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You cringe at each creak on the old warped stairs but that doesn’t sway your determination to reach the second floor. Your gaze is fixed on the top rotten step as you endure the climb. The walls watch. Things crawl under your skin.

The servant’s door shrieks on its hinges as an endless corridor empties into a dark master bedroom, occupied by a moth-eaten canopy bed dripping with cobwebs. Sallow peeling wallpaper sheds from the walls like dead snakeskin and flutters to the floorboards as you brush past. In the corner on a tattered rug sits a child’s wooden rocking horse, the seat worn smooth, the corded mane and tail coated in dirt. A mahogany chest of drawers stands lifeless with the top drawer still pulled out as if someone left in a hurry; a cracked mirror clings to the wall just above it, but you know better than to catch a glimpse of yourself in it.

The air is thick and heavy and it seems you inhale the shadows around the room as they cower and shrink back from the light of your candle. Their twisted silhouettes and outlines bottleneck in your throat like dead leaves circling a drain, and during this moment it becomes obvious that the quiver of a gentle candle flame may not be enough to keep the ghosts under the stairs… from coming out.

Slipping back the way you came, you creep down the hall like a thief and peer over the broken banister. Below lies a sad arrangement of disarray… sheets draped over furniture, tattered curtains hanging by mere threads, a cold stone fireplace, wet rotten holes in the plaster walls, a chandelier with broken strings of crystals, a man’s derby hat still hanging from a coat rack, and all manner of papers and debris strewn about the room.

THE WALLS LEAN IN.

Your blood suddenly stirs. Someone is crying in the room above you. Behind you are the attic stairs.

Your body’s reaction to the sudden drop in temperature sends an icy chill down your spine like a razor blade. A window is open somewhere. A dead breeze wafts the scent of mold and decay over you as the orange pinch of flame atop your stump of candle flickers once, twice, and then is gone. The darkness settles over your head and shoulders like a deathly bridal veil as your heartbeat quickens and goosebumps spread across your flesh. A foul dust in the air coats your tongue with a stale film and turns your throat to dry cotton. Now directly in front of you, like a tomb in a mausoleum, the attic door stands wide open, hanging by one hinge. There is movement in the walls.

Each stair screams out in pain as you ascend into the pitch darkness and both hands grip the wooden banister for fear of stumbling and falling backwards. At the summit, a few paces into the room, a lightbulb chain hangs in the blackness and you hold your breath as you give it a sharp tug. Nothing. Instead of flooding the room with light it seems to deepen the shadows even more, stirring up darkness like a diver stirring up soot in the belly of a shipwreck. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. Sweat soaks through your clothes, a hammer pounds at the insides of your chest and hot shivers cascade down your backbone. The silence is deafening.

Suddenly something moves in the room. You want to scream but you can’t. The sound of fingernails tear and claw at a chalkboard. A door slams somewhere downstairs. Hot tears spill down your cheeks. The mirror in the master bedroom crashes to the floor. Something moves toward you in the darkness. Your body commands you to make a break for the staircase but you’re far too paralyzed to move. Someone is screaming downstairs, shrieking with murderous ferocity, wailing with misery like a lamenting sailor’s widow. Footsteps pound down the second story hall from the master bedroom and pause at the foot of the attic stairs. Your vision blurs.

They know you’re here...

Just some random thoughts on a gloomy overcast rainy day...maybe..but i ask myself, 'Is real life much different from this?'

Reminiscence

Dizzy.

That’s how you feel when you run into a significant other you haven’t seen in a long time. A bitter avalanche of icy memories plows into your chest at breakneck speed, stealing the very breath from your lungs. Gasping for air, there’s really no use fighting it; the blow is instantaneous and it’s overpowering. Your eyes land on this person, your heart immediately stops dead, your knees go weak and you internally panic. You force yourself to walk over, but before either of you say hello, you’ve already got an endless amount of things you secretly want to say and an equally lengthy list of questions you wish you could ask.

What affection the two of you once shared was absolutely beautiful, consequently causing any unanticipated meetings thereafter to be twice as awkward. But as everyone always reminded you, life has a way of operating, God has a mysterious way of working, and sometimes things change without a moment’s warning. Even after it was all said and done, it’s still hard to imagine how things could’ve ever evolved from “always” to “never” in what seemed like a single dramatic heartbeat.

Months and months later, you run into this particular person unexpectedly and the realization hits you like a brick wall. The pain is still there. It’s almost as painful as the night you said goodbye, and what if there isn't any goodbye. Enough time has passed to con you into thinking you’ve begun to heal, and of course you probably have, but then you see this person and suddenly those old familiar aches begin to hurt all over again. You were finally beginning to mend after what happened, the relationship withered and ended, however dramatically, but the moment you lock eyes with this person you once shared so many dreams with, your stomach turns and a bitter taste fills your mouth. You can barely breathe. Half of you aches for things to be the way they once were, the other half longs to forget the whole thing ever happened. Regardless of your role in the conclusion of the relationship, it left you shattered and bringing it up after all this time would only pour another dose of potent heartbreak for both of you.

So there you are, standing face-to-face, unsure of what to say aside from the typical small talk jabber. A myriad of emotions swirl through both your heads but they only make former lovers more confused. Maybe you hug an awkward I-haven’t-seen-you-in-forever gesture, but that familiar mixed scent of perfume and cologne makes it even more impossible to know how to act, brief as the impending conversation inevitably will be. You just can’t stop thinking “things will never be the way they used to be” and that’s what hurts most. You both know where your identities lie, Who ultimately claims your hearts and where your fortresses are… and those things are truly what matter most, but this unforeseen meeting is still severely painful and there’s no denying that. It keeps you both awake for nights.

This is me being honest. I tossed and turned a lot last month. I thought about someone so much it was unhealthy.I had to escape.I ran.But that's a story for some other night. I would be doing grave injustice to my trip, and a special someone, if I weren't to dedicate a blog to it. But all said and done, I feel much more relaxed now to have finally let it out.

So here’s hoping I fall asleep easier tonight if I send a simple message out into the void:

Girl,

I still care about you. I think about you all the time. But things are different now.I’m praying for you constantly. I want so badly to know you’re being taken care of. I wish you the best in life, not because you’ll surely find it, but because you deserve it. You deserve so much.

I just wish you knew 'You are NEVER alone'.

Dip.