He struggled to get his hand out of the wall as more liquid started seeping through these cracks. After a while he stopped, took a deep breath, placed his foot on the wall and pushed himself loose, spinning backward in the attempt. Realizing that he was just about to dropkick the TV screen in his struggle, he closed his eyes to avert his gaze from the unavoidable tragedy. ‘I’m sorry baby, daddy loves you’ he thought and readied himself for the collision.

  However, as his foot collided with the screen, instead of the expected crash, it felt like he had stuck his foot in a bucket of cold syrup. His foot went through the screen with a ‘blorp’ with ripples cascading outwards from the point of impact. Confused, he opened his eyes and peered into the TV, but the reflection displayed in which his foot was dangling was not of his room. Deep within the TV screen stood an altar upon dusty stone tiles, an altar made of stone and bone, with a circular indentation with decorations spun around the rim. Images of skulls combined with a mixture of Norse symbols and others he didn’t recognize. Christofer looked back at the sizzling water as it reached the level of his mattress

  “Mysterious altar or sizzle water,” Christofer looked back and forth between the TV screen and the rising levels of water.

  “Alright, altar it is,” he said to himself and jumped inside. Darkness swallowed the area, but just like the cold it did not cause his sight to be impeded. The atmosphere shifted as he stumbled inwards with a couple of heavy steps into the hall that had opened up.

  Christofer stood on a shattered stone tile as he looked around. The cobblestone blackened, a light breeze picked up, carrying with it the smell of charcoal and black dust; warmth touched his fingertips. Each step echoed and sent ash and smoke up into the air.

  “Hm, what? These are some really snazzy acoustics-” Christofer took a deep breath,

  “Hellooo?” he yelled, resulting in dust raining down from the rocky ceiling above as another couple hellos echoed after.

  He could hear a dripping sound, but could not figure out its origin. Blood from his hand dripped on the floor as he made his way towards the altar but he was so focused on the clear sound that echoed. A rough carving sound, like rocks smashing into rocks. A mysterious cloaked man sat crouched down amidst a circle of rune stones, completing yet another runic rock in his lap. The serrated edge of a sharp rock dug into the smooth rock in front of him. Christofer’s steps were now apprehensive shuffles - despite that, dust still obscured most of his field of vision. He moved closer to the altar, but now the man was gone. The rune he had etched looked like the one in his room - a carving of a hand with a lock around it. Christofer looked to the right, then to the left but there were no signs of the cloaked man. It was by this point he finally noticed his hand.

  “Wait, why is my hand bleeding!?” he asked himself, sighing.

  “Did I somehow cut myself back when I yanked my hand out of my wall? Bah! What is this thing?” he said with a pained expression on his face, blood still dripping from his clenched fist as he crouched down and poked the weird altar with his other hand. The blood seemed to pool up in a groove on the floor, flowing out into an elaborately carved pattern.

  ‘I’m kinda surprised that I didn’t see this on the way in. Also, I don’t remember bleeding that much.’ he thought to himself, stood up and stepped back.

  Despite the fact that the dripping of blood had stopped, the deep blood red flowed ever further along the grooves, as another deep green liquid flowed from another source. The two liquids danced along the grooves as they formed a sigil around the altar. A whirring sound resounded in the room as if a machine had been activated. Tired cogs clanked against one another within the walls. The mixed liquids in the sigil ignited in an instant, leaving only a continuously pulsating yellowish-green glow in the groves of the sigil where the two liquids had been.

  A crackling noise rang through the room and a sliver of green light illuminated the area. Despite knowing this was a dream, he still closed his eyes by pure instinct. When he opened his eyes again, he could see that the walls were lined with torches, flickering with green flames.

  “I admire its purity. A survivor... Unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality,” a voice echoed in the halls. Christofer’s head jerked into the direction of the voice.

  It was the gecko, once more sitting on his right shoulder but with new colors. Green, with yellow speckles on the neck and the upper back. Three rust-colored transverse bars on the snout and head; blue on the upper part of the skin around the eye. On the lower back there were three tapering red bars. It no longer showcased suction cups, but actual gecko feet.

  “Err, what?” Christofer raised an eyebrow and looked at the gecko, not quite sure if he heard correctly.

  “This is not a mere dream, it’s an echo, a memory. But it’s not your echo. It appears to be bleeding into your mind and you appear to have a thing for symbolic imagery,” The voice was clearly coming from the gecko. Luckily, its lips did not move, or Christofer would have an urge to punch it.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  However, it made him question how it spoke.

  “It?” he had difficulty finding the words to properly convey the confusion, “Who-”

  “Who am I? I am you, you are me,” said the gecko airily, as if in an audible whisper.

  “Alright, that doesn’t make sense, then what are you?” Christofer furrowed his brows and sat down with a noisy thud on the broken stairs to the altar. The gecko and him exchanged glances with one another.

  “I am a spirit, a sliver of your soul, cut off from you, yet born from you, born with you. On the darkened corners of the world I live, a faceless, malign shadow, captured for no more than an instant by the passing eye. Yet, while I reside in the realm of the peripheral, I am always watching. Watching and waiting.”

  “We both derive our conclusions from your subconscious, yet your focus determines my reality. That is why I am now a gecko, it is the shape you have given me. Also, if you are wondering, there is no apple juice in this room. Even though we both want it,” the gecko concluded.

  They sat in silence like this for a long time, absorbed in their own dark, painful thoughts of this particular fact. Christofer looked at the gecko, scratched his head once more and climbed up the top of the stairs. The silence was only broken when Christofer let out a sigh,

  “It still doesn’t make sense though.”

  “Well, since you don’t know how to explain it, I don’t know either. We both need answers. However, you know more than you see and you see more than you know. These symbols seem to be your subconscious way of creating tethers to the memories of both yours, and it. But for what purpose?”

  “It? For answers, I guess?” Christofer answered, after a pause.

  Christofer gazed into the flickering lights on the altar. Dust blanketed the stone tiles like a sheet of gray snow and danced in the dry air whenever he took a step. He looked around the room for an entrance and saw a hole in the wall further down.

  With his footsteps echoing, he entered through the large hole in the corner and picked his way down the pile of broken brickwork. Inside he could see a rough outline of jagged rocks, a cave. He walked with heavy steps down a natural set of stairs. Like before, it was eerily silent, only the sound of water droplets smacking against stone and the echoes of his steps could be heard.

  As he continued to move down closer to a small rectangular basin, he could get a better view of it. It had stone paving slabs around the sides, and on the floor around were an assortment of broken stoke tiles. Three steps led down into the water. Christofer squatted down near the edge and slid his fingers through the water with a bemused expression on his face,

  ‘Hm, not as cold as the rest of this place,’ he thought, tapping the surface of the water causing the rippling to still and reflect the world around it as the dirt and muck floated to the sides.

  In the water, he was able to make out the upstairs bathroom of his house.

  “Hm, reflections equals portals now... This is my life now.”

  Christofer exhaled and took a deep breath, closed his eyes and then jumped into the cold water. The ground crunched underneath as his feet landed awkwardly, shattering the floor as one foot went through. Confused, he scanned the area. Then he realized he was standing on the bathroom door. A hollow pinewood door. The sensation was strange. Reality had flipped ninety degrees. The tiled bathroom floor was now the wall, the door was now his floor. Still confused, he pulled up his foot from the door and tried to navigate the room as toothbrushes and bars of soap rained from open cabinets in the ceiling.

  The slightest movement caused the door to creak, its hinges groaning under his weight. Just as he was in the process of shifting his weight to his other foot to stabilize his posture, the ground beneath him disappeared as the bathroom door flew open. Before he knew it he had landed in the round hallway mirror below, which sent him rolling in the dirt, struggling to get a stable footing. All he could hear was the sound of his breath and the howling wind. He could feel the stares of a thousand eyes on his neck as he rose at the bottom of a hill. He had fallen through once more to an unfamiliar landscape. A vast grassy plain stretched out before him.

  “Free thyselves of thine encumbrance! Charge!” a man clad in steel bellowed

  Crossing the plains with quick strides on an armored horse, as a banner depicting two red axes with a serpentine dragon head’s neck coiling around them fluttered in the winds, attached to a lance in his right hand while holding a large shield with the other.

  Hundreds of armored horses were following behind him, their breath showing visibly through their imperial knight helmets. “For the glory of the empire!” echoed from the rest of the knights. Christofer followed the knight’s line of sight and discovered that he was standing in the middle of a battlefield, in between two armies that were about to clash. One of knights, one of beasts. He could see the horses shift their weight forwards, digging their hooves into the ground while the knights couched their lances. On the other side, there were too many beasts to count. They flew about in a frenzy, like piranhas high on the scent of blood, passing by Christofer without thinking much of him and treating him as one of their own while he continued running away from the knights towards the direction of the other beasts. He was urged on by an instinct to do so.

  A huge clash of sound erupted at the front of the battle as the knights charged into the massive wall of beasts. Their lances tore through bodies, scattering blood and pulverized bones under the heavy hooves of the armored horses. Christofer spun just in time to see a long black, semi-solid tendril-like arm coming for his head. He ducked below it and darted forward blindly as the arc of the attack left a trail of black smoke in the air.

  “Son of a bitch!” Christofer cried, dodging another couple of swings.