He took off his muddy leather shoes and threw them into the trash. He walked into his indoor pool. The more steps he took, the more the water rose up his chest, dampening the collar of his shirt as the chlorine water engulfed his head. He gently closed his eyes and slowly sank to the depths. He held his breath patiently until he couldn’t keep it up anymore. His hair brushed by his ears, and as if gravity had reversed, his hair floated, swaying elegantly along the calm turbulence of the water. His arms wrapped around his shoulders, and he rested his head on his knees as his feet touched the slippery bottom.

In that short moment, the world was quiet, and his mind was empty as the pressure of the water squeezed his brain. He couldn’t hear a thing, not even his own thoughts. Then he opened his mouth slightly, letting bubbles of air slip out, one bubble at a time. As those bubbles popped, he saw himself at the seabed, knocking against a submerged car’s window—a car rooted in the sand and tangled in seaweed. He kept hitting that window and slamming his entire body against it, screaming out until his lungs ran out. He swam towards the light in a hurry, and just as he reached the surface, the electricity went out.

He felt devastated, as if he had failed to achieve something—something in his subconscious mind. Water kept dripping off his hair, and the wet clothes on his body slowly turned cold. The back of his shirt became a translucent window to his scars—the scars engraved deep in his skin and beneath it. His head began spinning to keep all of the bad memories away, but with it, the good ones were thrown away as well. Every time he came closer to the truth, it was only a dream. The drenched clothes weighed him down, and he dragged himself, continuously tripping on the cuffs of his soaked pants.

He crawled into his couch, and his back collided with its leather. He stared aimlessly at the mirrored ceiling; he saw glimpses of his reflection as electricity flickered back. He saw the water on him turn into blood. He saw the look in his eyes—his vision slowly turning black, from his pupil to his sclera, like ink quickly soaked in paper—

BEEP—BEEP—BEEP— The alarm rang into his ears like a violin’s string snapping during the climax of the dawn.

The sun passed through the laced curtains—the only ray of light in this dark, quiet mansion. Its light left a floral print on his face, a painting he blocked out with his elbow. He opened his eyes and stared into nothingness; space itself felt like a container for his emotions. The tones of red on the maple wooden floor, the purple shadows hiding away from the warmth, and the sunbeam piercing through the tiny particles of dust like a golden sword.

He rested his head on the back of the couch and stared at the spinning ceiling fan. As it slowly sped up, he saw himself running away—to a grey agoraphobic field. He kept running, and while sweat ran down his face like light droplets of rain, he never ran out of breath. He ran on the back of his heels, his sleeves swayed like jellyfish, and his hair was wet from the sweat, so it got stuck on the sides of his face. He ran faster as the ceiling fan sped even faster, and then he came to a halt as snow started to fill the long grassy field.

He got out of his daydream and stared at the glass door to his unmaintained garden, watching as the snow fell like pastry sugar, hiding a very ugly garden filled with venomous weeds. He lifted his eyebrow in question,

“How come it snows when the sun was just here?”

He locked his phone, put some wood in the fireplace, and then sat on the floor facing the fire. He tilted his head back and leaned on the couch. He stared into the shadow of flame on the ceiling, thinking about how he wanted to burn everything. The world itself felt like a never-ending rhythm—the type you get tired of listening to after a little bit.