A leaky faucet was the only sound in the room. I crawled towards the wall with what little resolve I had left in me and wrapped my mouth around the cool drip. I drank for what felt like hours and finally collapsed. Days may have passed before I finally woke. Did time even exist in this terror? The room felt safe, but I knew better than to place hope in that illusion.
I sat up feeling ready to figure out the nightmare my life had become and began to scount my surroundings for an escape. Unlike the intensity of the last room, these quarters had a much more stoic and cathartic feel. All of the brick was white, or had been at some point as much of the paint was peeling from the stifiling heat. Several overturned plastic chairs accounted for the only furniture and with the exception to the steel basin protuding from the wall to my left, the room was a perfect square. A dingy lightbulb swung on a single cord hanging from the ceiling. Dirt caked the floor and there was a smell that could only be described as death. I had never actually been in the prescence of a dead body, but an innate human instinct seems to be able to alert your senses and tell you things you otherwise would never know, or comprehend.
A reflection bouncing off of a puddle of water in the center if the room, created by a leaky ceiling and the pouring rain outside, alerted me and directed my focus towards a window I had not yet noticed. It was odd because although the sun was echoing off of the ground, it appeared to be dark outside. Soon, I would give up trying to understand anything in this deadful house. Time wasted on figuring out the twisted world I was trapped in would only slow down my pursuit of the Temptress.
You have lead me here to this lair of iniquity and yet you are still all my mind can focus on. Do you need any help? Have you lured me here by way of some twisted cry for help? I will not let you press on alone. You need me, I can feel it. Perhaps even more than I have come to need you.
I lifted my exhaused limbs from the ground, staggered over to the window, and peered out into the blackness. Confusion made it hard to see as I struggled to understand why the hell I was here to begin with. Self pity would do nothing right now.
Concentrate, damn it.
I peered out the window and saw her instantly. Standing at the edge of a cliff on the backdrop of a breathtaking mountain which rose to the heavens, she again gestured for me to follow. The thing that stunned me the most was how beautiful her outfit had become. The tattered material at her sids that had once revealed soft skin were now replaced by the seams of a steady hand. Her once battered paws exposed by the holes of worn out shoes had become elegant feet elevated on perches of divinity. The straps holding the gown to her skin had gently fallen over the crest of her shoulders revealing a sexiness that imprisoned my eyes. Still, her face was covered by that damned white veil.
I should turn and leave, go back the way I came. I can handle the smell of shit once more, the foul odor of tortured souls. I'm not even sure what riddle I am looking to solve. What I do know is I will see her eyes. I will touch her skin. Her kiss will soon punish me, ruin me: A ghost of such elegance.
