only half-smiling.
‘No problem,’ Harriet returned. ‘Oh, and while you’re there, if it’s not too much trouble, can you ask Zach to turn his headset on?’
Michael mimed to Zach to turn his battery pack on, but eventually had to come off his mark and do it for him.
‘You know they don’t pay me well enough to work the useless twat circuit,’ he whispered to Harriet on his way back to his mark.
‘You do know he can hear you now, right?’ Harriet said.
Michael turned back to face the camera. He gave Zach an awkward smile. ‘How long?’
‘Fifteen seconds,’ Harriet replied efficiently. ‘Zach, the reason Mr Powers is hanging back away from the action is that he wants an establishing shot first and then a slow approach towards the melee.’
‘Yeah sure, that’s what I thought you were doing, but at Uni they said you should start with a big pan and then go into the-’ the intern’s voice rang in Michael’s ear, making him wince. He couldn’t help thinking that the kid sounded so bloody young.
‘Just leave it to the professionals, yeah?’ Michael interrupted.
Harriet counted down to four then Zach silently took over the count with his fingers, leaving his middle finger last.
‘I’m standing on the corner of Share Street, where earlier this evening, a woman fell to her death from the roof of one of the dwellings. Although it has not been confirmed at this time, the building is likely to have been a place of business known only as ‘The Room’. Locals have stated it is a fashionable café hidden amongst the Share Street townhouses. What is also not clear is the identity of the victim, although it is believed that the woman was local to the area.’
Michael was about to move towards the scene when he became distracted by the camera shifting up above his head. He stumbled over his words as he struggled to maintain his frame. But then, he followed the gaze of Zach and the camera.
Harriet’s voice was loud, too loud, in his ear.
‘Michael you stopped, is everything-’
Michael pulled the earpiece clear.
It was hard to see if it was a man or a woman, but the person silently jumped from the building. The sound of the impact was mercilessly loud. The life spilt out over the people below. Michael spotted Elena Edwards, or more specifically, heard her, first. She was the new woman from Channel 4 news; a mass of blonde hair and a skinny, overly tanned frame that was always squeezed into a dress on the verge of being obscene. Instead of doing her usual nasal broadcasting, she was screaming. Her eyes fixed on the floor, her arms bent at the elbows, hands stretched with the palms upwards. Her white dress was splattered crimson.
Zach was already on his way to the site of the drama; his camera was blazing with lights and gathering raw footage as he went. Michael followed him, running through the busy street and feeling his dinner, a burrito, bouncing proudly in his stomach. He noticed the intern getting down all he could through the camera. Michael wondered too if they would have the luxury to go through that unedited roll before the authorities could get hold of it. That specific joy was all too rare these days.
Zach was far in front, already partially engulfed by the forming crowd. Michael stopped; his black hair was flat and matted over his forehead; his breath was short and strained. He was close to the end of terrace house now, with a view to the grey metal front door, leading to this ‘Room’ place, to his right, and the gabbling crowd to the left.
‘Film the roof, Zach’ Michael shouted through the crowd. He lifted his gaze to where the jumper came from, but he could see no signs of movement, there wasn’t even any lights coming from the building that he could see. It looked like the person had jumped out of the darkness.
Apart from the crowds who showed no signs of abating, Michael’s eyes were drawn to the metal front door of the so-called ‘Room’. A man cautiously opened the door and left the building. He didn’t look at the crowds who were too busy screaming and capturing Elena Edward’s frozen stance to see him, but the man bowed his long neck and walked quickly into the road.
In the thirty years that Michael had been in the business, he had come across all manners of people, but the way this man was acting was unusual. Michael motioned to Zach who was too busy filming the crowd, the body on the floor, and the screaming reporter from Channel 4 News, to notice. He shook his head and backed away from the crowd and towards the man.
The man who didn’t want to be seen was thin; even wearing a large thick coat, he appeared to be almost painfully jagged. He was tall, perhaps 6ft 6 or 7, but with his bowed head, he looked more like a long shadow than a man. Michael could see how easily he could slip away into the darkness. He managed to follow the man for a few steps before reaching for his arm. He knew better than to find himself alone with the stranger, so he had to move quickly.
The tall man squeezed and contracted under his grasp and turned his head to Michael, eyes wide, ‘What? What is it?’ he stammered.
Michael, through the dim lighting of the streets and the attack of the police’s blue glaring lights, saw a sharp terror spread across the man’s sallow face. His long arms curled up, and he adjusted his oversized glasses and brushed thick black hair from his face. His eyes, almond in shape, flickered just once to the crowd behind them.
‘You’re not curious about that?’ Michael gestured with a nod of his head.
‘What? I don’t know nothin’ so…Look I’m sorry I’ve gotta go.’
The man’s accent was soft, but still noticeably from South-East London. Alongside his sheer height, he would be even harder to miss in Birmingham now. Michael made no attempt to stop him as he turned away.
‘I think the police will want to talk to you. After all, two people did just jump from your building,’ Michael called after him.
The tall man stopped dead. Michael heard the man inhale deeply as he reached out to draw himself to a short piece of garden wall so he could sit. He turned his full, long body towards Michael. For a moment, the tall man looked at his questioner; he focused on his microphone, the channel’s emblem across it, then his almond-shaped eyes poised on Michael’s face. As the icy blue lights flashed across his thick hair and sliced shadows on his cheekbones, a grin, thin and wide, grew across his face.
‘Jesus. They called you to report on this?’ he asked in disbelief.
Michael coughed lightly, his heart beating faster. ‘Yeah well, I’ve already done all the stories about cats up trees tonight.’
The man laughed, high pitched and coarse. The sound made Michael wince. ‘I can’t talk to the police, and I don’t think you’d want me to talk to them either,’ the man said.
‘Now, why wouldn’t I want you to talk to the police?’
There was that thin, wide grin again. ‘Because I know who you are, mate, an’ I know what you did.’
The tall man’s breath returned and calmed. He continued, ‘But there’s a funny thing ‘ere, Michael is it?’ He paused. Michael nodded. ‘That’s not even the best bit, mate. When the police piece this together they’re going to clam up, they’ll have no choice. I won’t be allowed to speak, and some things will be lost forever.’
Michael scanned the area; the confused mob of people, the building and the tall man who knew his name,
‘Is this something to do with “The Room”?’
‘Michael?’ Zach was feeding back out of the crowd.
Michael turned to the tall man who was already on his feet. ‘If I let you go, then what? You seriously owe me.’
The tall man was already back-stepping, building up momentum, ‘I....I’ll find ya in the next couple of days. I know where you work.’
‘Wait!’ Michael, reaching into his pocket, strode up to him. He pulled out his smartphone and took a picture. ‘Insurance, find me - otherwise, I’ll print this on the front page-’
‘I don’t think you have any stories on the front-page mate, not anymore. I’ll be seeing you.’
Michael felt a hand on his shoulder that brought him back to reality. He had been staring into the dark where the tall man had drifted.
‘Harriet’s sending me deaf with this thing. You’re needed on the front line.’ Zach still had the camera mounted on his shoulder. ‘I can get us in close, but we have to move now.’
Michael nodded slowly, consciousness building up again. ‘Lead the way.’
The two men fought through the jostling limbs until they couldn’t fight anymore. This was their patch now, so they cleared a space. Michael was close enough to see the bodies in the shot. He also knew the police were frantically trying to get the crowd back and cover over the freshly decorated street, so they needed to move fast.
‘You ready?’ Michael asked.
Zach made a few checks on the camera and with Harriet. ‘Under a minute,’ he confirmed.
Michael strode over to Zach, arms wide to stop the journalists getting into their self-made filming spot and whispered into his ear, ‘Don’t film the bodies directly. If they see you filming the bodies we’ve lost.’ Michael returned to his mark. ‘How long?’
Zach seemed to respond to something in his ear. ‘50 seconds.’
‘Hold your position, Zach,’ Michael said as he turned towards the scene. The only people left to fight to get to the real crux were around twenty journalists, clamouring for the moment that would give them the edge in the great ratings war. Michael recognised Eric, an old runner he used to piggyback when they both worked on the Echo. He reached out through the living bodies to grab the back of Eric’s coat.
‘Michael.’ Eric turned and instinctively grabbed him, pulling him to the cordon tape. He was bigger than Michael and always wore the puffiest winter coat you ever saw, which made him look even more substantial, like a thick oak tree.
He didn’t have much time. ‘What you got?’ Michael winced at the sound of his voice; he wanted to give an air of knowing more than he did, which was absolutely nothing. He might well have said ‘what the hell is going on here?’
‘Well, I think we missed the money shot.’ Eric pulled on Michael’s lapel to direct his attention to Elena Edwards. She was crouched low, blonde ashy extensions slick with a red liquid, her overly tanned limbs quivering in the arms of an Ambulance staff member.
‘I’m not sure that’s the proper use of that phrase, Eric,’ Michael said, unable to contain his smile. ‘But I’m sorry I missed it.’
‘Mr. Powers, Michael!’ Zach shouted above the crowd, ‘It’s nearly time!’
‘Is that your boy?’ Eric asked.
Michael nodded. ‘Yeah, first gig.’
‘Well, hate to say it Powers, but I think you’ve shit it.’ Eric motioned out down the cordon. A group of Uniformed Police Officers had started to wave the cameras down. ‘It’s started.’
Michael watched as scuffles broke out across the police tape. Cameras were snatched out of hands and allowed to fall to the floor, adding to the already messy street with splintered black plastic and shards of glass.
Something was wrong.
Michael moved past Eric to get closer to the bodies. He caught Zach’s eye and quickly shook his head, motioning him to stay back. He couldn’t risk Jennifer’s wrath if the intern’s camera was smashed up in the mayhem.
Michael found himself opposite the bodies and at the front of the line; the cordon tape relaxed and hung in a limp ‘u’ as the cameramen who had stretched against it retired to their vans, half smashed cameras cradled in their arms. He looked at the scene, in all its horror in front of him. The man, the second faller, was shrouded in the bonnet of a car; he formed a mass of blood and pulp. The window had collapsed, half inside the vehicle and half inside the man. Blood had risen above the crumpled metal and fell like mascara tears down the front of the headlights. The man’s face was distorted, but despite this, there was a familiarity about him.
And then Michael turned to the first faller. The woman was bent unnaturally across the pavement, spilling out onto the road. It wasn’t pleasant to follow the contour of her once slender body. Her beach blonde hair was still changing crimson colour, and its disarray threatened to cover her face completely, except for her wide staring eyes. He had to crouch to see her face.
Michael froze. The night’s coldness pressed upon his chest. His breath became short and painful. He had a desperate desire to throw up. After what felt like hours of staring at the woman’s glassy eyes, he flung himself backwards.
For the second time that night, Zach’s hand on his shoulder shook him into life. Slowly and awkwardly, Zach got Michael to his feet. Michael still stood facing the bodies as though it were some grotesque installation in a museum. He knew Zach was talking to him, but he no longer heard the words.
You get one, and you have the other.
Michael recognised the woman straight away, and that meant he’d already pieced the distorted images of the dead man on the car together. He knew them both.
Because I know who you are, mate, and I know what you did.
Michael turned and grabbed Zach by the arm, flinging him around. ‘It’s over kid.’
‘Bu, Mr Powers-’
‘It’s a fucking lockdown. We have to go,’ he snapped.
Michael pushed through the crowd and ran back to the end of Share Street and the waiting van. He almost got to it before he had to duck down and, slamming his back against the brick wall of the nearest house, he threw up. When he was sure it was over, he allowed himself to fall on his backside and enjoy the cooling bricks on his back, cradling his head against the stabbing pain.
Zach carefully placed the camera down and found a spot next to him. A few moments passed before Michael broke the silence.
‘So, Zach. How was your first assignment?’
They both smiled.
Zach began nervously playing with his headset before reaching across to re-attach Michael’s earpiece. Michael turned to him briefly.
‘Oh, no. Why?’
‘Harriet wants you. Sorry, Mr Powers,’ Zach said.
‘Oh, hello, Harriet. How has your night been?’ Michael began.
‘Michael I’m not sure I know what’s going on-’
‘Me neither,’ he interrupted.
‘-but I’ve got Jennifer on the connect.’
‘Of course you have. A perfect end to a perfect night.’ There was an audible click. ‘Jennifer.’
Her voice came on the line. Sharp and fast. ‘Powers, it seems like you have a few answers about what’s going on down there, but for now I’m not interested. What does bother me is why I’ve been woken up in the middle of the night with a countrywide slap down on a double suicide.’
‘Sorry, Jennifer. Just to be clear - are you bothered about the slap down or being awoken in the middle of the night?’ Michael thought he heard Harriet snorting through the earpiece.
‘First thing in the morning. That means eight. You better have some answers, Powers, because as sure as shit I’ve got some questions.’ There was an audible click.
Michael pulled the earpiece free.
I’ve got a few questions of my own, he thought.
He sat for a while as Zach started to pack away the gear in the van. The two men didn’t speak at all on the ride back, but Michael’s head was filled with the image of the dead woman laid out across the gutter and the dead man who shouldn’t have been there at all.
(C) H. Adkins 2021