It would always start the same, with me, alone, in some unfamiliar house. Always night time. I would approach a half-open wooden closet door, push the thing open, see nothing but dark inside of it. I immediately enter the space, where I seem to become its only occupant. My surroundings, the walls, were solid black; as was the hard, cool floor, I couldn't tell what the ceiling was except there was dark above me. Could be an arm’s reach above me or a mile above me. The path ahead of me typically extends for several hundred meters at a time. Occasionally the hallway branches and splits off into more corridors. Sometimes I press my bare hand against the wall as I walk. Oppressively solid. No fixtures, no floorboards, no dressings on the walls, no holes, no windows, no hinges or gaps or light. Despite it all, I did not require a personal light source. I pressed on. The drive I felt to advance forward was perhaps initially fueled by a common curiosity among all thinking beings, to find an answer or an end or a meaning. I wanted to find something and it had to be somewhere in here. The want became a need, first like a strong addiction, then like an innate requirement of thirst or hunger; I need to progress. I need to continue. I can’t turn back. I have forgotten about whatever was in my waking life, it’s irrelevant to my task. I also feared looking back. Physically or mentally. It would frighten me. The time spent there was indeterminate, sometimes it felt like hours. Sometimes like days. Sometimes I reach out my hand to touch the wall again, and there is nothing, and I just reach deeper into darkness. Sometimes it felt stifling and suffocating, like the walls were going to close in and crush my body at any moment. Other times I felt acute agoraphobia, where I could barely draw enough oxygen into my lungs and stumble forward indiscriminately, grasping at nothing. I could feel a poisonous fatigue and yet I still continued. Sometimes I dropped to the floor and crawled like some sorry animal. Sometimes it would hurt. Sometimes I would turn my head and visualize something for a mere instant, just to have it revert to the same darkness again. Sometimes I would whimper and it wouldn’t sound like me. Sometimes the walls would tap and I would tap back. Sometimes, there were echoes, sometimes, none. Sometimes I can feel it eating away at me. Naturally, I have yet to find an end, I have yet to find an answer. It always ends with me waking up in my bed, heart hammering, staring at the door to my quarters in anticipation.

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