Lovely Couple

I arrived at 12 midnight as requested by the strange message. The message sounded impossible to resist. The funny thing about the message, it disappeared the moment I arrived. Beyond its pull on me I couldn’t remember what it said. A bell like mesmerizing sound came from nowhere- ahh-oom, ahh-oom it sang to me over and over again.

I entered the mansion through the ajar red door with the black door knob. I came upon a strange scene of two lovers.

They stood frozen in time- still as a photograph – with a frightening mileiu. Hung alive in mid-air and breathing near an inferno, a man with a gray derby and black hat band, a woman with a light pink frilled silk dress of yesteryear. Both smiled as if thumbing their noses at the devil.

Each had a grim stare that belied their smiles as if in contest with each other, a vision remembered from long ago. Childhood?

Fortunately a glass partitioned wall stood between me and the scene or I possibly would have feinted with prostration or perhaps become as paralyzed as the lovely couple.

On the wall, in green lipstick, another message, “I’ll see you on the other side”. Yes, the other side of what was my question. Several dark-black holes, literally opened up the size of a hand. Which made sense, since several hands appeared. All of them gloved. One looked like the Michael Jackson glove. Another white one with black embedded pearls. There were a variety of colored gloved hands: red ones, green ones, blue ones, a rainbow. Finally an ungloved hand appeared smeared with something that looked like black grease. This should have been my clue to turn around (and leave).

The hands began a dance, by holding hands. And a bodyless voice began singing a ghostly version of ring around the rosy. Its hollow sound echoed off the walls. They finished with ashes, ashes we all fall down. At that they were gone and the room became deadly quiet.

Nevermore, did I meet this couple, they, however, seemed familiar. I love Edgar Allan, we are good friends. And I felt as if the bricks were going to close in on me. The pyre climbed higher, it climbed higher, higher yet. I wondered if it would consume the room and break on through to the other side. The glass might shatter at any moment and take me with them. My timorous feeling like being part of some crazy rock and roll rhyme. It seemed as if the Devil might get the final laugh.

A smile showed on their frozen faces. The heat and their positioning looked painful. They were distorted in shape as if a strange desire to contort their bodies overcame them.

Suddenly a tear showed up in both their eyes as if synchronized to communicate some message. It drizzled down their faces and then dropped into the air but never hit the floor, perhaps evaporated from burning pyre next to them.

“How could the couple be saved” ,I asked myself aloud to no one? Suddenly a black hole opened up with the Michael Jackson glove and it beckoned me to follow it down the hall. The pointer finger curling and moving so fast it appeared blurred. A warm wind blew between my legs and raised the hairs on my back. Down a poorly lit long hall I followed the rapidly moving finger.

At the end of the hall a long rope hung from a ceiling door. The Jackson finger pointed upward. Up the rope my body crept. My practice on obstacle courses had paid off. Maybe my other favorite hobby's escape rooms would also come in handy.

Either I would be a hero by the end of the night or I would end up on the other side.

The room above the ceiling entry way was pitch dark. Yet my feet carried me through the threshold. I had never felt so compelled and brave. It felt like my life depended on this journey.

When my feet squeezed past the door threshold, the ceiling door sprang shut behind me. Alone in the dark for a moment my wind wandered. Then the black greasy hand touched my knee then lit up in mid-air. I followed the flaming hand.

The flamed hand led me to green door. On the door, another message, enter here. It felt like Alice in Wonderland in a funhouse mirror kind of way. But still unheeded to my own safety my feet followed the flaming greasy smelling hand. It opened the green door and beckoned me again to further follow.

I could feel the heat from the pyre from the room with the couple. In fact I could see the couple down below me through the glass. The flames from below now lit up the room. The warmth from below licked at my feet. Another door with a message, “All who enter here, remember pain ends.”

I felt so brave. I entered through the black door and climbed down the stairs. I now heard the couple moaning a most pitiful non-human sound. Finally I walked the final steps to where the racket came from. Another glass partition stood between me and the couple. The sound made me grimace and put my hands over my ears. Yet I walked closer until I saw at my feet at a mirrored two foot door with combo lock on it.

A message appeared on the door 99-99-99. But on the lock numbers only went to 6. Then I realized that the nines were sixes. So obvious did not need to pick the lock. When I entered the room cool air blew in from the previous room as if a malevolent spirit had entered.

I sensed the couple seemed horrified to see me even with their backs turned to me. I walked around to look at their faces. It was hard to see them with the heat.

Suddenly awoken by the din of the alarm and the sun shining upon my face, I fully awoke, I realized the vision seemed to be merely a nightmare. But it seemed so real, terrifying.

Right now my reality seems like this may be the dream. The couple definitely felt familiar, but the heated wavy air made them hard to identify. But then I realized even with the blurriness that the familiarity, the man was me. For now the so called awaken state keeps me from being frozen.

But I feel as if I had an out-of-body experience. Now my mind feels as if this is the dream and that so-called dream-mare contained the real reality. Pray for me, pray for me.