The Room

Short Story – Speculative Thriller / Psychological Sci-Fi

The first thing Sam Whitaker noticed was the cold. It wasn’t just a temperature, it was a sensation that lived beneath the skin, sterile and empty, a void where warmth should have been. It pressed into him, settling deep into his bones, whispering of something unfinished. Something wrong. His body was slow to respond, heavy with the stiffness of sleep or something deeper. He lay on his back, the surface beneath him unnervingly smooth, firm without comfort. He knew this feeling.

A hospital bed.

His eyes opened to a ceiling so white it barely seemed real. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, their glow flat, artificial, and unwavering. The air smelled of antiseptic, sharp and clinical, with no hint of humanity. Sam swallowed, his throat dry, the act strangely foreign, like a machine rebooting after a long shutdown.

His fingers twitched, then curled into a fist. Good. He could move. He flexed his arms, then his legs, testing for restraints, for damage, for anything that might tell him why he was there.

Nothing.

His heart drummed a slow, uncertain rhythm. Slowly, he turned his head and locked eyes with himself. A second bed. A second man. Same hospital gown. Same posture. Same face. His stomach dropped. The other man—his doppelgänger—stared back at him, blinking slowly, assessing. Sam swallowed. “Who the hell are you?”

“Funny,” the other man said. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

A thick, uncomfortable silence settled between them. The room was small, white walls, tiled floor. No windows. Only a single door with a card reader. Above it, a tiny red light blinked from a security camera.

Sam inhaled sharply, and forced himself to sit up. A clipboard rested on a metal tray between them. He grabbed it with a shaking hand.

Patient: Sam Whitaker
Diagnosis: End-stage heart failure
Blood Type: RH-null
Treatment Plan: Experimental cloning and organ harvesting

Sam’s breath hitched. His grip on the clipboard tightened. The other Sam—Sam 2, because what else could he call him?—leaned forward. “I don’t like the phrase ‘organ harvesting.’”

“They didn’t mark which one of us is which,” Sam 1 muttered, flipping the pages.

Sam 2 scowled. “Convenient.”

They both knew what this meant. One of them was the real Sam Whitaker. One of them was an experiment. And one of them was going to die. The silence grew heavier.

Sam 1 swallowed. His throat felt tight, like his own body was trying to suffocate him. “The odds of finding a compatible donor…” He exhaled sharply. “One in 320 billion.”

Sam 2 huffed a dry laugh, though there was no humor in it. “Right. I am more likely to trip over a rock, fall into a volcano, survive the lava because I’m…”

Together, without thinking: “…wearing flame-retardant socks, get shot out by the eruption into orbit, and become the first human moon of Earth…”

The words came too easily. Too naturally. Sam 1 barely heard himself say it, his voice quieter now. “…than find a donor before I die.”

Sam 2’s expression didn’t change. Didn’t soften. He held Sam 1’s gaze, steady and unblinking. “Before I die.”

The silence stretched. A thick, suffocating thing.

Sam 1’s fingers twitched against his leg. His skin felt clammy. If one of them was a clone, shouldn’t they feel different? Shouldn’t one of them be missing something – memories, emotions, something? But as they spoke, as they filled in each other’s sentences without thinking, it was clear: The clone was perfect. Too perfect. Both of them were Sam Whitaker. And neither of them was willing to be the one left behind on the operating table.

Sam 2 broke first. He shoved off the bed, pacing. “Ok, we test it.”

Sam 1 frowned. “Test what?”

“Our memories.”

Sam 2 ran a hand through his hair—their hand. “If one of us is a clone, there’s gotta be a gap. A missing detail. Something wrong.”

Sam 1 exhaled. “Alright. What do you remember?”

Sam 2 closed his eyes. “Born in Fort Worth. Rusty, the dog. Hit by a car when we were six. Storm drain swallowed our favorite Hot Wheels in third grade.”

Sam 1 felt a lump rise in his throat. “I remember all of that.”

Sam 2 kept going. “Senior prom. Lena Alvarez in a blue dress. ‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol.”

Sam 1 scowled. “She dumped us for that douchebag, Dylan.”

Sam 2 opened his eyes. “That bastard.”

A small, bitter laugh escaped Sam 1, but the amusement died fast. Everything matched. No gaps. No missing details. Favorite movies. High school teachers. The exact weight of their father’s old leather armchair when they sank into it as kids. The summer their mother got sick, how they sat at her bedside, holding her paper-dry hand, praying for more time. The guilt of not calling her enough before she died. Everything matched.

Sam 1’s throat went dry again. “What if we both are real?”

Sam 2 looked at him. Neither of them had an answer.

Time passed. Minutes? Hours? The red light of the camera continued its steady blink—the only real measurement of time. Finally, Sam 2 exhaled sharply. “What if we don’t choose?”

Sam 1 looked up. “What do you mean?”

The room tilted. Sam 1’s heart hammered against his ribs, suddenly fragile. He had a heart condition. That was true. He’d known for years. But terminal? Had it gotten that bad? His gaze flicked upward. Sam 2 was scanning the next pages of the clipboard, fingers trembling. Then he paled.

“What?” Sam 1 demanded.

Sam 2 didn’t answer. He just turned the file toward him.

Subject 02
Identity: Sam Whitaker
Genetic Match: 100%
Function: Organ Donor

His hands clenched around the page. It felt heavier now. They stared at each other.

Sam Whitaker.
Sam Whitaker.

One of them had been made. For the other. A slow, suffocating realization settled between them.

Sam 2’s jaw set. “What if we don’t let them take a heart from either of us?”

Sam 1’s stomach twisted. “I don’t think they gave us that option.”

“Then we make it an option.”

Sam Whitaker had always assumed survival was instinctual; that when the time came, his body would lurch into motion, fists raised, muscles bracing for the fight. But now, staring at this own reflection in another man’s eyes, the weight of the clipboard between them like a loaded gun, he understood the real terror: this wasn’t just about who would walk away. It was about who deserved to. The file sat between them, heavy with the weight of an unspoken truth. The heartbeat of the room was the steady, rhythmic blink of the red camera light, a quiet metronome to the growing dread. Sam 1—one of the Sams, the real one, maybe—looked away from the clipboard as if it was too bright to behold.

Sam 2 turned toward the camera, an idea forming in his eyes. “We get out of here.”

Sam 1 hesitated. “How?”

Sam 2 grabbed the IV stand and gripped it like a bat. “We start by taking out that camera.”

Sam 1’s pulse pounded. “If we do that, they’ll know we’re resisting.”

Sam 2’s screwed up his face. “Who is ‘they?’”

Sam 1 pointed at the blinking camera. “They. Them. Big Brother’s twisted OnlyFans stream! Whoever is on the other side of that!” He aimed his gaze directly into the lens and shot both barrels of his frustration, “I hope they’re enjoying the show!”

Sam 2 scoffed. “You think they don’t already know?”

Sam 1 threw his arms up in defeat. “I don’t know.” He looked at the clipboard, the bed, the locked door. One of them was supposed to die here. He stood. “Okay,” he said.

Sam 2 grinned. “Now you’re thinking like me.”

With a sharp swing, the camera shattered. The red light blinked out.

Silence.

Then the lock on the door clicked. The door swung open. Two figures entered, clad in surgical masks and gloves. Calm, professional. Unbothered.

“Mr. Whitaker,” one said, adjusting a latex glove. “Please get back in bed.”

Neither Sam moved.

The second figure stepped forward. “It’s time for the procedure.”

Sam 2 gripped the IV stand tighter. “Which one of us is the clone?”

The masked man tilted his head, eyes flicking toward the broken camera. “That information is irrelevant.”

A chill crawled up Sam 1’s spine.

“No,” he said, voice shaking. “No, it’s pretty damn relevant.”

The second figure sighed, pulling a syringe from her coat pocket. “If you resist, we will sedate you.”

Sam 2 didn’t hesitate. The impact from the IV stand sent the man stumbling. A tray clattered to the floor, syringes and vials scattering across the tiles.

Sam 1 barely had time to process before Sam 2 grabbed his wrist.

“RUN.”

---

Author’s Note

I wrote this during a time when everything felt a little off, like I had stepped into someone else’s life by accident… after stepping on a Lego. So I split that feeling into two versions of the same man. The Sams let me play with the tension between who we were, who we became, and who we still think we are. It’s a strange thing to face yourself head-on, especially when both sides think they’re the real one.

Photo: DC Studio