{"id":2466,"date":"2013-04-10T14:48:08","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T14:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2466"},"modified":"2013-04-29T15:27:24","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T15:27:24","slug":"the-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2466","title":{"rendered":"The Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"catamount<\/a><\/p>\n

There is only the room. It\u2019s the kind of room she likes. There\u2019s a sofa, a cat, a little table and two armchairs. Everything\u2019s perfectly clean. The wallpaper\u2019s fresh and new; the light from a little lamp smooths across the pristine wall paper. There\u2019s even tea. And there\u2019s a biscuit. On the table, set by the sofa, there\u2019s the little cup, and in it is the tea, pale and weak, just as she likes. The cat is curled on the sofa beside her, asleep. She strokes it. At the heel of one armchair there\u2019s just a small rough patch where the cat has been sharpening its claws, ready to scratch, ready to hunt and fight. But it can\u2019t, the cat, because there is only the room.<\/p>\n

But there is a door. There must be a door. She sits on the sofa, comfortable, knowing there\u2019s a door. The sofa\u2019s made of the same material as the armchairs. She\u2019d thought of everything. Everything she\u2019d thought of is in the room. She\u2019d thought of the cat.<\/p>\n

But the cat hasn\u2019t a name. It bothers her now, and now she can\u2019t think of any names, not even her own.<\/p>\n

She looks at the tea. It\u2019s still and doesn\u2019t move. Nothing happens to the tea in the cup, or to the cup on the table, or to the table or to the room.<\/p>\n

And then, sometimes, she isn\u2019t on the sofa; sometimes she\u2019s standing in the middle of the room. Except she shouldn\u2019t know, now that she\u2019s sitting, about the times when she\u2019s standing, shouldn\u2019t have remembered them, those other times. She shouldn\u2019t know about time and about time in the room.<\/p>\n

And sometimes the cat is awake too. Then the cat will curl from the sofa, stretch, and go to the armchair to sharpen its claws. It\u2019ll look at her, the cat, as it picks at the armchair with first one foot, and then the other, its claws making a sound like a radio without stations.<\/p>\n

She hadn\u2019t wanted any sounds. She\u2019d wanted the cat asleep. But when the cat looks at her, it\u2019s as if she isn\u2019t herself, as if she is the cat, sharpening her claws on that patch at the heel of the armchair, sharpening her nails, ready to scratch, to hunt and fight. And then, at times like this, when she just sits, and the cat is asleep, she can\u2019t help staring at that patch, and thinking it isn\u2019t perfect, that patch, it\u2019s far from perfect. Perhaps it\u2019s because of the biscuit.<\/p>\n

Because it isn\u2019t quite right, the biscuit. Perhaps that\u2019s why she stands sometimes, in the middle of the room, looking at the cat. Looking at the cat as if she is falling from a height toward it. As if she has, somehow, been screaming.<\/p>\n

She sits on the armchair now, looks at the biscuit. Unlike the tea, the room, the sofa and the cat, the biscuit\u2019s changing. It\u2019s horrible how it changes, the biscuit. It looks soft, a little old.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s always looked soft. But, although she doesn\u2019t think she\u2019d wanted memory in the room, now she looks at the biscuit and it looks different, a look of decay and age. And at this precise moment, she wants it. She wants the biscuit.<\/p>\n

She leans forward, reaches for it and lifts it from the table. It\u2019s light. She cups her other hand under it, in case of crumbs. She wants the crumbs too, wants the whole biscuit to be dirty in her mouth. Her mouth opens. Her mouth opens for the biscuit which is on her tongue now, on her tongue over and over, falling and falling to pieces in her mouth again and again in this room which never changes. Never changes. Never changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is only the room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[292],"tags":[8],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Room - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2466\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Room - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is only the room.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2466\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-04-10T14:48:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-04-29T15:27:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/catamount-s.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Alys Conran\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Alys Conran\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2466\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2466\",\"name\":\"The Room - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-04-10T14:48:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-04-29T15:27:24+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/173c038a8a70beed41bdb42d5f18d7d0\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2466#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2466\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2466#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Room\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/173c038a8a70beed41bdb42d5f18d7d0\",\"name\":\"Alys Conran\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"Alys Conran\"},\"description\":\"Alys Conran\u2019s poetry, short stories and translations have been placed in several competitions including the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize, published in a number of anthologies and magazines including Nu: Fiction and Stuff by Parthian Books and Cut on the Bias by Honno Press, and read at The Hay Festival and on Radio Four. 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