“Welcome, contestants, to the Room Of Silence. Your challenge will begin in a few minutes. I shall now explain the rule. Yes, there’s only one rule. The rule is: no talking. Any kind of vocal activity is forbidden. How will we know? We have attached devices to each of you, to detect any kind of voice. Whispering is also forbidden. If this rule is broken, you are disqualified. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, whoever remains at the end without speaking will win $900,000. Good luck.”

That was the last voice I ever heard for a long time. From then on, it was pure silence. Me and my opponent, Joshua, were silent for 9 days. Here we were on the tenth day, still silent. We didn’t know what would happen if we had spoken one thing.

After the tenth day, the only other sound that was in the room, the buzzing of the air conditioner, shut off. This triggered a series of events caused by insanity from total silence. It was so silent that you could hear a car driving from a mile away.

I started to draw weird paintings, scribbles, on the walls with a piece of charcoal I found among the empty floor. I couldn’t even make out what they were, just black lines with no real purpose. Non-abstract, insane art. Joshua started pacing the room, getting more furious as the days past.

4 days passed, we were mentally unstable, and began getting desperate. Joshua put me into a chokehold and I nearly gagged, but I fought him off. He fired punches but all of them hit the wall, I caught one of the punches and threw Joshua at the wall, he made a gag noise. And there was an alarm that went off on Joshua’s wrist. There was rapid beeping, and Joshua began to hold his neck, as if he was being strangled. His face became blue, he went unconscious. Then, his body disintegrated into sand on the floor. The sand was red, as if it was the blood of Joshua spilling out.

The doors opened, the watcher arrived.

“Congratulations, Roger. You’ve successfully survived all of the games. You are the last player standing. As promised, inside this suitcase is $900,000 in cold, hard cash. The exit is over there, and by the way, you can speak. Just be aware, I’ll see you again.”