The Man Who Misplaced His Freedom
Gabriel Jeroschewitz, November 29th 2025, dedicated to anyone who’s had to isolate themselves from something they couldn’t break free of.
I first met Oswald on a Tuesday—the sort of Tuesday that pretends to be a Monday, complete with the stale aftertaste of a weekend no one enjoyed. He was sitting in the Isolation Room, though “room” was generous. You could call it a cell, a cube, a padded rectangle, or perhaps a laboratory for testing how long a human can survive without hearing their own footsteps.
He had, as he put it, “all the freedom in the world.” It puzzled me, given that his world consisted of four walls sweating faint mildew and a door that had more locks than hinges. But Oswald explained in a tone so flat it might have been ironed:
“Freedom isn’t about going anywhere. Freedom’s about knowing you could go anywhere. Which I can’t, of course. But I could, if things were different, which they aren’t.”
It was his brand of philosophy—an elaborate pretzel of logic that left you chewing but never swallowing. He said this with the gravitas of a judge handing down a sentence to himself.
The Isolation Room was run by the Bureau of Tranquillity, an institution committed to making sure no one’s thoughts got too loud. They operated on the principle that minds should hum softly, like refrigerators. If you found yourself thinking about something uncomfortable—death, injustice, the neighbour’s strange laugh—you were escorted here to “cool off.” Oswald had been cooling off for fifteen years, though no one seemed to remember why.
He told me once it might have been for “gnostic turpitude,” a phrase so vague it felt like a trap set by a bored poet. The Bureau disliked anything they couldn’t explain with a cheerful slogan, and Oswald’s thoughts, whatever they were, did not stick to slogans.
“When people can’t summarize you,” he said, “they lock you away so they don’t have to keep trying.”
I visited because I was doing an observational report—at least that’s what I told the Bureau. In truth, I was fascinated by the way time behaved in that room. It didn’t pass. It hung. Every moment sat in the stale air like dust motes waiting for someone to breathe too hard.
Oswald occupied himself by arranging imaginary furniture. He had a complete set of chairs you couldn’t sit in and a grandfather clock that never ticked. He spent hours “dusting” them, smiling like a man who had just wiped down the Mona Lisa.
“Why pretend?” I asked.
“That’s the wrong question,” he said. “Why stop pretending? Out there—” he gestured vaguely toward the locked door “—everyone pretends they’re free while obeying rules they don’t remember agreeing to. In here, I pretend I’m imprisoned while having the freedom to imagine anything. It’s the same trick, just better lighting.”
His humour was dry enough to powder the air. He’d make jokes about his own confinement—“At least I save on rent”—and about the Bureau’s efficiency—“They’re very quick at making sure nothing happens.” But beneath the wit was a hollow that rang if you knocked on it.
One morning, I asked him if he missed the outside.
“Miss it? Oh no. Outside was exhausting. Everyone was so busy proving they were alive by running out of breath. Inside, I can sit without explaining why.”
But then, as if he’d caught himself revealing too much, he glanced at the far corner of the room. He had a habit of looking there, toward nothing, as though it were a window only he could see.
I began to suspect Oswald had built something inside his head—something larger than the room, larger than the Bureau, perhaps even larger than his own life. He once mentioned “the garden,” a place where the air smelled of cut grass and distant rain, where the trees leaned inward to whisper secrets only the roots understood.
“I go there when the Blues get too loud,” he said. “You know the Blues, don’t you?”
I did. The Blues he spoke of weren’t musical or emotional—they were existential static, the dull ache of knowing you have everything and it amounts to nothing. Freedom was just another word. With nothing left to lose, you were supposed to sing about it, but for Oswald, that only made the silence sharper.
The Bureau staged “release rehearsals” for long-term occupants. They’d unlock the door, invite the prisoner to walk out, clap politely, then guide them back in. “We want the moment to feel perfect when it’s real,” they explained. I attended one for Oswald. He stepped out into the corridor, glanced at the identical beige walls, and walked back inside before they even closed the door.
“You didn’t want to stay out?” I asked later.
“I was already gone,” he said. “The corridor’s smaller than my garden.”
The garden became a fixation for me. I tried to imagine it: was it lush and wild, or symmetrical and orderly? Did it have actual soil, or did the ground feel like clouds underfoot? Oswald never described it fully. “If I give you the shape,” he said, “you’ll mistake it for the thing itself.”
He resisted definitions the way some resist chains—because definitions are just chains tied to words. That resistance was what kept him here. The Bureau didn’t mind imagination, but they hated opacity. They wanted thoughts they could display in glass cases, each tagged with a neat description. Oswald refused.
Months passed in the elastic haze of the Isolation Room. I lost track of the days, learned to measure time by the rhythm of Oswald’s dusting. Sometimes he stopped mid-gesture, closed his eyes, and smiled faintly. Those moments felt electric, as if something in the room shifted—the tilt you feel before an earthquake. He never explained them, but I knew enough to suspect he was visiting the garden.
And then, one day, the rehearsals stopped. The Bureau announced that Oswald’s “real” release would take place the following Friday. They prepared it like a grand show—invite lists, speeches, and champagne for the staff. They polished the locks until they gleamed.
On Friday, the Bureau officers stood in formation. The director delivered a monologue about the glory of freedom, the triumph of rehabilitation, and the dignity of returning to society. Oswald listened politely, his hands folded. When the locks clicked open, he stepped forward… and kept walking.
Not out the door—through it.
I don’t mean through it ordinarily. I mean through it, as though the wood and metal were only a painted backdrop. He dissolved into light, like sunlight dissolving mist. The room brightened for a moment, then dimmed again. The officers looked startled, but quickly composed themselves; no one wanted to admit they’d just witnessed something inexplicable. They marked him “Released” in their ledger.
I stood alone in the room after they left. It was unchanged—same walls, same faint mildew—but it felt emptier now, as if its outline had been erased. I kept thinking about what he’d said: “Freedom isn’t about going anywhere. Freedom’s about knowing you could.”
In some part of me, I knew he hadn’t gone anywhere except deeper into that garden, beyond the reach of Bureau slogans and locked doors. He had stepped entirely outside the stage the Bureau built.
Sometimes, late at night, I imagine him there. The trees bending inward, the air heavy with rain. No one clapping, no one watching, no rehearsals. Just the quiet, unseen victory of someone who refused to yield.
And I wonder—now that I have the shape—if I’ve mistaken it for the thing itself.
