Dark Sanctuary.

I traverse a marble floor, cold and dusty.  My bare feet feeling every step.  A sharp pain and small crack divert my attention.  As the blood trickles from my sole, I realize that it is a broken dream I have stepped on.  Once a thing of beauty, now reduced to worthless shards.  So the ideal has turned to a hazard.

I continue on, leaving a trail like breadcrumbs for anyone to follow in the darkness.  Across the floor and around the corner until I see a red light.  Stopping to listen, I hear a rustling approaching from the darkness.  I press myself to the wall and hope the beast will quickly pass.  Then, to my surprise, it is not a predator I see, but disfigured forms and distorted images crawling accross the floor.  The parade soon passes and the light turns green, so on I walk.

Through the hall and down the stairs, I glance back and see myself stopped at the light.  I’m being haunted by my past.  I run across the floor only to find there is no escape.  I press myself to the corner and shut my eyes.  When they open again, I am staring at myself.  This shadowy figure looks not entirely like me… the eyes are darker and this one wears many scars.  A 21 year veteran of a desperate and bloody war.  Through battle, surrender, and trickery has he survived, and now he stares back at me.  A small grin crosses his lips as he steps into me.  No sickening thud or crack of bones, but more like the embrace of an old friend as the dead man takes residence.  Then the pain hits my head.

I sink to the floor with a scream in my throat.  A sharp piercing in my brain as I wonder where the chains on my wrists have come from.  I begin to hate the world and another chain latches onto my neck.  Thoughts of evil and dark vengence as shackles join my neck to my ankles.  Unable to walk, I start to crawl to the steps, much as the other poor forms had done before.  The dust smells like death and tastes like ash under my burdens.  The stairs are gone now… I am in a cell. 

A single mirror spells my fate.  Gaunt-faced, chained and bound, I have nothing to do but wait for my passing.  I sit in the corner and await an unknown executioner.  I look up from my self-pity and see a figure cloaked in a cloud.  Out of this cloud is a hand reaching down.  “I have come to save you if you’ll let me.  Why stay in this dark sanctuary?”

Unable to reach out, tears and a weak cry are my only response.  The hand reaches down and grabs mine.  The chains fall off and up do I go.  Looking down on the labrynth, I see my wraith… only now, he has taken on his true shape.  Horns have replaced the halo I imagined, blood flows from his eyes and fangs glisten for my soul.  “Not this time,” says I, “we’ve been there before.”

When the motion stops, I look around…  A large room with a golden floor.  The sandals on my feet are firm and the air is cool.  Where the shackles had been, only small drops of blood remain.  As I walk across the room, there is a table, and on the table… the dream.  What was broken has been remade, and what was ruined is beautiful again.  En route to the table I see a mirror, though it is not my reflection I see.  In the mirror, I see my wraith in his dark room.  A sneer, a roll of the eyes, and a shaking of the head as if to say, “You will be back” are my greeting.  But there was something else in the mirror that drew my eyes… it seems my shadow had his own cage.  However… I’m the one who’s holding the key.

[CK]