Not a bad dream. A bit boring, if anything. I wonder when… it’ll turn, thinks a wraith, humming to herself in a dingy little room. Next to her lies a once-human, shackled to its bed by sleep and greenbrier. Atop a bed-side table, a single candle illuminates the vines and the fog they exhale, surrounding dark green in a soft, orange veil, and casting thorny shadows that roll in the white haze. She eyeballs a collection of rolling thorns, thinks of spiders, and takes a sip from the fog.

  Gone are the loved ones that accompanied the man, and the atmosphere has grown somewhat darker too. It used to be a pub he sat in, obviously and without a doubt, but now, the building is far more abstract. A dream losing all semblance of reality. The kind of place a nightmare might take hold. At least he still has his drink. “Better try to taste it before *that’s* gone too, mister man,” she whispers to the sleeping ghoul.

  On the outside, it remains unbothered, which is a difficult thing to recognize in a face so tortured. She does not mind the way it looks, though. Maybe at one point, she would have, but after watching so many of their dreams, she knows that ghouls are still human… just with shattered minds and bodies. Funny how easily dreams can make them forget all about the dire situation at hand.

  She wishes *she* could dream. She hates herself for wishing. She hates those who still get to dream. Pain means much less without a few moments of peace to break it up. Everything feels the same, a mind-numbingly, boring existence. Still, she takes another sip from the fog.

  I wonder if he tasted it… would it have any flavor at all? Doubt it, thinks the wraith, seeing as her prediction – the complete and utter loss of dream beer – came true. But the man could care less about an absent beverage. In the distorted pub, a single exit has appeared – a dark staircase leading upwards. With eerie figures now lurking in his peripherals, it is almost certain he will climb those steps.

  Desire to flee a nightmare’s beginning shows clearly on the outside… clear enough for the wraith to notice through vines and thick haze. Her humming fills the room again, I think I’ve seen-no, I swear I’ve seen this one before. Another drink of the fog reveals a man in full sprint. If only he knew those chasing him bear his true form.

  Away you run from what you are to become. Fear misguided, its source mistaken, visions of monsters are not what leave you so shaken. You want to rest, but know if you do, a thousand and one monsters will become a thousand and two. That’s what really scares you… it’s already too late. Sorry, mister man, she silently intones beneath her humming, afraid her verses would reach no one at all. She breathes in the fog and holds her breath.

  This time, its taste gives glimpses of beauty in the darkness. As the man climbs a stairwell of demons, the steps aiding him and walls caging him begin to tear and populate with cosmos of dark purple and red. He wants to join the stars – to die from anything but the monsters – but their speed steals the moment needed to take the plunge. All he can do is race to the peak, leaving behind a beautiful death through a hollow rooftop door.

  He stands still for a few seconds, awing at the largest and brightest moon he has ever seen as its light showers the flat, gravelly roof underfoot. Besides this sole building, the city is empty. Pure darkness beside and below. Besides the white gem overhead, the sky is empty. Not a star or cloud in sight. Besides him, the roof is empty. No monsters and nothing to run from. It is peace, rest, reward, and… it does not last long.

  As demons flood the roof, pouring from its entrance like spiders hatching from an egg, the moon is the first to flee. He chases after it, reaching for its shrinking image while the world around him dims and the building’s edge rises to meet him. It is over. What was a dream became a nightmare, and a nightmare – devoured by a night terror. Cornered, alone and without light, the man makes one final choice. His eyes drift down, and… the wraith pulls away, returning a geyser of fog to the vines. The end of his story is not hers to watch. His terror would only drive her further from sanity.

  Instead, she watches the sleeping ghoul squirm beneath a cocoon of imprisoning greenbrier. Thorns tear into its flesh, drawing all sorts of fluids, and soiling its sheets five times over in a matter of seconds. Its cries are the absence of hope – screams of complete loneliness in a predatory universe. A bit dramatic. It’s not all that bad. Somehow, she reasons that *this* scene will corrupt her mind less than witnessing another night terror. Just a big spider… caught in its own web.

  Only when its movements come to a full stop are its thorny green shackles released. Drawing back to the cracks they sprouted from, the vines haunt the dingy little room with sounds of barbed wire cutting through sopping, wet clay, and leave a spiraling mark of sloppy lacerations on the ghoul’s twice-dead carcass. A mark that, along with the fog, serves as the only indication that the vines were ever there.

  For the briefest moment, the blanket of dense, white haze blurs the lines between desecrated corpse and deep red sheets. They appear as a single pool of blood, glistening in the dying light of a candle that refuses to shine upon anything else. And the wraith cannot take her eyes off the unlikely beauty, humming in a rare instance of calm until the sound of creaking metal overtakes her song.

  On either side of the bed, three thin slabs of steel screech open to reveal large fans sunken into the floor. Time’s up, stupid. No, worse than stupid. This… could break the contract, thinks the wraith, a bolt of dread shocking her absent heart as the fan-blades begin to accelerate. Like fighting a maelstrom’s pull, she swims against their ever-increasing, downward current, but before long, the force of airflow is too great, and all she can do is position herself over the crimson-stained sheets. There, her unstable form pancakes atop the corpse and its entrails, threatening to spill over the bed’s edges. But she knows… she need only outlast the fog. That is, after all, what the fans are here to collect.

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  When the last of it is pulled from the air, the buzz of blades slows to a rattle, and the scream of steel gates seals away the fans once more. At least my little light survived, she thinks, peeling her flattened being from rotten cloth and meat. The miracle candle illuminates her storm cloud of a body as it contorts back into its proper, wraithly shape. It also exposes the unlikely beauty that brought her calm for what it really is. Without a filter of milky white, the glistening pool of blood is just… death. A shattered body and scattered remains. Nothing special.

  She sighs, she forgets, and she hums two notes in victory – one for herself, and one for her light. Gorgeous sounds, they are, just like every sound she makes. The candle’s tiny flame writhes with her vibrations, and she sways slowly to match its dance. Of course, she knows this moment too, was never meant to last.

  Six gentle knocks assault the door, and her gaze snaps to a dark corner of the room. If she could take a deep, healing breath to calm her nerves, she would, but the only thing wraiths can suck down is fog. So, like a growing web of electrical currents, anxiety courses through her ill-defined body as she drifts towards the darkness. Nothing but open air restricts the way forward, but still, something deep within her hesitates… screams in opposition of leaving the island of candlelight at the room’s center. It is as if a brick wall stands in the divide between light and dark, and only upon hearing a doorknob’s click does she commit to hiding in the shadows.

  The door creaks open, inviting in a ray of light, and she feels its warmth just barely graze the small of her back. Unlucky. She wishes her plan had failed. She would have loved to be caught in the tempest of light now flooding the room. Instead, her near-weightless, translucent and… shivering body hovers in one of the few dark pockets left – a miserable little corner of moldy wood and paint that never dries.

  In exchange, to the annoyance who knocked – a tall figure whose shadow bridges the gap between the base of the door and the foot of the bed – she is all but invisible. A poor trade, and yet, one she has made a hundred times before. One she regrets, but one she refuses to walk back. Because this cold… this fear… *they* are not meant to last either.

  The figure enters the room with its neck craned forward, ensuring that the opaque, obsidian glass of its full-faced helmet does not bump against the doorframe. For the split second it spends ducking, the mirror-like surface of its helmet captures a distorted image of the beautiful, raging torchlight outside. More than anything, that reflection… that short-lived, promised world of light is where the wraith needs to be. But as the figure straightens its neck, towering over the cramped, little room, its helmet is cloaked in darkness, and the reflected world of light disappears. Only the light itself remains, its warm, orange hues mixing with the figure’s black suit to create a hazelnut aura.

  Though her body cannot seem to cease its nervous trembles, her eyes remain confident and focused as she stalks the figure from her tiny pocket of darkness. Down to the elegance in its step, the shaking stack of fresh, white sheets in its arms and the obvious repression of turbulence in its chest, for the wraith, this sight… this entire predicament is not at all out of the ordinary. She knows the world of light is just a short dash away, having object permanence and all, and she needs but a short window of opportunity to make her move.

  It comes with the sound of wood on wood. Two taps of hard-heeled oxfords against a splintered floor. Two strides of long, black-slacked legs in quick succession. That is all it takes for the figure to move from the door to the rot-stricken bed, providing a blind spot that the wraith uses to slip away. Maybe next time, Aino, she thinks, a lovely warmth embracing her as she departs the dingy, little room labeled “93.”

  Beyond is the promised world of light – winding hallways of white, and polished, marble floors that are just begging to be ruined by a long, snaking line of once-humans. Doors upon doors line the walls, all numbered in what seems like no particular order, and all connected by intricately carved trims coasting just above the floor. Whoever carved such trims was obsessed with lacing them with stories of demons… demons that the wraith does not know and does not care for. Well, except one – a spider with a strange looking nose.

  Its story begins at the base of door number 1056, all alone and stranded in a rainy, mountaintop wasteland. Incredibly detailed carvings depict the spider’s toughest battles, the loyal disciples it gained and the grand creations it made. A couple meters to the right, where the trim connects to the adjacent door, number 2, the story ends with the spider standing upon a mountaintop of its own. Armor-clad, it points its serrated blade skyward, ready to accept whatever challenge comes next. For this trim alone, the wraith lowers herself to the cool, marble floor and hums a precious tune in admiration.

  Otherwise, her flight through the pristine white halls is uninhibited, an endless supply of light guiding the way. Each door she passes is interposed between two flames birthed from scaly, golden sconces, and at speed, the fixtures blur into streaks of fire and treasure. It is the perfect place for her, and yet, she intends to leave it behind. She misses sleep. She misses her dreams. For those, she is willing to trade the warm, freeing light she only just received. And so, miss wraith scans the golden, orange streaks for a break. For a shadow. For a door cracked open, a bed and a dreaming, broken soul… the closest she will ever get to having another dream of her own.

  However, when she reaches her quarry, a door opened just wide enough for her to squeeze through, an enthralling abnormality resonates throughout the halls. It sounds like an argument… one sided, really… one voice, only. But in response, the voices of hundreds erupt into a terrified frenzy. Screw it all. The wraith makes for the source of chaos.

  “Finally… something exciting.”