Lucid dream

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To the activators: I hope this goes through as a U18. The ending is pretty morbid, but I've limited myself to hints, so I'll just give it a try as a U18.
To my kind readers (Haaach!). You can find the actual commi for the chapter if you write one yourself * fg *
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Darkness so all-encompassing that I believe I can touch it. A moment ago the city was brightly lit, but now I can't see my own hand in front of my eyes. A power outage? How blind I stumble through the street. I'm on my way home because now I have my own home again. I just don't find it. Am i drunk That would also explain why my shirt is gone. Another woman's story? I don't remember anything like that. Damn it, I don't see anything! Where is the moon when you need it?
As if on cue, children's laughter from school around the corner. Now? At this time?Middle of the night?

There's no moonlight in the window
The moon's gray clouded face
Every night an O speaks

Because what he sees here is sad
It disappears behind clouds
How is the world full of crowds
The joyless one left alone

You find yourself on the edge of the night
You who spoke so carelessly.

You said you like her
You said you trust her.
You said you don't want to lose her.

And then
Suddenly you lost the language

They sing and laugh and don't seem to know any fear, despite the bizarre nursery rhyme that sounds out of their mouths. Somewhere between the bright voices I hear violin playing. The tones are soft and not entirely clean, but beautiful in a bizarre way that goes perfectly with the strange singing.
I keep walking I'm slowly making out shadows in the dark. Houses. Street lights. The bench on the edge of the tiny little park, right across from my front door.My front door! At last! I dig for the key in my pocket, feel for the lock, but my fingers are touching concrete where the door should have been. Where the fuck is my home?
Suddenly there are steps in the darkness that quickly come closer and yet seem far less threatening to me than the singing children. Light. Light that lives. A small, living flame that seems to be drinking water, from the hand of the slender, almost thin figure to which the steps belong. I can hear the steady drop of water as it escapes through the leaky vessel in the palm of my hand and slaps onto the floor. I know the boy who, in his hand, connects two very different elements in peaceful symbiosis. We only saw each other here yesterday.
"Are you going to open the door for me again?" I ask, glad not to have to stand out here at a loss.
"You unlocked it yourself last time.I'll just show you where it is, "he replies, borrowing Marco's voice again, which echoes strange and yet familiar in my head.
The last time we met here he smiled, but today he's dead serious. There is a sad expression in the water-blue eyes, besieging them like a gloomy premonition that encroaches on me. I do not feel well. I know that his very presence always had the opposite effect on me. What is different? Where is the familiar security that I associate with him?
Without a word he holds the small fire to the door. I can see how it, starting from the flame, spreads on the concrete wall as if someone had just built it. I look at him questioningly. He nods and I unlock it.
The lock opens with a soft click. I push myself against the door, want to push it open, but it doesn't move an inch. "You left the building in the direction of your escape," he reminds me in a tone that is neither friendly nor rude.It is simply ... nothing and therefore more unpleasant than any rebuke I know.
So the direction of escape. I pull the door open and now I also know why I fled the building. Where my hallway, a square, anonymous staircase, should be, is a spiral staircase that, to make the madness complete, also leads downstairs, even though I live at the very top. The railing is elaborately decorated, but just like the steps rotten. In some places there are holes like black chasms that I definitely don't want to fathom. I stop as if rooted to the ground. I still know the picture. Back when I asked a psychologist to seal my memories, she used the picture of a spiral staircase. Only it was much better preserved than this one.
"Are we going?" He asks.
No, I want to yell at him, but the word gets stuck in my throat. "Do we have to?" I ask insteadandalready know the answer.For him, too, the question is rhetorical. “I can go ahead if you want,” he offers me, “but you have to open the doors, you have the key.” The doors. The doors are exactly the reason I don't want to go in there! "What happens if I don't?" I try one last time to avoid the inevitable.
"I guess then we won't find the exit and you won't come home," he replies soberly, holding the fire on his outstretched arm and taking the first step. Because I don't want to see the steps, I fix my gaze on the calming flame. If I look into it long enough, I can make out human contours in it. Head down, towards the water in the palm of your hand, the barely recognizable creature hovers there and seems to be interested in nothing other than the cool water. When hand and fire suddenly move away from me, I follow automatically, descending the first step, which groans softly under our weight.Step by step we walk around the first arch, always accompanied by a muffled creak, until we reach the first of the doors he was talking about. Like those who will follow her, she is set directly into the wall. You return at the edge of the stairs at the same intervals. Doors made of musty wood, here and there still with the remains of peeling paint. Can you even call this countless layers of gray and gray color?
We pass one of those sleeping monsters made of wood and rusty hinges. Then a second. A third. He stops at the fourth door, shifts his weight on the step to see if she is holding him, and then gives me a questioning look. "What do you think of this one?" He signs instead of using the borrowed voice again. I have to admit that I'm a lot more comfortable with it than when he speaks.
"Is probably as good as any other," I reply weakly. I unwillingly unlock it while the hair on the back of my neck straightens up to the last.Everything in me is reluctant to open this gray thing in front of me. But that is exactly what I do, driven by the certainty that otherwise I cannot leave this place. The wood shrinks with a squeak and reveals a child's room.
I can barely avoid the toy robot that flies towards me. He touches my companion briefly on the arm, but he doesn't make a face, instead he looks curiously inside. A little boy sits on the floor

(What is he doing here? This is my door!)

maybe ten or eleven years old. He has a bandage around his head from which tangled red hair peeks out. The look in his eyes is extremely irritating. Too mature, too experienced for a child, it stands in stark contrast to the thrown robot, a gesture that couldn't be more childlike. "Kisho, what's the point?" Sighs a young woman behind us in this-don't-stand-so-tone that basically makes me mad. It seems to be the same with him.We have to dodge the next toy. "Excuse me, please?" Asks the woman immediately and pushes past us into the room. "You don't have to do anything other than say hello for a moment. Maybe you can even play something for him? That would be something", she flatters her son, "Just come down for a moment."
"No, Yami says he's angry."
She groans as if someone hit her. "Not Yami again! I'm getting enough! He doesn't exist!"
"I suppose there is!"
She recalls what she has learned about raising children and tries to be kinder. "It's okay if you have fantasy friends, but if you overdo it, the others will think you're crazy. Is that what you want?" She threatens gently.
"I AM crazy. That's why I wrapped the bandage around my head. Then everyone can see that I'm mentally ill. You're telling me that, aren't you?"
"N-no!", She assures, startled.
"Of course not," he replies as sarcastically as a true adult.I flinch and his mother does the same. My torchbearer looks at me confused, but doesn't ask any further questions. Behind us, more people are coming up the stairs. "What's going on?", Tanaka wants to know, "What's taking so long?"
"He just doesn't want to come out of his room," explains Kisho's mother.
"That is very rude," Tanaka tries to educate him, but his guest takes the wind out of his sails. "It's okay," he says, trying to defuse the situation. Just the old diplomat. Ronga peeps into the room with interest. I have a hard time not being too frightened that he of all people is the visitor the little one is supposed to greet. The fact that we're being pelted with toys again doesn't necessarily make it any easier for me."Kisho!" thunders[i]Tanaka.
"I am extremely sorry, Mr. Kodansha," stammered his wife. So his name is Kodansha too, not just Darey. Look, so Ronga owned the company I work for.The old wolf is always good for a surprise. I have to smile and Ronga laughs too. "Not really, not really. That's okay," he said soothingly.
Meanwhile, Kisho rummages in a box, pulls out a small children's violin that looks astonishingly similar to the large one I saw that evening while awake, and holds the bow threateningly. "Don't you dare to take even one step over the threshold!" He snaps at Ronga, "Don't come any closer."
"You really have to de-"
"Shut up, mom! Don't let him wrap you around your finger! He's not human!" He screeches and pulls the bow over the string so that the instrument screams like a cat that has been kicked on the tail. We all cover our ears. Only the deaf-mute next to me stands there calmly and watches the spectacle indifferently, almost sadly that he cannot take part in the misery.
Ronga's form suddenly begins to collapse.His fingernails elongate and an animal growl escapes his throat. It is day in here, although it is night