The room is dark. I am not alone in the house, though if you were to ask me properly, I’d tell you the people who fill these walls mean little to me when I can not hear their footsteps. Most of what I can see is covered by absence and the near-blinding light of the computer screen. A half-consumed bottle of water is screaming for a sip, and the book that rests beneath it is begging to be read. A Toblerone is taunting me, opened but unfinished.

None of these suppressants faze me slightly, though they are in plain sight. My mind has long since drifted off into the workings of the past. I look back on long nights and warming tears, wishing I had been bullet proof all those years ago. Most of the events that breeze coldly over my gaze have blurred together, slurring my recollection and folding my eyelids over. I can not help but blind myself, though the difference between open eyes and closed ones is insignificant in the absence of light.

There is a howling slipping into my ears; the song which plays suits my state all too painfully. Repeated are the words, “Today, we escape.” I begin to consider the fantasies I’ve concocted which involve severance from this chair, from this dampness, from the lack of footsteps. I could disappear. I’d become invisible to the nostalgia which raids my tired soul and keeps my teeth chattering.

Suddenly, I’ve fallen into a coma. I recall countless midnights of being tucked away beneath blankets. Sometimes I was alone, sometimes with a friend, or a boy I could not place. No matter whether someone laid with me, I was always lonely. That feeling comes to haunt me tonight. I’m beneath no blankets, and bear the longing of a hand to touch. Where a second head may have rested, there is merely empty air for breathing. My lungs and no one else’s will reap the oxygen looming here.

A moment passes. Next, I’m caught in the middle of a summer rainstorm. I’m being held into and onto by someone who later becomes a stranger. The water gathers on the tips of our shoes, and he clings to my jacket, pleading with my name. I make no effort to calm him, but instead wander off through the recklessness that is my paranoia. Does he notice that the body he holds has been permanently vacated?

One last time, the scenery redevelopes. I’m back and forth, on a swing set. The wind is bitter and my jacket comes undone. I can sense them watching me, holding a camera to capture the second when I fly through the air. It is a sublimity which can not hope to last, as I will inevitably reach the sand. The pain will shoot up through my knees, and I’ll curl into the ground. No one can see me if my head is tucked away.

I return to the basement, where this evening had begun. The music creeps back in, my pupils dilate and a stone forms in my throat where a free ride should have been. My own consciousness has usurped me and I have surrendered any control. I’ve made my decision. I rise. My ankles wobble and I stumble towards the stairs. I seize the jacket which hangs near them, and start to crawl. As I reach the back door, I tie up a pair of my most comfortable shoes and slowly drift through the wooden door and into the snow. I’ll not wait to hear my name, but rather run until I discover a new set of terrors, a new set of seclusions: a new kind of motivation to keep me up at night.