Exploration A

‘I’m haunted by the lies that wove the web inside my haunted head…’

Imagine a house. Any house you wish – your childhood home; a mansion, stately and brick, ivy-clung; a suburban two-storey, pink as frosting; any house will do. Now walk up to the front door, across the wrap-around porch, sun-blistered and peeling, grey from the ravages of time, heat, rain.

(My house has a porch, but if yours doesn’t, that’s fine; simply cross the lawn; walk the three steps; follow the stones; any path will do.)

Open the door, step inside. Breathe. My house smells of nothing. Yours may smell of dust, or lilacs left in a vase by the kitchen, or bleach. My house, though, smells of nothing. Walk the rooms of your house. What do you see? I see a middle-class living room, shabby if I look close enough, the arms of the couches worn thin, I see a dining room with a bare table, shining in the sunlight as though it’s just been polished, and the polisher stepped from the room only seconds before. I see a kitchen empty of food. I don’t think this kitchen has ever seen food. I turn down a hallway and it narrows. The house is a trailer now, all shag carpet, sunken living room, and ersatz bay window; I turn down another corridor, follow the stairs up, and I am standing on a gorgeous cherry hardwood floor, and every side table is kissed by a doily, and the armchairs are stiff and tall like proper Victorian ladies.

The house is empty of people.

Curiously, there are no bedrooms.

Do you see, now, why the house you’ve chosen doesn’t matter? It’s all the same; we are together, in the same house; it’s every house that has ever been built.

Let’s go down the stairs now. Follow them down, down, down. Until. Until the end, until the bottom. Follow me, take my hand. It’s okay; I’ve done this before. I do this every night, every night for half my life. This is the basement, this is the end, this is the bottom. We see different things. I can tell, I see something unfamiliar reflected in your shiny eyes, your curious cat eyes, but it’s okay. Here is what I see. A room, vast and tall as an airplane hangar. The ground is grey, it’s dirt. This room is wrong. Something about the geometry of it. Something about the taste of it.

There is a door at the end of the room. I know you see it, I know you don’t want to see it. There is something about the angles of this room. Something about the way the door rushes towards me, and the way the room gets smaller and smaller, and goes on forever. Try not to look away, okay? Something awful is behind the door. Something cold, something enormous, something insubstantial. Something snorting its hot breath into the grey air. Something I can see through. Something that is waiting. It’s been waiting for fifteen years.

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here. It’s very cold here, at the bottom, while we wait. While it waits for me. And now, while it waits for you.

‘I can hear myself; I’m somewhere in there…’

***

References: House of Leaves (novel by Mark Danielewski), Haunted (album by Poe), the Minotaur (self-actualization), recurring dream (fifteen years)