Setting Exercise 1

Teddy Bear

This place smells of emptiness. The slate floor is cold on my hands and knees as I crawl around, giving off a smell both musky and old. Small pieces of cement from between the cracks stick into the palms of my hands, and scrape my knees, yet I continue crawling. I’ve lost him. The floor is red, blue, green, and even yellow in some places in the light. My shadow casts a grey figure across the floor, leaving it once again, desolate. The emptiness is overwhelming. Each move I make echoes in the deep crevasses of the wooden ceiling, so high above my head it might as well be the sky. I look up at the brown panels, the combination of the fans and the intricate electric lights set shadows playing across the ceiling. They look like octopuses, tentacles twisting like tendrils of hair, whipping in the wind.
I continue to crawl beneath the pews, the old creaking wooden bottoms grazing and scratching my back like sandpaper as I try my best to stay away. There. Beneath the next pew, I spot him. I reach him and pick him up, embracing him close to my face. I take a deep breath and breathe in the fresh smell of laundry detergent. I close my eyes and relax.
Defeated faces, some sneering at the trick, some sad for having lost the game, gaze down on me as I walk by. They are all cloaked in loose-fitting robes, tied around their waists with plain ropes. Red, blue, yellow, and one white. Bare footed they walk through their panels. I think of how sad it must be to have only one emotion expressible throughout time. I forgive them, because I understand the reasoning behind their stained-glass masks, smiling, frowning, expressions of disappointment and degradation.