I sit in this room, the shadowed memories flying behind my eyes like moths darting at the flames of an open fire.

High, vaulted ceilings rise above me like a narcissist’s self-regard.

I remember…

Alone, I feel a tempest of recollection bursting at the seams of my mind, twisting it like taffy in a sideshow arcade and trying to come forth, to break free of the mental constraint that is me.
Books lie scattered everywhere, a field of fallen dominoes waiting for another chance to inspire.
I wish they could.

The memories grow…

Grotesque images plough my senses: the smell of beast after a sudden fall of acid-rain, the colour of viscous viscera fermenting in a vat of vomit.
This appeals to me in ways I cannot begin to define.

I can hear the silence: the echo of my pain, like claws scraping down a fleshless spine as the spider-webs cling to the ceiling, drifting like dandruff from a diseased scalp; that, too, appeals to me.

Was I going insane?
Or am I already there, all this an imaginary friend that’s not very friendly at all?

I can taste the dust settling onto my skin, and it tastes like dry, dead beetles; scarabs scuttling down my throat to infest and ingest me from the inside.
It tastes too good to not be true.

The three windows allow marginal light, seeming as stingy as bankers with God’s own illumination. The carpet under my bare feet is gritty, more a collection of shards, splinters and sand than any man-made fibre.
I feel the same; scattered and broken.

I remember…

As I stare at the tattered pictures of fallen heroes blue-tacked to the walls, I remember the events that happened here, the terrible things that no-one will talk of.

Not to me, anyway.

I remember the things that I wish I could forget.

I mean…it was me that suffered here, wasn’t it?

Was it?

Or was it all just a dream…?

…I remember?