Page 1
Stage lights blind me. Where am I?
Below me, a crowd screams like banshees or spectators at a Roman coliseum. My hands fumble with the notes of a song that feels at once unknown but familiar.
The crowd screams for me, cheers for me. Terrifying monsters bathe in their adulation. I feel my soul burn for fame.
But I know this is merely an illusion. I know where my desire for fame leads. Broken marriages. Broken bones.
Has it led me here?
Is this Hell?
Page 2
I find myself descending upon a lake, clutching only a flimsy umbrella to slow my fall.
Below: a cabin, a dock. Beyond them, not the familiar woods and the town of Bright Falls, but a wall of ice and snowy mountains like jagged teeth.
Around me, I can sense strangers, but not quite. We have been thrown together, that I know, like green soldiers conscripted into an unknown war. Are they here to mock my desire for solitude? We are drawn toward each other as we hit the ground, seeking safety in numbers.
Gunshots in the woods, like drumbeats or rain against a tin roof. I feel afraid.
Page 3
There is no safety here. I see my companions fall to the bullets of unseen assailants. But though their bodies vanish, I sense their presences lingering, like ghosts or bad dreams.
A dark impulse arises, like the schemings of a witch in a swamp. I have been so long in the Dark Place, the author of circumstance instead of its victim. Here, the tables have turned.
Bullets fly past my face, and I feel a heat surge inside me. Anger. I can rewrite this story. I can bring my companions back.
Page 4
As their forms reappear, regret curdles in my gut like sour milk. Perhaps they had found freedom, but I had trapped them once again. Was this my own selfishness at work? Should I not challenge whatever greater logic brought me here?
There’s little time to wonder, as more enemies with dark desires descend upon us. We’re helpless to flee.
My companions fall and blink out like dying stars. Hot bullets tear my flesh. There will be no salvation for me, as I had been others’ salvation moments ago.
If I want to escape, I’ll have to free myself.
Page 5
A return. A new location, new strangers. My curse.
In place of the lake I’d first seen, now I land in some kind of mansion. Wide grounds. Shrubbery in the shape of ravenous animals. A maze.
A famous writer could live here. An accomplished artist could deserve such grandeur. One like me?
Page 6
Around me, frightening men appear, shouting in frightening gibberish. They speak in gunfire. Blood lust consumes me. Only one of us can come out alive.
I’ll make sure it’s me.
Page 7
Bloody and battle-weary, my companions and I leave the compound. We don’t speak of what we’ve done. That place was no home.
We move through the strange land, driven toward an unknown goal. I can tell that we have to keep moving, that nowhere is safe. The air prickles with electricity. We quicken our steps.
Page 8
We aren’t fast enough. A storm comes upon us, but unlike any I’ve seen before. There is no sweet caress of wind or the staccato drumbeat of a summer shower. Instead, the air turns a gruesome purple.
Lightning crackles on my skin. I feel the storm sap my strength. My companions fall, and I am helpless to save them. Darkness covers me like stormclouds. Am I paying for my sins?
Page 9
Another return. New companions, neither friends nor enemies.
Is there no way out of this place? What am I not seeing?
In fury, I attack the world around me. My axe splinters the trunk of a tree. If this world wants to destroy me, then I’ll destroy it before it gets the chance.
But each assault only fills me with regret, fills me with the memory of all I’ve destroyed. I ruined so much in my desire for escape from my old life. What can more destruction bring?
Page 10
I follow my companions. They seem no more at home in this world than me, but they move with purpose.
In the basement of a strange house, we’re confronted with riches, more than I even dreamed of in my writing days. Like Midas’ touch, Midas’ curse. Is that why I’m here?
Gluttonous with fear and desperation, I try to take the gold bars, but they’re too big to carry, like stones in the pockets of a drowning man.
The place seems to know my deepest desires and to use them against me. My desire for fame, for grandeur, for riches. My desire to conquer and destroy. But through it all, a longing for home, for the familiar. As if it’s a funhouse mirror of my soul.
Perhaps to escape, I need to find a way back to what I know best.
Page 11
The ruin, the terror. Again and again.
I find myself with new strangers. At least their unfamiliarity is familiar.
In an ivory acropolis, strange signs. A glowing arrow, like those I’ve seen in the Dark Place’s twisted version of New York. Where will it lead me?
I follow its path. And there, hidden away: a plot board, like the one in my writer’s room! Is this what I’ve been brought here to find?
Page 12
As I stumble through this strange place, leaving my companions behind, I find more familiar sights. In a cabin, I find a familiar deer head, like those scattered through Bright Falls. The old world, the true world, blurs and overlaps with this one, like a pile of photo negatives in a darkroom.
I understand now. I’m simply in the wrong story! I can write my way back to my own story, the one I know best, if only I find my writer’s room.
Page 13
And then, deep in a woods, I see them: the tell-tale round windows of my writer’s room! Everything I wanted, even when I claimed I didn’t. A dark place, a familiar place, where I alone pull the strings, control who lives and dies. Like a power-mad puppetmaster. Returning again and again, like a drunk at a bar or sinner at a church.
Page 14
But as I rush for the doors, self-knowledge stops me. Wallowing in my darkness is not the way back to Alice, back to my life. How will I ever leave the darkness behind if I don’t turn my back on what it promises?
How can I learn to live in a world where I’m a piece of the story and not its creator?
As much as this unfamiliar place has caused me to seek the familiar, perhaps it’s in giving up the known that I’ll find true safety. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.
Isn’t it?
Page 15
I leave my writer’s room behind and seek out my companions. I know I have to give up my self-centered way, my need for power, my affair with darkness like a forbidden lover. Growing, changing, improving. That’s the only way to escape this place. Where I’ll go next is unknown, but it has to be better than here.
