My Nightmare

I didn't wake up, I just...was standing in the room. The room I have never been in and will not leave. Can not leave? I don't know. My head is just a daze. Not in any pain nor discomfort, just no memory of how I got here or what is going on.

I've gone drinking and tried a few recreational drugs but have never blacked out. I have never had the experience of not remembering what I have done. This wasn't...scary, but it was un-settling. I didn't feel fear or pain. Come to think of it, I didn't feel anything at all. I felt my heart beat so I knew I was still alive but I had no feelings beyond that. A hollow shell of a person I did not know.

I started to turn and examine the room only to see myself in the mirror. I knew the body looking at me, but it wasn't a person. It was a vessel designed to carry and transmit words and emotions. How I knew this simply by looking in a mirror I'm not sure. But This feeling came to pass slowly as I looked into the mirror longer and deeper. Almost as if the longer I looked the more I came back to myself. Once I was back I felt more like myself just still missing the knowledge of how I got to where I was.

Almost as quickly as I remembered myself, I started scanning the room to look for clues to where I was and why I was there. From what I could tell it was an old abandoned theater dressing room. A few makeup stations, racks of old tattered costumes, and some random equipment. I didn't see any doors or windows. I don't remember any light source at all. But somehow I could see everything in the room as if it were lite.

I started moving around the room and started to feel as though I was being watched. I couldn't figure out how, there was no way in or out of this room so how could I be watched? Still as I proceeded around I could not shake the feeling of being not just watched, but studied. Almost as a scientist watches a wild animal. As I looked closer at the room I started noticing things changing.

The posters on the wall would change slightly at first, then drastically. The equipment was in different places with no signs of being moved and no sounds being made. No sounds being made at all. then I notice a quite rumble coming from above. As I listened closer I started to hear laughing and cheering almost as if there were a show going on upstairs. As I stood in the middle of the room Staring at the ceiling pondering what I was hearing, something called to me.

Not with a sound, just a feeling. Something compelled me to turn around. A door. A door that was not there before. A red oak door, looking as old as the theater room I was in. I stared at the door without movement for about 20 minutes. I knew this wasn't real. I looked all around this room for any way I could get out and there is no way I missed a door. I felt the door pulling me, grabbing hold of my chest and beckoning me closer.

Not in a painful way, just like a primal calling. Something in me wanted, no needed to go to the door. As I walked closer and closer I felt like I was moving slower and slower towards it. It felt like an hour to take the ten steps towards the door. I reached out to touch the door. I don't know why, I felt like I should back away but I couldn't stop my hand. Just as my fingertips brushed the door knob something awoke.

The door began clattering and banging. Something was on the other side trying to break its way in. Pounding relentlessly, scratching and clawing at the old oak door. It wasn't a person or people. This was not from our world. There was something behind that door that took every emotion I had in me except for one. Pure Terror. not fear or fright, I felt myself reduced beyond a frightened child and went straight to primal fear. I was no longer a civilized person with emotions and goals and thoughts. I was pure instinct, pure fear. Looking death in the face even though all I saw was a door. I knew that whatever was behind the door did not want to kill my body.

It wanted to erase every fabric of my existence. Past, present and future.

It wanted to take the very idea of my existence and erase it.

I watched my body crawl away from the door and as I saw the door burst open I woke up in my bed.

This dream stayed in my head for a while after. Not so much the entire dream, not even the fear and terror I felt at what was behind the door. In fact thinking on it now whatever was behind the door doesn't bother me. The only thing I can't shake, the one thing that keeps bothering me is the room. I keep feeling myself in that room.

I feel hollow and alone in the room. A person who is not a person. I think and feel but the things that make me who I am don't exist anymore. Not even a mindless worker ant just, nothing.

So why do I keep going back? What is drawing me back to that room? I do not know and don't know that I will.