Out of the darkness and submerging into the moist density of life with a splash.
Hollow caves before dark waters.

How do you swim without a body?
Do you float?
Do you drift?
The mind never really does stop jerking, does it? And the heart keeps pounding anyway…

Do you need eyes to see?
I'd never found the heart to checked if they were still there. And yet I saw.
And I knew where I was going. I knew my travel's destination and I knew my way by heart.
Though broken it may have been.

I somehow knew that I'd find the house, our house as it has been for yours, to be deserted.
And I would lie if I said that I wasn't relieved.

I felt the whispering thoughts scouring my mind as I sought a way into the ruins.

At least she didn't die waiting. At least she wouldn't wait dying.

And yet...

Cold desolation had the masonry in its grip. But the walls were mere smithereens of a virtual reality, glowing dark in the nothingness of evermore.
And I saw. I saw through it all.
I saw through the mist that used to cover my mind and dissembled verity.
I felt with my eyes, I touched the warmth that guided me through the devastation and led me to her room.
Lena's room. A sanctuary for reality.

I slid through the door, breathlessly taking in what had remained of her life.
The chaise lounge, the curtains and the furniture…grey nothingness with no life in it. And it would fade soon.

But there it lay, on the dark smoke that might have been her desk. Her handwriting preserved on yellowing paper but squeezed together by a pale ribbon.
It could only have been her, in my humble opinion untruly but by her highly valued, chambermaid who would have dared to confine such delicate encompassments of reality and leave them to rot.
The ribbon crumbled beneath my touch.

My dear wife's memories had been carelessly packed together; letters between envelopes, personal notes commingled with chronicles. And scattered among them lay ripped out pages of her diary.
As I turned my head in disgust I found myself growling with the beast inside riding my convulsing emotions.

The Playwright.
Lena had been one of us when I had been one of them.
Now we were neither.

I shivered, my monstrous mouth giving the gurgling sound I had learned to despise so much.
Tenderly I extracted a leave, hardly daring to cast a glance over it. And yet at the touch I felt the words flowing into my mind.

My dearest,

Do you remember our first dance? I would not be surprised if you'd tell me that you didn't.
Your heart had been racing throughout the evening. You wouldn't have dared to ask me for a dance and I wouldn't have had the heart to admit that I couldn't dance.
Our first encounter may have been a collision; but it had been a seminal collision nonetheless. And I knew that I wouldn't regret it.

But doubts do overcome me as I'm still waiting for your return.
And I regret that my fear prevented me from taking the last steps with you.
Somewhere in my heart of hearts I knew that it was time.
They say knowledge is power. But it's nothing but a curse.

I wonder if you'll ever know…

Though safely tucked away and ready to be send out the envelope's reverse side lacked an address.
How could she have known where to send it to? How could she have known where I've been?

I wonder if you'll ever know.
Her words hurt. I felt her voice, I could see the tune.

I skimmed through the sheets of fugacious words.
Letters. She kept writing letters. Over all this time Lena had still tried to…reach me?

But what's time when you've looked into eternity?

I'd unwrapped another letter to find the words answering my questions.

My dearest,

Time trickles through my veins like endless rain.
But what's time when you've looked into eternity? What's a year when you've spent centuries in the dying sand of perpetuity?
If only I knew that you wouldn't come back.

If only I knew that you were dead.

Amongst the letter a note had slipped into the wrapping. Scribbled over the torn pages the same words in a handwriting so frightened and distorted that I could barely recognize it as Lena's.
I HEAR WINGS!

And the sheets of paper deliquesced into one narrative of pulsating madness, headlined and crisscrossed by the same words.

I HEAR WINGS!
Every night I hear wings. A humming bird's wing beat with a steam engine.
It's not the scream of a living thing but the screech of dead metal.
Why does it hide in the dark? Why does it wait for me?

We were warned. We thought that everything would change once we'd crossed the boarders.
But they were wrong. We change while the world stays the same.
The ultimate truth screams in terror and it's screaming at me. Because I know the truth.
It's set in stone.
Peering into one's own truth is forbidden. But it's not your own truth that's driving you insane. It's the other's truths, their destinies and their prophecies of doom.
How could I've lived with this burden?

Since you've left Professor Du Pré never paid this house another visit. He knows where you are now but he may think that bearer of bad messages misbecomes him. But I shouldn't wonder.
It's times like these I remember my mother's words: 'Never trust an unmarried man.'
But wasn't she the one who said 'Never fall in love with a musician'? And you're mostly a painter anyway…

At night I hear wings.
What am I waiting for? I can die alone. Better alone than together.
And it's growing stronger every day…
Why does everyone think I'm so scared? We all face the Simurg in the end.

Gently I placed the fragments of Lena's crumbling mind back onto the grey and unreal table.
Hidden beneath the obviously hastily bundled up package of reflections of her thoughts lay another envelope. I recognized Alexandre's address on the back, though it had been coarsely scratched out.
The crude black marks which covered most of the paper caught my attention instantly.

My dear,

Your special colours are a witches' brew! The dark marks of the paint stain my fingers even weeks after I've laid hands on your palette and brush. Especially your fiendish black refuses to relinquish my skin. As if it held my body within its firm grasp…
Sometimes I wished you'd return and scold me for the disarray I've caused among your colours and their sacred order on your palette. But its nightmares that unbosom that your destiny is of unearthly nature. And so shall be your return.

As I look upon my work, the heinousness I've trapped upon the canvas, my chest hurts for my heart is breaking.
And what's staring right back at me is the face of nightmares. It's the future I've seen.
But not mine.
And that's what makes it hard to endure.

You always said that painting made it easier to bear.
You promised me that it would help.

And now I have to lock you up and wish to see no more of you.

Intrigued that Lena had dared to resume her aesthetic work where she'd left it after her marriage I slid through the spectral house, searching for her artistic legacy.

I found my atelier to be still located in the attic; at least I found what was left of it.
The roof was a mess and barely existent, streaks of sunlight formed small puddles on the floor.
And scatter across it laid paintings that bore witness to a distorted mind.

My gaze travelled over the disintegrating canvas. Evidently my dear Lena's brushwork had suffered. She'd never been an artist herself and yet I had found that her stringent drawing style left nothing to be desired.
Her works had always reflected her fair-minded fidelity; while being rich in detail they'd been meticulously drawn.
She never palliated anything.

And all that was left now were crude rags smeared with paint.
On the far end, illuminated by a light spot, stood the last easel that hadn't fallen victim to woodworms. It was an old easel and probably not one of the best I'd had.
But it had been recently used.

I dared to step forward into the dying sunlight that engulfed Lena's possible last work.
And the beast inside roared as I recognized my own distorted, monstrous appearance mirrored in the raging colours.