There’s an empty room with your name on it.
The door is ajar, moving slightly…Â just a trick of the eye, perhaps. Soft pale light frames the opening, pulsating gently in an irregular pattern. The handle is still warm, but cooling fast. I think it will be ice cold by morning.
The empty room beckons me, but I dare not enter. It is your room – it says so right there, on the door. Scrawled hastily with a nail file, one word – your name – and a dire warning. Lasciate ogni speranza…
I steal a glimpse through the slight opening. A wall: whitewashed, neutral, reflecting light in tune with the broken bulb. Upon it, a spider built its nest, and now it’s waiting. Waiting in vain, for there is only I who’s left alive, and I’m not coming in. The spider is staring at me.
Half a vase crawls into view, within it a dozen dried roses. They used to be red. I can see their leaves, almost crumbling, frozen scream around the last evaporating drop. They’re brown now, the colour of old blood. The colour of nails endlessly scratching a brick wall.
I used to know this room. In my mind I can almost see it. The vision is hazy and incomplete though, like the glimmer of distant mirages glimpsed through the midday sun. I open my eyes. The spider mocks me silently. I think it’s already dead – chitinous carapace stuck in its own dusty web, moving gently with the current. Death is ironic nowadays.
There’s an empty room, sanctified in your name.
Who are you?
I cannot remember.