The Room

There’s a hallway in my dreams that I’ve never been able to place in reality. Yet, at the same time, it’s utterly familiar. I know this hallway intimately. Do I only recognize a path I have walked many times in my sleep, or is there another reason it calls to me?

This hallway haunts me. At the other end is a closed room, with a door that I don’t dare open. I don’t know why. I only know that there is some inherent evil on the other side.

Still, every night, I walk the same footsteps, until I am once again standing in front of the door. I press my hands against the wood, and it feels hot against my skin, and I can never bring myself to turn the handle. What is behind there? Why do I fear it so much?

I can’t answer these questions from my side of the door, but I can’t open it, either. An impasse.

Until one random day when I’m lying down on my couch. My head isn’t comfortable against the armrest, so I end up pushing it further and further back, until finally my head is actually hanging upside down. I casually view the hallway from this new angle.

What I see is the same hallway from my dreams. The one I dread each night, yet somehow never noticed before was mine all along. At the end of the hallway is the same room that’s always been there, now inversed.

His room.

Suddenly, I know why I am always afraid in my dreams. I’m afraid now. I quickly sit upright, and ignore the hallway and the room at the far end. The door that’s always locked.

That night, I’m in the hallway again. Only, this time, I don’t walk towards the door. Instead, I turn around and try to run away, only I can’t. The door always appears in front of me, no matter which way I look. It looms closer and closer.

Now, I’m there again, standing in front of the closed door. My hands press against the wood. I glance down at the handle, fearfully, and am not surprised to see it finally turn.

No. No, please no. I don’t want to go into that room. Not that room where he went inside and hanged himself, and never came out again. I don’t want to go inside, yet I already am. The door’s open. The room’s the same as I remember, even after all these years.

The noose is waiting.