Reflections

        Why can’t I wake up? This seems like a nightmare, yet I can’t wake up. No matter what I do, I slap myself, I dunk myself in the cold water of a barrel that seems to have been catching the drips from the ceiling for a long time. I pinch myself; I yell and scream at the top of my lungs. Maybe the reason that I can’t wake up is because this isn’t a dream. This isn’t a nightmare. It’s worse, it’s reality….

I feel as though I’ve walked this corridor before, I have seen the same person pacing in a dark room, muttering to themselves, “I’m not good enough” repeatedly at least three times now. Down this hall is another man punching the walls, screaming in a fit of rage with tears strolling down his face, blood staining his knuckles. I continue down the hallway until I approach another room that I have also seen before with a man kneeling asking the universe for help because he’s trapped in his own mind and can’t break free, muttering something about bringing her back to him at the end of each sentence. The rooms are becoming closer together with each loop I make in this never-ending, repeating, maze of lost men. A new room is also added each time, why? Who are these men and why do more show up? What is happening in this maze? I have got to get out of here if it’s the last thing I do.

This room that was empty on the last loop now has a man lying down in a bed, he is hyperventilating and whispering that he doesn’t want to die. The room to the left containing the man punching the walls, his knuckles appearing to be more and more covered in cuts, bruises and more blood each pass by. The room to the right is a man staring at a picture of what I can sort of make out in the darkness as a woman. She looks very familiar to me, almost comforting but I feel sad, like a hole has been placed in my chest.

A new room, a new man, pacing. He isn’t doing anything else other than pacing from one end of the room to the next. Over here next to the man muttering that he isn’t good enough is another man, staring at his reflection, ripping away pieces of his face, skin and blood dropping into the sink below him.

These rooms that all of these lost men are in have shifted closer together, adding more rooms, the voices, the echoes, the crying, the pain, it’s all lumping into one horrendous sound that is overwhelming my head and making it increasingly more difficult to hear my own thoughts.

Have I been down this corridor? Yes. No. Wait…is this the one with the man dancing in a circle laughing hysterically as a fire is erupting in the corner? Yes. I see him, the faint orange glow on his bloodied chest where it appears he has taken a blade to it. This room now has a man hanging from some rafters, swinging back and forth. There is the room with the man attempting to swallow as many pills as he can, muttering, “I’m coming home.”

I dunk my head back into the barrel of water….wait…this isn’t water anymore. This is blood…was it always blood? No, it was water. Right?

I punch a wall as hard as I could, nearly shattering my knuckles in my right hand. I let out a scream of pain and insanity as I am tired. I am so tired of walking this same corridor over and over again waiting for a change, but every change is more and more terrifying than the rest. It’s almost as if I’m staring into a…wait, that can’t be what this is right? If that was the case, then it would definitely be a dream. I take a rag from the floor and wipe the water…or was it blood? From my face then wrap it around my knuckles. I drag my hand across the wall as I move down the corridor again. More rooms have been added since I last passed through. This man is punching himself in the face with grunts and profanity. The man next to his room is laughing as he pulls his teeth out one by one, choking on his own blood. That man over there is dead.

I dip my hand into the barrel of what is now water once again. Or was it always? I cup the water in my hand and drink it. I know this taste. Whiskey. It touches my tongue and some of my issues I once felt in this never-ending corridor feel as though they’re solved. No…I promised I’d quit. I walk away from the barrel, letting the smell of whiskey fill my nostrils. I do miss it, I miss the feeling. I stumble past a room with a man sitting in a lawn chair chain smoking cigarettes, shaking as he does, the lighter occasionally lighting his face up, I know that man. I hate that man. Another room with the same man as it always has been tightening a belt around his neck, begging for it to all end. The same man in the next room over, shouting at the woman in the picture to come back.

I reach into the barrel that is slightly less full, will it please be water? It’s dirt….no….ashes. Why is it ashes? I can’t drink ashes. I’m so thirsty, I need a drink.

This man is picking at his skin repeating the words, “you’re ugly” as he rips chunks of his skin off of his body. This man is holding a gun to his temple crying, he appears to have a bottle of whiskey in his hand. I need a drink. My lips are beginning to peel the drier they get. There is the barrel…what will it have in it this time? I reach my bloodied hand into the barrel, I pull out a single razer blade. I place it against my wrist, all the men stop talking and stare at me from their rooms…”This is how I get out.” I mutter in a raspy voice, a voice that doesn’t sound like mine. All the men are staring at me as I stare back at them, pressing the cold blade to my wrist. These are not men….these are my own reflections of my past, my present, my future. These are all versions of myself that I have seen, that I have been, that I could have been and that I might end up being in the future. The moment that thought crosses my mind, the mirrors surrounding me crack and explode in shards of glass, shards zooming past me slicing my skin as they do, the razer dropping on the ground. Time stops, I’m left there surrounded by shards of glass and reflections of myself shouting at me to wake up.

I open my eyes, I’m in my room, sweating. I grab my water bottle from my nightstand and take a drink.