One

As far as he could tell there was no noticeable light source, the walls themselves seemed to radiate light, brilliant, flawless white light, throughout the entire room--perhaps room is not the right word; there were no shadows, no visible features, no way to determine the size or shape of the space he now inhabited. Space. That was the word. No way to determine the size of the space he was in. He had already tried shouting, but there was neither reply nor echo. He had run as fast as he could, but had no way of knowing if he was running in any specific direction. He took off his shoes and threw them as far as he could, running to their landing spot and throwing them again and again and again and again. He quickly lost track of how many times he had thrown his shoes or how many steps he had taken, but he kept going. That is how he found it. Right there at chest level in stark contrast to the perfectly white background. Three blood red letters: Dig.
He sat there for quite some time, staring at those red letters. Dig? Dig what? Dig where? What the hell does this mean? He looked all around him but he could see nothing else, only white. He sat down and put his head in his hands, then he looked back at the letters. If I keep one hand on the wall those are written on and keep walking I’ll eventually come back to this spot. Then I will know how big this place is. So what? What if I take my hand off and can’t find my way back? He stood up and noticed for the first time the clothes he was wearing; white pants and a white shirt, very similar to the scrubs a doctor or surgeon would wear. The shirt had a pocket over the left breast that contained a pencil sized white metal rod. He looked over at the pair of white shoes he had thrown. Why hadn’t he noticed them when he took them off? Why hadn’t any of this registered earlier? In fact the only thing that appeared strange to him was that none of this seemed strange in any way, only frustrating and confusing. He knew this place wasn’t where he was supposed to be, yet he couldn’t remember how long he had been here or what happened before he got here. None of this makes sense, but why don’t I care?
He walked over to the letters and reached his left hand to touch them. The wall felt soft and ever-so-slightly grainy. He ran his hand across the letters and was surprised when the red coloring smeared into the white where his fingers had touched. He looked at his hand and found it covered in a fine red powder. He quickly wiped his hand on his pants leg, leaving a streak of red powder against the white fabric. Then he put his fingers to his nose and took a cautious sniff--there was no smell. Next he licked his index finger, hoping that the powder was not harmful, and noticed a bland, dry taste. When he failed to drop to the floor vomiting his liver out or bleeding through his eyes he declared the powder ‘not poison.’
Looking back at the letters he placed his finger against the dot of the i and pushed firmly. He could feel the material, whatever it was, give a bit and when he removed his finger he saw a small depression in the surface of the wall. He put his finger over the depression and pushed harder, but he could not compress the material so easily this time. He spread his hand out and leaned against the i. The wall gave only the slightest bit so he pushed harder. Eventually he found himself leaning into the wall with both hands, pushing with all his might. Still nothing. He placed his back against the wall and started pushing again. He could feel the wall give a bit more. After throwing his entire weight against the wall for some time, he slid his back down the wall and sat on the ground thoroughly frustrated. An idea flashed in his mind and he turned around and scratched the wall with his fingernail. The powder came off easily so he stood up and began scratching the letters with both hands. His fingers began carving lines in the wall, deeper and deeper. The powder got under his fingernails and cracked the skin, causing his fingers to bleed. But he kept going. When he was up to his first knuckle he stopped scratching and pinched the space between two grooves. He twisted his wrist and with a silent snap a small flake broke off the wall. Delighted, he began to break off as many pieces of the wall as he could. This worked for a while until he was left with a shallow hole devoid of any edges or protrusions to snap off. I need something hard to chisel through this stuff. The rod! He took the rod out of his shirt pocket and jammed it into the wall. Satisfaction. He pushed the end of the rod parallel to the wall, breaking a large piece off. And so he began to dig, stabbing the wall, angular chunks of the material crumbling off into a pile of rubble at his feet.
How long had he been digging? Hours, days, a week? I don’t know. The pile of rubble was now a mound of material--chalk, he decided it was--several feet in diameter and reaching to his knees. When he had dug as far into the wall as he could at the height of the letters he began to work his way down towards the floor. As he sat propped up against the mound of debris he surveyed his handywork: there was now a hole several feet taller than it was wide, reaching from the base of the wall to the bottom of his chin, and a few feet deep. He was quite tired and very thirsty. A faint cloud of chalk dust lingered around the hole and he was sure his lungs were full of the stuff. His lips were dry and cracked and his eyes were scratchy and red. His hands had become so dry that the tips of his fingers had split open, the wounds filling with chalk, stopping the bleeding but worsening the cracks. When he reached the ground he discovered that it was made of a different material that his rod was not able to break. It was at this point he decided to rest.
He hadn’t been sitting long before he felt compelled to start digging again. I had better get back to work. He wondered why he had thought of it as work and why he felt forced to continue. I have nothing else to do, might as well keep digging. And so he kept digging. When the hole was now a tunnel some three and a half feet deep he stopped. He crawled out of the tunnel and lay on his back. His body was filled with fatigue, his eyelids became stone. He could keep them open no longer and his world was immediately engulfed in blackness. It was as if he was blinked out of existence.