This is not my bed.

These sheets are not my own, and this is not the room I went to sleep in. Yet everything looks the same. The sheets a dull white, with a stubborn stain in the far right corner. The drapes, those dreary, awful drapes, the colour of dark wine. And yes, the wallpaper too. How I wish I could forget its brown tinged edges, with those gaudy swirls and flourishes leading ever onwards but never going anywhere, or suddenly disappearing where the paper has been scratched and torn away. Indeed, if this were a picture, I might be tricked into thinking that this was my room.

But this room feels decidedly devoid of anything at all. How can that be, when I am right here? The silence, too, is overwhelming, as if the air itself were frozen, no longer able to carry sound. And what of that ghastly light cast about the room, filling me with this aching dread? From the corner of my eye I can see the television, standing where it has always stood, but I cannot make out the picture. If only I could turn my head and see, I might learn its secrets. But my body will not listen.

The man in the corner breaks his bones.

And where are all those friends of mine? Much as I try I cannot remember their faces, or their names, and I wish they would come to see me. How I wish they would come. But perhaps they have forgotten me, as I have forgotten them. After all, hasn't it been years? Or was it decades? My dear friends, I am sorry I do not recall. It's this dreadful room that makes me forget.

The man with the broken bones beckons me. Maybe he can stop the rats from gnawing at me. Their insatiable teeth eat away greedily, and I would plead for them to stop, if only I could speak. I would not mind their company, were it not for their ceaseless, silent gnawing. I can feel the chattering of their teeth against my bones. More of them keep crawling out of the wallpaper, from cracks and crevices they should not fit through, a writhing mass of fur and teeth and tails, washing over me and crushing me beneath their weight. I worry they will not stop until my bones are all that is left of me.

The man with the broken bones speaks to me through a mouth that isn't there, with a voice that makes no sound. I can not hear him, but I know what he says.

I will not listen to him, for I know better than to trust men with broken bones and mouthless faces, and this is not my bed.