Dreams

I used to be in a place that got smaller and smaller until it was only a collection of just these few rooms: just a narrow hallway of a space.

I found a door, and then a stairway out of these rooms, where I found this vast house untended, missing its occupants, or whose occupants hide from me. I am stuck in this house feeling a tension between the vastness of this place to explore and the claustrophobia of not being able to escape.

Parts of it are in ruin. I can feel the neglect. I am compelled to explore but at the same time trapped by it.

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All purpose has been removed; running and searching are all the same now. Why am I here; why am I the only one here? I find essences of others but never them. Who has been here before me? Is it only me? Has it only ever been me?

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It does get lonely in here. I talk to myself and jump at my shadows. But I am beginning to wonder whether they actually are my own shadows. I remember I had one once. She chased me until she became a part of me, and I miss her. She was terrifying, but I knew her. She followed me into now familiar rooms, but she and I are the same, and I no longer fear her. I also no longer have a companion, even one who hunts me.

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