You are in a room.
It is lit orange by a chandelier in the middle, hanging over a glass table with wooden hooves as legs.
The walls are a dark brown oak with panel molding and gold detailing.
You imagine growing with the trees, in the sun, feeling its glowing blanket reward you.
You look outside and see the moon just coming up.
Its crescent glow illustrates just the edges of the landscape outside.
From the room, all you can see is the dark shapes of unknown trees,
Jagged rocks, glints of wet grass reaching for the sky.
You shiver at the unfamiliarity of the dark shapes, you
compare them to the smooth edges of the room, the
slick texture of polished oak, the warm velvet of the
carpet under your feet.
You turn around.
There is a gray granite stone next to the glass table in
the middle of the room.
That was easy, you think.
You knock on its rough texture, and it hinges open
with a tectonic weight, revealing a room similar to
the one you are in now. It is warm and airtight, you
are surrounded by walls of engraved dark wood, and
cornices sit along the upper edge where the walls meet
the ceiling. A gold trim hides all of the otherwise dark
details of the room, reflecting the orange light from
that same chandelier hanging over the glass table.
The window is gone.
As is the door.
You sit in the stone examining your comfort.
You cannot see it but you know you are inside it.
You lie on the red couch.
Time passes and paintings are absorbed into the pale
wall.
Sometimes they fall.
There is a dead body on the dining table in the stone.
An old man.
You panic.
You can smell its rotting teeth.
You are in a chair.
It faces the red couch.
It is a La-Z-Boy.
It is warm and airtight in the stone.
Never too warm.
You can smell its rotting teeth.
You never left the room.
It was cold outside.
