Enter the room of my mind and the first thing you are assaulted with is darkness. It spreads across the cold floor to tickle the corners of the nonexistent structure that is my thoughts, and then creeps up the brick walls until it comes in sharp contact with the ceiling. The chrome ceiling fan spins on the slowest speed, pushing at the shadows until all that's left is flickering fingers across the depth of the room. In each corner of this forbidden place are these empty golden cases that once held the musical instruments of my life, whatever they may be.
The violin case rests on top of two square boxes, the neck propped up against the wall and fading off into the black coloring. The gold glints wildly on and off like a broken bulb, catching my attention every now and then just to throw me off when it stops moving. This was the first thing I noticed after I had stopped playing violin and went back into this world. This was the first thing that screamed and cried until I looked over at it and felt my heart break once again.
The other cases are mysteries to me, and have been for quite some time. Whenever I look over at them, it seems like I'll be able to make out the shapes when they fade in and out, but I'm never able to. My eyes focus on it for no more than a second and the gold turns into black and all I can see is the extended corners again. The black stretches out like space, and to be quite honest, yearns to mess with my perception until I feel if I take one step, I'll fall and that'll be the end of me.
This is what I saw for so long, this never-changing photocopy of my actual life. A distorted vision of what I see every single day and am never able to touch again for fear of losing whatever it was I had found. I guess you can imagine my surprise when I closed my eyes in my bedroom, entered through the door at my back, and saw someone standing in one of the corners, tapping his foot and running his finger lightly across the black dresser that stood there. The case that used to be there was gone, and I felt slightly angry with this intruder for taking it away from me.
For the first time, I moved forward and stepped across the sheet of space just to reach him and tell him how upset he had unknowingly made me. As I neared him, I started to recognize him and that must have been some sort of cue because he melted away into the wall with a thoughtful look in his glowing eyes.
Color.
Every time after that, he broke into my secret world and moved things around. The violin case that I would always see from the corner of my eyes off to the right would end up directly in front of me on the floor. The other cases moved around until they all finally disappeared from my mind one by one, leaving me with two things.
Him, and my violin case.
That's when I noticed that I was no longer angry with him for messing with my life, and I was no longer upset when he appeared and acted as company in the darkness. I couldn't see him, but I sometimes caught glimpses of his eyes in a flash of light that I had never experienced before. He stood and waited until I slowly inched away and out the only door in the room, my eyes sliding open and resting on the bright rooms of my real life room, seeing the golden sunshine filtering in through the windows and caressing the foot of my bed.
I realized it was all a dream, and I started to ache for sleep.
The day would go by too slowly, but when nighttime came, I would eagerly rush upstairs and to my bedroom. Locking the doors for reasons unknown to me, I would climb into bed and force myself to sleep. The darkness started out as just that, and then it eventually developed into the hallway that led to the room that led to him.
He stopped moving around the room once I reached it, and he would stand directly in front of me for as long as I stood there. We shared our company in that endless room that was all too small for my liking, and I was no longer afraid of being in the darkness alone anymore. I wasn't afraid because I wasn't alone anymore to begin with, and even though I couldn't see him half the time, I knew he was there like I know when I'm tired or thirsty. It was a physical sensation that I got in the pit of my stomach whenever I opened the door and stepped into that strange land of dreams. It settled there as I looked around the room and imagined where he might be standing this time, and it started to ease as I bravely strolled around the room with my arms extended in search of him.
Once, I even heard him laugh.
We started to play small games with each other, almost like we were children running through the backyard searching for places to hide so the other had to put their skills to work and search. He danced off in front of the golden case and took it away with him so that it faded into darkness along with him, and then he would slip it somewhere else and see how long it took me to find its new location.
The dark dressers and boxes were moved all across the middle of the room so that when I walked, I sometimes bumped into them and found myself floating in mid-air when I fell. He would turn the chrome fan on and off and I'm sure he watched my reactions as I stared at the gleaming blades. The door would open and close in invitation, but I didn't want to leave the room just to wake up. I didn't want to leave the darkness, and I certainly didn't want to leave him all alone.
When I was awake, I took medicine just so I could fall asleep again and be in the same room as him. Whenever I started to do this, I would walk down the hall and try to push the door in, but it's almost like he was pushing right back and preventing me from getting inside.
I stopped.
He let me back in.
I was happy when I was with him. I was happy in the darkness, and the moment I accepted this when I was truly awake, things started to change again. The room started to empty out the little objects it already had in it, and he would fade in and out of the room doing something I'm not quite sure of. Sometimes I cried when he wouldn't show up at all, and then I would feel good again when that weird feeling settled in my stomach again, announcing his arrival.
He was waiting for something to happen, and I just grew more and more confused as I tried to figure out what it was he wanted to happen to me. He started to laugh a little more often, and I even heard him cry once when I started crying for reasons I can't explain in words. When I was awake, I was unhappy because I didn't have anyone like him who could make me happy and forget everything bad that had happened.
He was waiting for something to happen, and I found myself waiting with him.
I grew anxious when I would feel him in the room, and I found myself shaking with anticipation for what might happen. It must have been quite something just for him to be so concerned with it. I spoke to him through the darkness, using soft words that I hoped he would respond to, but he didn't at that time.
We played our games a couple of times, but not as much as before because the cubes and dressers were gone. Once I decided to play our older game and I walked all around the room with my arms stretched in both directions just to find him. I was a little frightened when my hand met something solid, but that fear didn't last long as I was lifted into the air and my body flung itself out the door, causing me to jerk awake with sweat running down my face.
Happiness turned into fear as I was propelled into this world again and again each night, and I instantly began searching for him in frantic desperation. The second I touched his body, I was out the door and awake, yet the moment I was sleeping, I repeated it again. That instant rejection was stopped abruptly as my finger ghosted across him one night and I stayed right where I was. I took a step towards him and pressed into the bare flesh of his arm with sick curiosity. He moved towards me, and I suddenly felt warm arms wrap themselves around my body and pull me into a gentle embrace.
It took me just a second to realize that he was moving, and light flooded into the room as he opened the door and gave me a little push through it. I spun around in hopes of catching a glimpse of his face, but the door was already closed and I turned back and staggered down the hall towards life.
When awake, I was sick and tired most of the time. Exhaustion didn't seem to want to leave me alone, and when I fell down into my bed one night, I tried to keep my eyes open because I was afraid to sleep. It was my reluctance to sleep that finally sent me spiraling down into the hallway where I instantly felt like something was wrong. I wanted to stay in the hallway until I was allowed to wake up again, but my feet moved by themselves and I found myself in the room too soon for comfort.
He wasn't there.
Everything was completely still as I searched for any signs that he had been there, but all I saw was the black, unending corners of the place I knew all too well. My fear washed away quickly as I took a couple steps towards what I assumed was the middle of the room, and I stayed there for what seemed like hours until I heard a soft voice whisper against my skin.
It was him, but he wasn't there.
Find me.
My mind screamed at me to hurry and I threw myself towards one section of the room with my arms out in front of me, waving through the air in search of him. He had never talked to me before, and I guess I was scared that he needed to be found or something bad would happen to me. I grew desperate as I tore through the darkness without any feeling that he was even there. Hot tears began to curve down my cheeks as I grew tired and fell to the black floor. My eyes drifted up towards the chrome fan, and my chest started to burn as I watched the blades spin restlessly.
Find me.
I wanted to scream out to him, to tell him I couldn't find him, but I didn't have the nerve to tell him that he would just have to stay missing. I forced myself to my feet and nearly dropped back down as a surge of pain hit my body like a wave, leaving me gasping and crying in the middle of darkness.
I needed out.
The door seemed too far away as I started to run towards it, and I almost stopped and allowed myself to stay on the dark floor forever, alone and scared. Something pushed me to go further and I nearly cried out with happiness as my fingers curved around the cold metal of the knob and started to twist. At first the door wouldn't budge, but I put everything I had into it until it finally slipped open and allowed white light to spray into my room.
It was so damn bright I had to turn away to look back into the darkness of the room, but I froze as I noticed the black starting to leak off the walls towards the floor, revealing shards of color underneath. Spinning back, I stumbled through the door and blinked at the white room that was in front of me. The door swayed back and forth in a silent plea, and then finally slid shut as I ignored it for one second too long.
Without even needing to check it, I knew the door was locked.
The white walls colored slightly to a beautiful beige, and three windows appeared on separate walls. In the split second it took for me to blink in shock, curtains had appeared on all the windows, and my three dark dressers were back and placed around the room. The white ceiling fan forced air down towards me, and I laughed when I felt my hair flicking back and forth from the current. Two sofas appeared on either side of a coffee table, and the white floor flooded away to reveal gorgeous hardwood.
Through the windows, I could see beautiful green grass and a patch of gorgeous flowers sprouting up in a small garden. There was a bird in the tree outside another one of the windows, and a squirrel raced across the lawn to settle by the mailbox. I was studying the other houses when the feeling formed again, and I knew he was there.
I turned around and he was sitting on one of the sofas, reading a newspaper and peeking at me over the top page. Memories flooded into my mind and I knew him like I knew him so many years earlier before he had left me all alone. His hands slowly began folding the paper as he allowed me to adjust to the shock of the realization, and then the next thing I knew, he was up and had me in his arms.
He held me like he never wanted to let me go.
His voice tickled across my neck as he whispered once more.
"Quatre."
And I melted into his arms like I had before he had died. I wrapped my arms around his body and inhaled the scent that was uniquely him, pressing myself against him and letting out a mixture of cries and laughs. His hands threaded themselves into my hair and he pulled back just enough for him to lean down and kiss me, his gorgeous green eyes flashing with amusement as I met him halfway by standing on my tip-toes.
I never woke up again because I was where I needed to be.
We were together again.