A Room

You come across a dead tree, all dried up and barren. You could almost crawl inside of it, if only it was big enough; but you find that it is, and so you do.You then sit inside of this hollow giant and think how it’s almost like sitting inside of a corpse and you feel uncomfortable for a moment.

Looking up, your current thoughts are interrupted as you are confronted by a void. Shrouded in shadow, you can’t quite see where the emptiness ends. Everything around you is dark to begin with but up there is completely unknown. You wonder what kind of creatures have made their homes up there in the chest of this dead body and you begin to feel your skin crawl. You slap at the back of your shoulder even though you know there is nothing there, (then your leg) but you do it anyway just in case, (now your neck) and because it’s kind of reassuring at the same time.

And so you lay back and fall asleep under the spider canopy that hangs gently above your head and you feel safe for once. You feel guilty and hidden away and perfect and as if your entire being has been kept a secret from everyone but you and the spiders. And it is this thought in particular that makes you feel more at peace than you ever have before.

It’s almost as if you never were at all.

Ending

When the word 'sacrifice' lost meaning to me, the morning air tasted warm and sweet. I stepped out of my front door and saw decades into the future. Everything that one may consider good in life had crept under my skin over night and melted there beneath the surface; simmering gold. I lived peacefully in this world for years.

Sudden and sharp however, I learned that nothing good can ever last.
I had been living happily blind of the oncoming slaughter.

When the mirror shattered, the truth escaped. All that had nourished me, I found had been rotting from within for years. Dozens of mangled creatures escaped from these once cherished thoughts and plagued my mind day in and day out. I was alone.
I was left stirring the same miserable soup, in the same crusted pot for centuries and the misery coagulated over a weak fire that was always just a whispers breath away from dying out.
I did not know what else could be done.
I waded aimlessly in these muddy waters until a shy but kindly shade cautiously crept past me and led me out.

Stars projected from our eyes onto the ceiling as we counted constellations. We lay together in a blue cave whose stone walls swayed with the coming breeze; cautiously close, we slept that night as children under separate sheets and so on. We discovered a secret world and still lay together asunder. I trembled in the darkness. I could hear the ghosts whispering and I caught his eyes astray. I pretended not to notice this and smiled softly under the darkness. Just before the spiders carried me away that night I felt the wandering of his fingers and a gentle pressure rest on my leg. Subtlety had never before held such power against me.