I’ve been climbing up a spiral staircase.

It was so high that when I looked up, I saw only a black dot where it seemed to end—at least, that was the impression I got. Perhaps it was just my imagination.

The dot appeared to be getting larger the higher I climbed.

Sometimes, it would disappear, then it would appear again. The size of the black dot would vary from time to time.

This must be a dream, I thought.

“Who asked you to come up?”

A faint voice drifted from a distance.

But when I turned around, there was no one there.

There was nothing. Only the spiral staircase in an enormous whitewashed room.

I kept climbing anyway.

Soon, I grew tired. My legs felt as though they were about to give out.

While my will was strong, my body just couldn’t keep up.

When was the last time I had a decent meal? My last water intake?

I just couldn’t remember for the life of me.

That’s when I felt my soul tearing itself away from my body.

I began hearing that voice again. It loomed over me this time; it was more audible, even conversational.

“Another contender, I see. Just a little more, and soon you’ll be free from that useless mortal body of yours.”

“Who—who’s out there?” I managed to let out a trembling, cracked voice.

“Just another resident. Another contending thought. C’mon, a little further and you’ll figure it out.”

“Figure what out?”

I willed all my extremities to move. I managed to climb some forty flights more or less, attempting to escape the strange voice.

Why would anybody build such a strange contraption? A staircase in the middle of nowhere?

When I reached another landing, I looked down and saw my physical body lying lifelessly on the steps below.

“I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight, am I?”

“For as long as you have me, for as long as you are you, I don’t think so.”

“And why is that? Is there a way to just shut you off?”

“I wish it were that simple. You’ll have to find a way around me, around you—thoughts are essential but bothersome sometimes.”

“Thoughts?”

“Well, we could be an afterthought, a suppressed memory, sometimes a culmination of a feeling, like desire, even malice. Like I said, bothersome.”

“I’m an afterthought? What the heck are you talking about?”

“We are the itch of the mind, we are engineers of guilt, of sorrow, even grief; we are what dreams are made of—a storm of the mind, the passing rain over a sleepy town, the knights of creation. And no, we don’t get to sleep. Even in unconsciousness, we do our handiwork, the strange and the bizarre; we sometimes appear as apparitions, you see.”

“Especially at night.”

“Keeps you awake, keeps our person awake, yes.”

“If that’s the case, it must be nighttime, then.”

“In their world. Not around here, I’m afraid.”

“You’re not making sense at all.”

“Look around. There’s nothing here. Only your consciousness and all the things you’re about to abandon.”

“Can you at least try to be helpful?”

(silence)

“Hey, are you still there?”

There was nothing.

I kept on climbing the spiral staircase. It must’ve been some time before I reached what appeared to be the summit.

When I looked down, everything was the same—a white canvas.

I began to survey what was above me.

It was like peering through a wide window, only it was an enormous view of someone’s bedroom.

And a faceless figure gripping a colossal pencil, poised to make contact with where I stood—

I wait for the artist to continue with his craft.