He remembers those hands. Hands that were once warm and soft, taking care of him and giving him everything he needed, nails soft pink. He remembers those hands helping him sleep and now he shamefully and painfully knows those fat, rubbery hands falling and trapping him underneath him, stealing another piece of his innocent heart away every single time. Hands that keep him there, squirming and screaming as she cackles, that shrill laughter the only thing he can hear when his head scarcely hits the pillow. And he never forgets how much he remembers, not even her eyeshadow, her lipstick, the strange items she would take to the bathroom that seemed to scare even his nightmares.

His nightmares, twisted, mangled figures, each one of himself but more and more demented. They jumped as he did, fell as he did, followed behind him, never quite dying but just ripping his soul from him. He stared them in the black holes for eyes, their moans ringing in his ears, eyes lopsided and a stench that worked it's way to the back of his eye sockets and the bottom of his chest. The stench curled around his lungs, seeping in like leeches sucking away his breath, making him wheeze with every move. Room to room, they seemed to stare back at him, eyes in places they shouldn't be. They cried out to him for help, attached to the walls by large fleshy pieces, crawling around as bloody masses, maggots having their way every other step. Things beyond his imagination limping after him as all he could do was sob and hope they would go away if he shut his eyes tight enough and let the psychedelic shadows take over his mind.

He went deeper.

A place he thought he knew once, warm and safe as those hands were, now bloody, gaping and gashed, screams and ooze dripping from the walls, if you could call them that. Monstrosities even worse than before abandoned limping and bound after him, their breath on his shoulders. It was worse than anything he'd drawn up in calmer times, worse than anything he'd dreamed of even when nights were long and quiet. It hadn't struck him where he was at, the place where he'd began, but he pushed onwards, the fleshy pink walls seeming to cave in on him. His breath was panicked, quickening. HIs tears blurred his vision, small hands pushing back the hell but seeming to disappear into it instead. Small cries that didn't quite sound like his anymore were drowned out by the louder, more desperate sobs of the nightmares. His head ached as he longed to remember the better days, but all he remembers is the voice that she heard, the voice that she followed, and the voice that drove him deeper and deeper into madness. The voice of so-called royalty, the savior to the people he'd stuck in the calamity of the world. It came to haunt him in the place he knew first, and he felt lost and blue.

He felt crazy, like a hyperactive child. Like a baby. His fists struck the fleshy floor and bounced off, and he hoped in some part of his mind that it would scare off his demons but they never stopped coming.

It repeated, every single time.

The same nightmares, the same rooms. The same helpers and friends, that would die as he went deeper. Every. Single. Time. It drove him mad, watching the flies glow and swarm in circles of his death. The foul stench of feces didn't bother him anymore. He waited for that salvation that she prayed to, and it didn't come. All that came were more rooms. Some burnt, some burning. They came endlessly and he grew tired and awaited his death. He suffered without hope, only wanting the love that she never gave.

And they say every run is different.