On a worn down, stained mattress, the woman woke up the next morning in a dark room. The only window was blocked with wood, and the wallpaper was peeling off the walls like dead skin. Underneath, the naked wall echoed its ghosts to the woman's soul with its prisoners in captivity screaming for her tears, but she didn't cry; She ran out to the splintering, empty hallway with doors lining every six feet, turned, and continued towards the fading natural light that floated in.

She ran fast, at first, with the light fading into the sickly green wallpaper and green aura, but the light started to bounce as she grew tired; her breath in her ears. Her footsteps got louder, and when she approached the carpeting of light, they ceased to echo. It was a plastic lining of a false, faded yellowing light, and when the woman looked up, she saw a high window overlooking the stairway down to nowhere. Dust particles danced in the cloudy light, but they stopped moving as the woman steadied her breath. She couldn't remember where she was, so she turned back down the hallway, staring at the far back before it turned where a dusty painting sat on a table. This time, she slowly crept back to the painting, and as it came into view, she realized it was a photographic portrait of two beautiful people: man and woman sitting together on a bench.

The man's eyes were a vivacious, pulsating psychedelic blue that pierced your heart as if he was looking at you through the painting. His soft lips bounced out of the photo like puffy balloons. He was wearing a masculine dark blue, silk collared shirt with his arms wrapped around a beautiful redhead with devilish light green eyes. They were the lightest green eyes the world has ever seen, overshadowing her crooked, offset, washed-out pale lips. She was probably the most high-spirited energetic woman on earth, and the man quite the opposite. His smirk surfaced an unrelenting man that made his eyes a maniacal, glowing turquoise.

The more she stared, the more the woman realized how psychotic he was. She backed away from the photo and walked into the door, entering the room.

It was a bathroom all dirty with mold, faded blue tiles, and a moisty stank that wetted her nostrils. She looked into the spotty mirror to thankfully find her hair a dyed blond from black as her roots gave way to the crow, and deep brown eyes, so deep they were almost black. The bathroom became more vibrant as the saturation increased to unnatural colors, and the green mold and blue tub engulfed her as her eyes widened and popped out of their sockets. At first, she thought she was high again until she heard a thump from outside the bathroom, and it all faded. She became her original boring self again.

She opened the door back to the hall to see the man from the photograph, enshrouded by the sparkling heavenly light of God from the tall hallway window. He body was innocently twisted as he looked over at the woman. Half his face was shadowed—his blue eyes fading in the light. She froze, and so did he, exchanging fearful expressions. Then, the man took off, jumping down the stairs, so she started to chase him.

"Hey!" 

Her voice cracked, using it for the first time. She was shocked to be hearing quite a low voice for a woman. Making her way to the stairs, she loudly stomped down them as the whamming of her heels echoed at the top of the stairway. The stairs took her down to a dark, dusty hall with the warm orange glow from the window at the end of the hall; the man's outline moved steadily downward.

"Hey, who are you?"

Her voice was sucked up by the enclosed ceiling, but the creaking of the floorboards seemed to be coming from everywhere. The man turned right at the end of the hall, but when the woman got to the extremely dusty window, she stopped and looked down the dark corridor. It was a T-intersection at the end with both directions leading into darkness, but she wasn't stupid to follow anyone off a cliff.

By the window, there was another little table with an orange-brown clay vase filled with deep red roses that looked thick with paint. She opened the window with ease and looked out over four stories high to the lushes dark green lawn below her, and farther out, a cliff overlooking the sea. It was a clear morning that smelled fresh and new to the world, and the birds sang their thrilling songs. The woman smiled for the first time, and it felt great. All the fear she once felt was gone in an instant because she had nothing to be afraid of. She took a deep breath of the cold morning air, came back from the window, and screamed down the hall:

"HELLO DOWN THERE!"

No response.

So, the woman strode down the hall with her chest high, smiling wickedly with the power of confidence. It wasn't until the darkness engulfed her and she turned around to see the clean morning light far off in the distance that her confidence started to slip, and when it did, that's when the man became stronger than her.

Hands wrapped around her mouth and neck as she was dragged into a dark room. She struggled and struggled until it disappeared, and she was back at the end of the hall by the window and roses. The woman walked down the hall again to find another light at the end, but when she got there, there were the same roses again. This time, she dumped the flowers out the window, listening for the crack of the pot echo off of the side of the house, but she never heard it. She then walked down the hall—this time back from where she came—and found the pot was gone but the roses scattered about the floor. She held her hand up to her head confused but decided to not mess with the halls and walked back to the stairs.

Then, she saw the hall continue past the stairway and someone walking down it. As she walked up, the person walked toward her.

"Hey, are you the owner of his house? Hey, excuse me—"

The person walking up was her with her mouth moving but no sound coming out. She reached up and touched solid glass so pristine, it looked as if the hallway was double its length.

In the mirror, the colors began to shine bright with vibrancy as the greens became too green and red, bloody clouds painted around the sides of her vision. She blinked and it all went away. She blinked again, staring into her reflected brown eyes and watched as they turned a deep glowing green, and the dusty bleak hallway sang back to her. Her eyes began to water as they became green like new growth, and the bloody patches dropped from the wall.

The mirror sees everything and can hold its memories of reality. It doesn't lie, but it can remove you from your body as one begins to fail to recognize oneself in the mirror.

Her eyes stung as the glass began to vibrate, and the hidden voices swarmed her head and licked her ears. She began to struggle, her eyes began to water, and everything started to become a blur of vivid greens and reds. She saw the man again with his eyes wrinkling, one line from each streak to his sides, and his mouth sagging with sadness; a man in between youth and wisdom. She saw him with a frail woman with brown hair as she pressed her hands against her head and fell over with the aging man mumbling nonsense. The woman woke up again but this time back in the dusty hallway. Who was that lady in the mirror?

The woman walked up the stairs but found out it led to a different landing: the hall leading straight to a door with the kitchen and living room on either side leaking out white natural light. Walking wearily to the door and opening it, she found the same hallway she was in. She turned around and saw herself at the open door. Another mirror, she thought. She walked to the kitchen but found it was blocked by a pane of glass when she bumped into it. Looking through, she saw the man and his wife at the table eating breakfast as a little boy with brown hair and startling blue eyes stood on a little step stool by the sink. The kitchen was an innocent baby blue and very, very cold. It was an over-saturated scene with both blues and vivid, dark greens from the outside lawn. The woman watched the boy enticingly as he reached up for the rack of knives, wobbling on the light faded green stool.

"Watch out." The woman mouthed with a smile as the boy tipped the knives over and fell stabbing him.

Deep, red blood seeped across the tile. The scene shifted multiple times as the man and wife jumped haphazardly across the small kitchen, and the blood smeared all over the baby blue committing against its innocence. She heard bustling around the end of the hall and saw the man open the door to let in the paramedics. The woman snapped out of it and ran straight for the opening but ended up running right into it. When she looked back again, the door was closed. She was stuck in a small hallway with muddy green wallpaper and deep mahogany brown trim.

Then, the room began to fill with a dark thick liquid. It was blood! The woman started to kick at the wall to open it or find a secret doorway, but to no avail, she sank in the liquid and tasted iron—the bloodline rose and rose as it bubbled into the small dark room. She opened her mouth to belch a call for help, but her voice box was shattered, and as she tried to yell, the liquid encroached on her lips, and soon into her throat. She gagged and coughed at the disgusting thought of dying. All that was going through her head was the danger and not the inevitability. Though the last thing she remembered was the blood rising above her vision of sight, and then everything going dark.