Lurkers of the Swamp

Sweat ran down my forehead and dribbled onto the cardboard box in my hand, its surface drank it up greedily until the droplet was no more than a shadowy stain. The cold air in those dark hallways seemed to whistle past every corner. The empty building hummed at every angle. Especially that early morning.

I dragged my feet in front of me through two glass doors connected that led to quaint and empty lobby spaces. It was a labyrinth in there. To this day, populated though it is, I avoid my mother’s offices. I caught myself in the reflection of every glass door I had opened. Light from faraway windows and distant bulbs lit me up enough to see my eyes ringed with black and drooping just as my shoulders did. Through the fog of insomnia I felt myself rushing and sweating even more through the cold air. 

 The place had its own coat of paint. Not on the walls or floors, not only, I mean. It was in the air and the light. I see it in most places, I see it vividly on the cusp of sleep. Every room that exists is blanketed by swirls and wallpaper invisible to the naked eye. The hues can raise your spirits or bury them all the same. The offices had a color. A color I’ve seen only in the depths of night. Only in my dreams or in that lucid period where you cannot tell what’s real and what’s fake. 

It is a grey so dark it could be black. But it isn’t black, black is nothing. The Greydark is the color that hugs me at night. The color you see when it’s silent and nobody sits beside you.

She sings her song, the one whose lyrics I cannot make out. It is the color of the girl’s hair who has taken residence in my sleep. In my delirium, much like that day’s delirium. I was still sweating from the humid smog that rises from the Florida soil. Only now I was shivering too, pacing through the cold, grey air. Every door I open leads into another empty room. Another hallway right out from it. 

3342-3356 reads a sign with an arrow pointed left. I rest the box on my knee and with a gentle upward motion, steady it back up and walk in the path of the arrow. 

The dim fluorescent lights flickered and cursed me from above. It’s one of the only times I remember missing the Greydark. If it wasn’t for the glass figurine in the box and fear of my mother’s anger I would have hurled it to the side and left that place then and there. 

I remember counting my breaths. I sped up as I got further down the hallway. It seemed to get longer. I don’t recall hearing clear voices, but what rumbled through my ears wasn’t nothing. It was a whisper, less, even. Like air pushing through a keyhole, the same sweet nothings I hear on the cusp of sleep. The night before that morning was three hours of those murmurs. I followed them through a dirt path, nearing the end I saw the girl with grey dark hair. She was dancing in the moonlight, by the trees. I could almost reach my hand to her. 

I blinked three times before my head hit a metal door. 3352. Mom’s office. I turned my head to the hallway and found the length of it behind me. I shook off the ringing in my head and opened the door. Darkness filled my vision. I stumbled back and leaned on the cold metal of the door until I could make out my way through the room. 

My eyelids fell heavily as I put the box down on a barren desk. Dozens of containers and plastic wrapped machines lay scattered on the floor. Behind the desk sat a leather chair, seat open towards me. I felt it pull at my legs. As if they were made of wood, I stumbled forwards and

sunk into the cushion. The Greydark swathed me whole as my eyes lost the struggle with my body to remain open. 

I am not a spiritual person. Religious or otherwise. I do dream though. In those dreams, I feel something. It’s palpable, real. Something warm or cold but not to the skin or the brain. To another part of me, one I cannot name. In dreams I can see the blanket of colors with different eyes. They swirl around the world of my creation. I fought it in that chair, in that sterile and vacant place, like I never had before, and never could again. 

I could hear her then. All around me, swimming through the GreyDark seas, they flowed and melted into her hair. The girl who wades through my dreams, as beautiful as she’s ever been. And for a mere moment, in that empty office building, amidst the dust and the silverfish, she was just as real.