My name is Yusuf bin Siobhan M.D. This is my story.

On many an all-nighter trip to the shitter did I pass the Bill Bryson Library’s Plant Room, maybe you have too. It’s an unassuming door on the staircase between the East and West wings of Level 2 – one of those things you could easily miss, and you should be thankful if you ever did.

But I started to question why the university could possibly need a Plant Room, in a library no less, not the biology department or the botanical garden. What were they harvesting in there?

So, I got into this habit, a terrible habit, of giving the door a push each time I walked past it. It was a futile effort and it never worked, my hand met no answer, just the cool wood of the closed door. That was until one time, and one time was all it took.

I thought I’d just take a look – to satisfy my curiosity. Little did I know what eldritch horror lay behind that door.

The day was Tuesday, 6^th February 2007.

With a gentle push the door creaked open – looking back I now realise a sign of its disuse. I was immediately greeted with the smell, a mix of cut grass and stale weeds. Peering inside, I saw a vast tangle of wild greenery. This was no greenhouse – this was a jungle.

I stepped inside. The single greatest mistake of my life.

The door closed swiftly behind me and my bag (packed with only a Red Bull and one measly Milkybar), and as I cut through the bushes and brambles I soon lost sight of the exit. That word – exit, like salvation – would come to define the meaning of my life from that point forth, because there simply was none.

I soon learned to survive, sustaining myself on a wide variety of seeds and berries. I made my mistakes though – misidentifying flora almost cost me my life on more than one occasion. During those first few weeks, I foolishly mistook a deadly castor bean for a Quality Street toffee penny. As I lay on the forest floor, curled naked in the foetal position, I begged the gods of the Plant Room to let me die.

They did not listen.

After learning to live, I spent much of my time exploring. I figured early on that walking in one direction for long enough would surely deliver me to the perimeter of this hellscape – I was wrong. I even made several attempts to cartographize the room, yet nothing worked. The room’s size was beyond human comprehension – only a god could fathom such a place.

I sometimes saw faces in there too, other students I’m sure. I only ever caught glimpses, buried behind the endless foliage, but my eyes would meet their and for a moment – for just a second – I felt seen.

Speaking of sight – I was routinely plagued, blessed even, with visions. They dominated my mind. With no nighttime, just the constant unforgiving glare of the LED’s overhead, I found myself dreaming all hours as the days bled into one homogenous nightmare.

So, what woke me from this nightmare?

I found the door. It’s that simple, that unsatisfying, that unreasonable. The Plant Room gods never worked in accordance with reason.

I lost 17 years in that room, that jungle. Sometimes I wonder if I ever really left.

And now, like Odysseus, I return to a home that is not mine. My family is broken, my future covered in dust. In the years I spent in the Plant Room, the world kept spinning relentlessly, and I missed much – the 2008 financial crash, 14 years of Conservative rule, the coronavirus pandemic…

Before I entered the Plant Room I wondered what the anyone could be harvesting in there. Now I know – they are harvesting life not lived.

I would like to sincerely thank The Bubble Durham for offering me the opportunity to share my story and the years I lost.

I have repeatedly attempted to contact Durham University about the Plant Room, but they refuse to answer me. I wonder if they know about the abomination hiding behind that door, I wonder if they care.

I would like to close my story with a short quote:

“Do you think God stays in heaven because He too lives in fear of what he has created?”

Dr. Romero

Image: Tim Marshall on Unsplash