The air swirled warm and thick with dust as Adrian’s slumber waned. His eyes would be greeted by a melancholy blizzard of grey, drifting through the room like ashen snow. The light decanting from the windows barely filtered through the infested air and could scarcely scorch his flickering gaze. No sooner had his wearied body begun to move than his hand made its way to the bedside drawer, from whence he retrieved a familiar tome: worn, and free from the smothering granular fog that filled the air. With almost feral urgency, he foraged through countless hastily scrawled pages before alighting on immaculate parchment. He traced his finger down the centre of the book and breathed deeply of the viscous air. Before the memory could leave him, he would once more make account of his mind’s delusions.
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November the fourth
Yet another night for which I may claim no easy rest.
My dreams are those of a man possessed. The dreams of one without the means to live and so confined to a life of dreaming. My own mind is a realm in which I am powerless, it seems. Upon waking beyond its shores I am subject to screams that echo from nowhere. My hands, cold and bloodied as they are, reach into the darkness. There is a door that glistens in a sinful crimson light and then… blackness. As if my own thoughts conspire to asphyxiate me in my sleep. And as I break free, always the same, as I break free from that torment: The sands. Outstretched before me, as far as my mind’s eye can see and further still, the dunes of arid sand are eroded.
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Adrian shut the book and sealed it back in the drawer. Once on his feet, he paced from wall to wall, from room to room, but never lifting his gaze from the floor. Even as he rested his head on a pane of glass through which daylight streamed like water, his eyes were ever fixed downward. He made his way downstairs, never looking up, never meeting the eyes of his forebears, staring at him from the walls. The portraits hung like dead men, stiff and still, with lifeless eyes that wound the living in their jealousy. Their eyes watched him from the shadows, from the corners, from the walls. Adrian sat by the fire, on a dusty armchair that groaned, even beneath his meagre weight. His head would fall limp and his sleep-enraptured stare would be drawn to a scurrying from the corner. Amplified amid the moans of the old manor and the crackling of the fire, a mouse gnawed at a hole in the skirting board. Adrian’s gaze flickered slowly, like a light. Off, on. Off, on. Off.
His eyelids weighed impossibly heavy on his damp and manic eyes. He tried, for what seemed so long, to open them again, and yet the darkness would appear blacker and blacker. No sooner had he relinquished his resistance than his eyes had opened of their own accord. The gnawing and scurrying that had echoed so loudly had abated. In the corner of the room, there now resided a crimson puddle. Adrian’s weary eyes traced the path of footsteps in the blood. The impression made by each was smudged, like some haggard zombie shuffle, dragging its feet across the floor. Wearily, he smirked as his feet began to tingle with the cold, dripping blood. The fire crackled louder than before, almost spitting out its fuel. The portraits on the wall secured their gaze upon Adrian, now laughing, as the burning rodent’s stench suffused his lungs.
Adrian awoke to the sound of the mouse in the corner, still carving out its home, unhindered. He frantically swiped his arm to the side, to reach for his journal, meeting only dust-infested air for his endeavour. He looked to his bedroom, past the staircase and the sentinels that awaited him there. The frenzied flame within his eyes burned to a final ember, and then nothing. He had no memory of his dream. The mouse had always been alive, had always been in the corner, his gaze had never lifted from its struggle. He sank further into his chair, and watched without expression.
