>>407I'd walked past despite my unease and found a small bedroom. There was a bedside table with an old-fashioned table lamp that looked blackened under a layer of soot and grime. Next to it was an old full-size mattress, completely soiled with years of dust and liquids. Between the bed and the lamp were countless bodies of bugs caught in dangling webs, mold sprouting from their carcasses, and on the walls surrounding the furniture were hundreds of small pieces of paper pinned to the walls. Some were Yu-Gi-Oh cards, many were pictures of Kaito, and some were old Polaroids with blurred and unrecognizable faces, figures that evoked a sense of grief when I looked at them.
Despite how horrible the scene was, I had definitely recognized it as 'my room'. I felt like an intruder in the midst of nature who had taken its course and reclaimed something that was never really mine.
My memory fades from here - I remember getting on a bus, presumably to pick up hardware for my new home. But the bus kept going further and further into the trees and away from any sign of civilization. The other passengers didn't seem to mind, but the further it went, the more I panicked. The line you pull to alert the driver that it's your stop was there, but buried under the upholstery of the cabin, as if someone working on the vehicle had tried to cover it up long ago. I felt the ridge and pulled, but with each tug the bus only accelerated.
Then I woke up.