Blue walls. Well, not actually blue, more like a turquoise or teal. I am in a building with a winding square staircase. The steps are steep but I’m climbing. I need to climb to the top, I know. Why, because there is something that I have to get. 

Curiosity gets to me as I pass another closed door. I am quite sure that I have opened a few such doors in the lower floors as well, but I don’t exactly remember actually touching their handles and pushing them in. There’s something about the building, the current floor always feels like the first. And yet, I feel the hard metallic handle in my palm, I feel the slight rusting of the layers not touched by human hands in quite some time. I push the door open. 

Immediately, I am engulfed by incense smoke and the chanting of some prayer. The melody is jittery, and there is nothing resembling a rhythm. But it’s a tune I have heard hundreds of times before. I see my cousin sister among the crowd. There are other people, strangers, who for a fleeting moment invoke a sense of familiarity. Then just as swiftly, they lose any resemblance to any person I know. It’s all very nice, and very enlightening, and very calming in the way only a mass prayer can make you feel. But I have to go. I wave goodbye to my sister, and close the door. Just as the door closed, I noticed that the room was empty, no crowd, no prayer, no music, no smoke. I do not dare open it again. 

On the next floor, I found another room, but the door to this one is already open a crack. I peek inside. A red figure is laying on top of a white one. Two beings, covered in satin. The red figure bobs slightly. A strange undulating dance, which is somehow erotic and scary at the same time. They’re making love it seems. Not human, and yet, merging into each other as humans tend to do. The white one spots me, and the red one lets out a scream. Enraged and furious, it hurls towards where I stand. I scamper out of the floor as quickly as possible, closing the door on my way. 

I think I have finally reached the floor I am supposed to be on. How do I know this is the one? There’s a stairway leading up and there’s the stairway I took from below to get here. I ignore the door for a moment and climb the stairway up, reaching the same floor again. I try taking the stairs going down and I climb down to be in front of the same door. And I know that all doors look slightly different, so I am stuck on this floor. 

I open the door. It creaks. Loudly. Inside, someone is standing by the window looking outside. They turn to me. It’s a woman. And I hadn’t noticed till now. Her dress is not really a dress but a strange weave of her curly wavy hair, covering her torso, down to her knees. 

“Why are you here?” She asks. 

“I am supposed to be here, I can’t leave this floor.” I say to her. I know I shouldn’t but I do. 

“You can.” She insists. 

“Do you want me to go?” 

“No.” She says and walks towards me. Her hair engulfs the both of us. And it’s dark once again.