July 10, 2014

My feet sink into the quicksand seafloor, which grips them and refuses to let go. The floor itself is not as it should be, feeling as though there are hundreds of hands holding on. Their nails scratch and their fingers cling to my feet, holding me tight. They do not pull me down; they just hold me in that one spot. My upper body can move freely, so I reach down to claw away at the wet earth, but it is hopeless. The hands have me, and they will keep me here until I have served my sentence. My lungs should be on fire by this point, but breathing has lost its necessity. "Sposa son Disprezzata" is playing through a muffled record player off to my right, being operated by a thin man with a deathly pale face wearing a black suit; Death incarnate, garbed in his cape of crows, awaiting the feast. This song has always haunted me with such exquisite form, and now it is my fiendish lover, cooing into my ear while slitting my throat. With each note, a memory is displayed in front of me - past lovers, places I call home, sailing with my father; beautiful memories that I cherish. But when the record stops, the man in the black suit simply plays it again at a higher volume. The memories differ as the volume increases; flickering in detail, becoming faded photographs. The louder the song plays, the worse the memories become. Memories of people that I have stolen from, used, and hurt were flooding into me. Guilt, remorse, and regret swarm me now, filling my lungs. The record finishes and after a few moments the man in the black suit plays it again, but this time, she appears.

She is standing there, eyes closed, crying into her hands. She is wearing a dirty white dress and her dark brown hair covers what little part of her face her hands leave bare. She whispers, but I cannot make out what she is saying. I am trying to get closer; I need to hear her, but they will not let me go. The guilt has built up so much that it begins seeping out of my pores; I desperately try to keep it inside but I cannot contain it. It mixes with the sea and moves with the current - dancing around me; laughing at me. Just then, she removes her hands to look at me. Her eyes are filled with pain, the type of pain so vast that it has nowhere to go. She drifts at the bottom of the sea in her stained dress, waiting for someone to come along and help her understand. She stares at me with those sad, confused eyes and pushes it all through me. All of the guilt, remorse, and regret that dances wickedly around me transcends from anarchy to visceral form - a scorpion that crawls into my ear, penetrating my brain. It uses its sharp claws to lay claim, and at the center it sleeps and waits. When its sting becomes too much to bear, she calls to me.

'Please ... leave this place ...'

Then she just drifts away, leaving me with my pain and my prison.

How can I leave ...

I awake in a panic - drenched in sweat atop a lumpy single bed with a soaked through cotton sheet and a pillow worn thin and tattered, most likely stuffed with an old sweater. I can see my silhouette lying on the sheets, sleeping soundly. Every morning since I can remember I have woken up drenched in sweat and in a complete panic. It is the same dream - the same nightmare - every night; not simply one or the other, rather an amalgamation of the two. I dream of an event which never happened to me, but still I feel the pain. I feel the burning, the terror, the agony; I also feel the regret and the guilt, which are far worse than any physical discomfort. There is colossal, unmotivated guilt that washes over me with every shift of the current, and by the time I wake up I am reduced to something other than myself. A fragment that concentrates the pain.

Every morning I scan my memories, searching through every forgotten volume and peeking under every rotting floorboard, but I find nothing. The searching itself only solidifies the reality that I simply do not know why this is happening to me. Impotence and futility are cancers; beginning as a note, but expanding into a song that you sing to yourself as you try to fall asleep, never knowing who put the melody into your head in the first place. 'You'll never find out, what you're lookin' for. You scream and you shout, but you'll never find what you're lookin' for!'

The bed begins to feel uncomfortable against my cooling skin, so I sit up to stretch my sore, damp limbs and pull myself out of bed; grabbing my clothes and backpack on the way out the door. I walk down a brightly-lit wood framed hallway with four rooms on either side, as well as a single bathroom for all to share. The decor of hand-crafted vases and terrible paintings screams hostel. I go into the bathroom and turn on the taps to use the shower and am greeted by several loud groans, followed by a few quick bursts of water that fizzle into a constant, reluctant drip - something to be expected in a place like this. When you choose to spend the night in cheap places, certain luxuries are diminished.

As far back as I can recall I have been staying somewhere different every night; that way every morning is like Christmas for loners. A new city, a new country, a new continent; anything is better than staying in one place for too long. On the wall heading to the lobby there is a wooden sign advertising a backpacker's hostel just outside of Nelson - a small, scenic town in south-eastern British Columbia. I vaguely remember staying here one night many years ago, perhaps with an old girlfriend, but I can't place when that was. I must have been drinking a lot at the time. Normally I make a point of avoiding places that I already have memories in. The best memories come from all around the world, in a place you have never been with people you have never met; people whom you will never get to know. So then why have I come back here?

When I go to the front desk to check out, I am greeted by a beautiful young woman with wide, charismatic green eyes, dark brown hair, and of a slightly tanned complexion. She smiles pleasantly as she speaks, telling me that her name is Tracey and that she is the manager. Customer service is certainly a requirement when you manage a hostel, so she is probably just going through the motions, but as I turn to leave she smiles and wishes me a good day. That smile ... it is genuine. It is not the smile that you often see adorning the face of an overworked woman; it is sincere and warm. It is difficult to remember the last time a woman smiled at me like that, or even the last time I really noticed a woman.

I cannot think of anything to say, so I awkwardly turn and walk out without replying, finding the image of her smile burned into my mind. I close my eyes and her smile is carved into my eyelids. My eyes look right into hers, and hers into mine.

I get into my car, a second hand Buick, and leave the parking lot of the hostel.

Coming to this town twice was a bad idea. Nothing good can come from revisiting memories.

* * *

The door opens in a dark room, and a man dressed as a janitor walks in and turns on the light. In stages beginning at the door, panels of beautiful golden light turn on, revealing a massive dome structure with ceilings and walls so vast they are impossible to make out. To his left he finds a two-wheel dolly cart that he moves toward a mountain of paperwork. He walks past the pile and finds stacks of millions of flattened boxes, which he then carries over to the pile. He has been assigned his task, and he will not falter.

The Janitor...