Loving Layla

I wander down the spiralling staircase. I don’t know where I am, or how to get back. But I’ll work it out. Probably. I reach the end of the stone steps. I seem to be in the old dungeons. Bars cross over the arches, the empty air ringing eerily silent. There are no prisoners here. This torturous hall way is familiar. Too familiar. “Pull yourself together,” I murmur. “It’s just dèjá vu.” My footsteps echo as I creep through the middle of the cage-surrounded hall way. Dèjá vu. That’s all. Nothing to be scared of. It’s just dèjá vu. I look across. The cell on my right doesn’t have a door. I knew it wouldn’t. I’ve definitely been here before. I start towards the open cage. I don’t know why. I know exactly what’s in it. In the doorway, I can somehow see into the cell perfectly, despite the dim lighting. Tools are scattered over the floor, with more hung on the mould-cloaked walls. No lighting, but a small, barred window, high up the wall, lets in a small, broken square of yellow light. Not quite how I remember. They’re all hung, in my memory, on their racks, and aren’t dusty, or mouldy, but bloody. I pick a couple of the tools up. Not ones that a labourer would have in their toolbox, but deadly weapons of torture. I turn the hellish instruments over in my hands. A knotted whip, the twisted thread made from strands of pure silver, and a dagger, with crooked teeth pointing back towards the bejewelled handle, making removing the knife from a living person’s body more painful than stabbing. How do I know this? I shake my head. I can’t remember. But something’s been bugging me, nagging at the back of my head, ever since I wandered down here. At the end of the hall way, just after this shabby store-room, is a door, different from the rest. Instead of a metallic grid balancing in the frame, a solid wooden block fills the rectangular hole. The three hinges are made of different metals, and even different designs. The top is copper, and reaches almost the full width of the door. The middle is the newest, made of bronze, and is tiny compared to the other two. The hinge closest to the earth floor is the oldest, cloaked in rust, mud and damp. It is quite thick, the iron buckled to the door with a row of five nails. The handle to the door is also iron, and is a simple ring. The door bears a bolt instead of a lock and key. Not that it needs a bolt. The door opens inwards, and there is no means of a handle in the inside. Again, how do I know all this? I still can’t remember, but the answer lies in that sealed room, I know that much. But unlike the slapdash storage, it’s exactly how I remember it. Leaving the strange store room, I approach the dèjá door. The bolt drags unwillingly from its home. The room behind is tiny, and empty. A wide shelf nailed into the corner serves as a bed, and a minute square window, situated at least a foot above my head lets in the light. A piece of a broken mirror opposite the bed reflects the pitiful window. I stand in the corner. I can take three strides along one wall, or five strides along the other, and past the door. But instead I place myself under the window, and reach up. My hands grip the cold stone of the window sill. That’s all there is in this cell. Stone. Stone floor, stone walls, stone ceiling. Walking my feet up the wall, I drag myself onto the window sill, and balancing uncomfortably on one elbow, I reach towards the window. One of the few things in this room not made of stone, but it is still cold to the touch. Squinting out, the window is grimy, but it isn’t impossible to see out into the world on the other side. The window is just above the water line of the moat surrounding the castle. At the moment, it is simply a ditch, but I can remember Allison leaping in and out of the water, her aqua scales glittering in the dying autumn light, her crustacean tail being replaced for clear wings, formed of pure hydrogen-oxide, as she ventured on land to challenge the Demon King’s loyal sacrifices. I drop from the window. This cell isn’t part of my memory, but part of my future. This is my cell from my nightmares. I know the instruments of torture, as they were used to torture me. I haven’t met ‘Allison’ yet, but I probably will soon. It’s not dèjá vu, because it’s not a memory. It can’t be a memory if it hasn’t happened yet.