Twisted Dreams

Stairs

As I walk up the winding stairs, I run a hand on the rough concrete wall, skimming over the wooden-framed paintings whose eyes seem to follow me. It’s dark in the stairwell. The only light seems to come always from around the corner, never increasing nor decreasing in intensity, or changing in color, and never, ever, growing closer. The source is never to be caught, always just around the bend. The stairs are stone, but unstable, wobbling in their places, crumbling at the corners, and worn from hundreds of footsteps in an otherwise untouched castle.

There is no sound - besides my footsteps and labored breathing - at first. But as I climb this endless tower, a noise from behind me slowly emerges. The lowness of it makes my ribcage rumble. The walls vibrate where I touch them, causing my vision to appear just slightly blurry. My head begins to hurt. A cry like a bottomless pit, with no water that splashes when a pebble is tossed in, only echoes as it bounces along the walls. Waves of these echoes pound against my back, but something keeps me from looking over my shoulder.

Every time I round a bend, something shifts down the stairs at the corner of my eye, but my gaze remains transfixed on the light ahead. The glow has changed, now, but only just slightly - no longer stable, it now flickers, but not like a licking flame. It shifts as if something is passing in front of it, whispers of shadows illuminated ahead. No sounds except the growing vacuum behind me, reaching for my sore, trembling legs. I push ahead. My fingers sting from being rubbed raw on the rough, curving walls, and it is only when I see the trail of blood from my hands on the walls that I realize the paintings have vanished. Only nails in the walls remain.

My breaths come out in pants, the shadows darkening and dancing in my eyes. Something new appears on the wall ahead of me, and as I gaze upon it, I realize it is not new at all. Specks of blood, slowly condensing into a few consistent, parallel lines. My hand drags alongside it, thickening the streaks. My mind cannot comprehend the implications until moments later, as the sound reaches its peak, a great howl that sucks me in and backwards. As I fall, a darkness closes in around me, and the flickering light shrinks until it is nothing but a dot on my outstretched and bloodied palm.

Then, nothing.