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The room smells faintly of apricots and iron. That's the first thing that hits me as my eyes stutter open on a dusty wooden floor. The next thing that hits me, is that I don’t know what an apricot is. My head lifts lazily off the ground, the pull of gravity tries to lull it back to sleep. Thick layers of dust stir into the air, tickling my nose and throat, as my lungs heave in and out, in and out. My body is splayed out on the wooden planks of the floor. As my eyes focus on the light of the much too bright room, my hands shift to my chest, trying to gain purchase against the damp wood below me. I manage to get a glimpse of them from my position. They’re soft, unworked. Calluses dot my fingertips, and freckles speckle across the dorsal side. I have to focus all my energy on pushing upward, pins and needles surge through my body as my sore muscles bustle to life. I manage to sit up, an awkward motion that lands me roughly on my behind, but it is an achievement nonetheless.
A moment of recuperation grants me the strength and focus to observe my surroundings. I seem to be in a barn, one that had been renovated into more of a home if the furniture is to signify anything. Despite this, the building is severely dilapidated. The wooden planks and panels that make up the entire building are aflutter with fungi and lichen, striking colors of reds, blues and greens that likely are not the best idea to make contact with. With some pressure, the once solid timber crumbles into tiny fragments. The wood ceiling pulls high above me, making me feel small, infinitesimal. The planks forming it seem to be in the same condition as the ones on the floor. Chunks of wood litter the ground, having fallen from above. Bright rays of light beam down from the holes that litter the barn's roof illuminate the space I have awoken in. The dust particles continuously make themselves known in the glow. A barn door stands in the center of the weak wall, strong and towering.
Windows pepper the walls of the barn. Their glass is shattered, spidery cracks dragging across their surface. Although the splintering would suggest a plethora of glass shards across the floor, from where I am, there's only one, surprisingly large sliver. The reflection provides me with a view of my form; tall, spindly, tan skin, short brown curly hair, complete with beige cargo pants and a yellow t-shirt that seems worse for wear. What eludes me is my face. The reflection only shows a smudge where it should be. I turn away. This revelation can wait until I know what's going on.
Carefully, my energy partially regenerated, I begin to crawl. My fingers dig into the floorboards, ripping themselves handholds in decaying wood. There's something peculiar about this room I’m in. My eyes have hitched on the guardrail to my right, and I make my way over. It lines the edge of the stairway that reaches up to the second floor of the barn. ‘The style seems Victorian’, my brain suggests unprompted. Although I don’t recognize the word, the idea of such stairs being in a place like this seems strange. Nothing else seems to match them. It itches at a place in the back of my head, a spot just out of my grasp, shrouded in an inky darkness that refuses to let itself be known. The rail’s veneer shines in the sunshine seeping in from the broken windows like a beacon, calling out for me in the most familiar way, as if it was instinct. Unlike the rest of the room, the railing is like new, not a scuff or scratch to be found. Even more strangely, the stairs holding the rail flake and splinter, portions of steps have dissipated into dirt, though the guardrail seems affixed firmly into its place. I reach for the railing, and it remains unmovable as I use what remains of my strength to pull myself to my feet. My muscles burn with excretion, despite the quite minimal workout.
With the rail to keep my trembling feet steady, I maneuver to the gaping mouth of the stairwell. I’m greeted with a bright red carpet, one that I don’t recall seeing when I first approached the stairs. It too seems untouched by the wear of the barn, and like an arrow, it draws me up toward the second floor. I follow the call. It takes me a while to stumble my way up the stairs. My grip remains tight on the guard rail, and the carpet bends and sags beneath my feet as the staircase itself crumbles under my weight. My climb is accompanied by blank picture frames that line the wall hugging the staircase. They’re dusty and hollow, and they leave a feeling of longing in my gut, though there is no-one there. It's a feeling that makes me rack my mind for a semblance of recognition, but no such glimmer makes itself known.
One arduous climb later, my efforts had made themselves known. I was now at the second floor of the barn. The floor occupied half the space of the floor below, splitting halfway from the wall into a crumbling overview and guardrail. It’s condition wasn’t an improvement over downstairs. I shouldn’t linger, who knows how much longer the supports holding it up will last.
The ceiling curves into a trapezoid above me. Now that I’m close, the holes that litter it’s planks give me a view of the outside, a window of rotting wood and moss. At least it should have. All I see is white, a void. I know I should feel scared, terrified even, at the prospect of being surrounded by such an emptiness, but truth be told, I feel nothing. Now that I think about it, I didn't even try to make it for the barn door, the idea of it not even forming in my mind. I did not try to leave this place, only went deeper in. Everything here is so strange, but it does not feel that way, like a second home that I don’t remember. It's all just pulling me along, all beyond me, and who am I to resist such a call?
In the center of the second floor, there's a particularly large hole in the roof, shining onto a particularly shiny slant-top vintage desk, standing on a particularly tidy section of floor. It's isolated from all the other furniture, and it glows in the dusty haze that fills every ray of light in the barn. It calls to me, the same way the stairs did, and I know what I must do. My steps are more like stumbles as I forge a path across uneven ground, body still aching the way it has since I woke up. But as I get closer, the feeling from my limbs dissipates. Not numb, but something else, an indescribable sensation. My movements become fluid, easy, almost weightless as I glide to the desk. My hands grip the crevice of the flap, and like second nature, they shift to a small latch that lies on the front, keeping it in place. They sit there for a moment, almost as if in anticipation, and then they move, the lock flicking upward and the desk-flap lowering down in my silent grasp.
Inside the desk, is a letter. I recognize it. It seems that it is mine. A fountain pen that I recall to be my own lies discarded on the table, excess ink from its nib spills out onto the lustered surface, leaving a stain. There’s extra paper tucked into a drawer behind it. Now there's dread, that peace I had known just a second ago has disappeared, but my body moves of its own accord, driven by a force that is beyond me. The envelope is light in my hands, and rough against my fingertips. And then the light that was never blinding, suddenly is, filling my entire being, and turning everything into a blistering white. And then I know. The letter is an apology, and I am dead.