Red-Washed Room

I didn't want to return to that red-washed room. The shadows danced in corners, leaping around as if they were bodies swaying in the wind, hanging by their necks to thick tree branches that bowed above their weight. The red mad shapes in my eyes. I think they were imprinted. I can't see them if I look at them but once my gaze goes elsewhere they reach with claws that scratch at the soft flesh of my brain. The hallway outside is dark and cold but it's black with shadows. The floor is smooth, quiet, it comforts me because it doesn't whisper about the thoughts in my head. It's blissfully empty, lonely, light seeping in through the open window. Shadows again. They won't go away. The red-washed room is silent but invades the space like the smell of death in a battlefield after everyone has gone home and it's just cold mounds to keep you company. I wish it would be quiet. Sitting at the end of the hallway away from the light, my eyes have adjusted now and I can see the room. It's missing the jumble of warmth but it does better without it. Moonlight outside is too bright, it makes shadows, it won't leave me alone. Crude objects block the view of the corners, hiding the shadows from sight, they could sneak up on me if they wanted to. Suddenly it feels too cluttered. I need to get out. I don't usually believe in ghosts. That's what I tell them. But in a quiet room, in the dark, they push at me, my shirt is gripped in their hands, they drag me along where I didn't think I wanted to go but now they've convinced me. Nails click behind me, hands scuttering through the dark towards me, climb up my legs, scratch me. Their weight pulls me lower and I sink thoroughly, my knees touching the floor now, it's cooler than before. There shouldn't be wind, I shouldn't hear voices. My knees don't exist anymore and neither does my voice though I have no use for it. Now my waist is gone, I'm sucked lower, pulled down by the shadows, they speak as I silently scream. The base of my neck is cold and I can feel the blood gushing from it now, it pulses out in thick red waves, angrily pushing my skin out of its way, slicks down the hallway I had travelled, back to the red-washed room. I have no pulse now, no body, the floor shouldn't be warm but it is now, warm, wet, red red red.

I'm not really here now. My eyes went last, I watched them roll away on a slide of crimson to the red-washed room. It all left me. I can still feel the hands but they're hugging me, pulling me into a corner. I can't go back to that red-washed room so I join the shadows and they prowl towards me with moonlit eyes that used to be black and I open my ribs and they leap for my heart and my eyes turn to moonlight and my hands turn dark and I finally feel whole again.