Three words: Table, night, broken.
Okay so I’m back to writing again. And I expected this to be something about how the physical manifestation of mental illness acts as a rot through the structures you create to set yourself up for success.
But much like my own method of loci representation, this snippet took an unexpected twist.
Thank you for the prompt! <3
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The last time I left this place I swore I would never return.
Yet, here I was again, pushing past the creaking doorway to peer into a room that I didn’t want to see. Not now. Not after all this time.
The floor was stained with water damage from an unknown source. The waterworks were broken here and shouldn’t have caused issues, but they did. Of course they did.
The moonlight coming in from the window scattered across the surface of an old coffee table that was covered in dust. The couch behind the table was made of black leather turned gray under the weight of time and unfiltered sunlight through the window.
I sucked in a shaky breath, the smell of old pages and aged leather catching in my nose.
I wasn’t supposed to be here.
I’d sworn I wouldn’t - shouldn’t - need to come back.
Bookshelves lined the walls, each one filled with titles that I couldn’t quite make out from here, but I knew them all. Knew them well enough that I could reach out a hand and immediately name the contents of whichever story my fingers fell upon.
There were a few precious, well loved tomes sitting on the desk pressed up against the right wall. Those were the most important ones, the ones nearest to my heart.
There were books scattered across the floor as well. Some lay open, others were dog-eared. There was one that sat upside down, something dark and sticky oozing out.
My trepidation twisted into disapproval. I always hated when they did that. No matter how well sorted I tried to keep things when I did visit, I always returned to find a handful of them were in disrepair.
This entire place was in disrepair, and I knew why. The answer was obvious. I was the last person to see this place. The only person to see this place. The only one who knew to come here. No one else knew how to push past the gnarled gates and listen to the specific music of gravel beneath their boots to safely navigate the twisted maze protecting this room.
No one else found themselves closing their eyes at night and wandering through the landscape of their own mind, drawing ever closer to a singular room dedicated to their own thoughts and memories. A room designed specifically to hide every thought that they weren’t supposed to have. No one else had to hide this way. Not that I knew of, anyway.
And if someone did find themselves peering into my mind, there were other rooms, other paths, that would lead to copies of this one. They were decoys, facsimiles filled with lies both big and small, all of them designed to throw off even the most clever of captors.
Some of those rooms were easier to access than others, of course.
Those who wanted basic knowledge, surface thoughts, rarely looked deeper than the wide open libraries of information that welcomed them in with the smell of coffee and the warmth of the sun.
The people who went digging for the truth, hunting deeper in my psyche, frequently found what they wanted as well. They were hunting, after all. They expected to find a challenge, and a different version of the truth than the rest of the world could see. A reward for their efforts, but a lie nonetheless.
These rooms, mazes, and misdirects came from years of hard earned lessons. Now there were layers upon layers of protection, and only one version held the key to who I really was. It was this room, which I’d boarded up years ago in a desperate bid to protect myself from something that even I couldn’t remember to fear anymore.
Standing here now, glancing over my shoulder to make certain that I was alone and that no one had followed me, I stepped deeper into the room and fought the urge to begin cleaning up. It wouldn’t matter. The books would rearrange themselves as they saw fit. The ones on the floor would return to the shelves and others would find themselves laying open on the desk in due time.
The whole point of keeping this most secret of secret libraries was that I didn’t have to come here often. Or at all. I didn’t have to tend to these pages. They were the most true version of who I was, and therefore there was no need to censor them or review the things they said in order to keep my stories straight.
It was safer to keep them tucked away and avoid the chance that I might accidentally track the truth back into the wide world like muddy shoes on a clean white carpet.
I’d sworn I wouldn’t return after the last close call, and yet here I stood.
I shivered, glancing at the open window.
Despite other aspects of this room changing, the window had always remained closed. It wasn’t real, wasn’t a necessary part of the infrastructure and only existed on an aesthetic level.
And yet, there it was sitting open, curtains swaying in the wind.
Someone - or something - else had found this place.
I wasn’t alone.
