~(::)~ FIVE: DREAM ~(::)~

I am in a dark abyss.

Shadows shift in this darkness. It is an evil darkness, showing the presence of things.

Three forms float on the edges of my vision, silhouettes that haunt my dreams and my nightmares. I cannot see them; I know they are there, but I cannot see them.

The shadows shift, and the abyss I am floating in simplifies; I am sitting in a dark room, one that I do not know.

I know I recognize it.

'We are sorry we had to awaken you,' a voice says. 'But that is better than death.'

I am confused. I find that I cannot speak when I try to turn my questions into sound, and sound into answers.

'We know you have been seeing us, been aware of us,' another whispers. 'You have been seeing our attempts to show you, not understanding our attempts to tell you.'

'This world is a dark place,' a third voice hisses, a windy wave, rolling over me. 'Evil. It haunts thoughts and steals souls. It kills.'

'There is no way out now. When death will come, we cannot guarantee; but you are almost here.'

'Find the way out. Find the way home.'

'Don't lose yourself!'

'We all did!'

'Remember us!'

The dream shifts.

I am in an empty white space. It is beyond the end, beyond the edge.

I know this place, somehow.

Why do I know it?

I turn around. It is hard to tell if I am in the milky whiteness that surrounds me.

A few feet away, there is a black shadow. It shouldn't be here, I know that.

I approach it.

It is a key.

That fades away as well, and the dream disappears for a moment to the blackness. Then it returns.

I am in my living room.

Wallpaper is torn away in a corner.

I know the corner. I was always strangely comforted by it when I was younger, but I have grown away from it with time.

There is an outline of a door.

A keyhole is the only identifying feature about it. That is the only thing that tells me what I have found, what I am finding.

I am finding the way home.

The dream fades to white, and then to black, and then to nothing.

I wake, and nothing is strange, and everything is normal.

I hope to keep this memory.

And then it makes me wonder why I thought that. I keep every memory.

My life is a strange thing that I don't understand.

What is the 'home', anyway?