To A Familiar Room

You pass by graves and mourners as you slowly begin to climb the tower. Weaving your way through each floor, you first try to scream, but no sounds come out. Then you try everything you can think of to get the attention of those you pass by. It is no use. You are not in control. Your heart pounds inside your head. Your mouth is dry, your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth and you can’t move it.

Then you reach the sixth floor, and your body stops. There is a woman there brandishing an intricate dream catcher in your direction. Suddenly your body is yours again.

“Boy, do you know yourself?” The woman’s voice pulls your attention from your sudden freedom. You look and her ancient face and realize it matches her crackling voice, draped robes, and thick perfume.

You think about the question, assessing you condition before answering, “Yes, I think so.”

Her ash-stained white eyebrow raises, “I know you!” Her exclamation startles you and you step back into the stairwell, crystal still in hand clinking against the wall as you brace yourself, reminding you of the object that stole your free will. “I saved you as a pup, when she got ahold of you last time. I told your grandfather that you could never come back here, or she would finish the curse she started all those years ago.” She tisks resigned, “It's too late now. After you picked up that sylph scope there was no chance for you to resist her since she already marked you.”

Her words bring up so many questions. Before you can organize your thoughts enough to ask one, she stows the dreamcatcher, and again your body is not your own. You try to scream for help; nothing comes out. As your body marches you towards the seventh floor you hear her voice reach out to you one last time. “If you don’t resist, she may let you live. For a price.” Her cackling follows you up the stairs.

The chamber at the top of the stairs is large. A mass of dark energy parts around you as you pass through the entryway. Dark stone wraps the room, and there is no light, but you can still see. As your body enters the room and drops to your knees, great purple lines of energy sprout from the floor and ceiling depicting great chandeliers, formless but feminine statues and an alter seeping a black smoky substance that begins to coalesce in front of you.

You're suddenly in control of your body again, staring at smoky shape that shifts from shapelessness to shapelessness with a pair of feminine purple eyes and a mouth with too many teeth, a blood red tongue, and sinister shape. Its mouth moves with the words you hear inside your mind in a throaty female voice “Dusty, darling, welcome back. You have grown so big and handsome. Did you miss me?”