A wall of white, thick smoke escapes the room and clouds Karls vision. He stumbles backwards, coughing, but quickly regains his composure.

The room is dark and foggy. With his eyes still being adjusted to the brightly lit floor, he can only make out faint objects and dim lights. Not even the rooms end is visible. He slowly enters and closes the door behind him.

His pupils dilate, allowing the faint traces of light the room provide him with to paint a clearer picture of his surroundings. It’s a long hall, barely illuminated by sparsely installed dimly glowing neon lights and decorated with statues at both sides. At its end there are three wooden doors. The source of the smoke is still unclear, although its omnipresence is undeniable. Every breath Karl takes is accompanied by the very familiar feeling of smoke filling his lungs.

Karl takes some more steps into the strange room with its frightening, almost threatening aura. Normally, it’d take every fibre of his will-power to not turn on his heel and leave immediately. Karl is certainly no stranger to fleeing. But with every inch that he moves further in to the room, and with every breath that he takes, more and more of his fear is left behind. Without realizing it, his usually slouched posture changes, straightens, and he starts moving upright. He begins doubting the way he first perceived the ethereal room, soon seeing his initial characterisation of its aura as threatening as a ludicrous thought, dreamed up by a coward.

He makes his way to the middle of the room until he realises that the statues at the rooms sides are not statues at all. They’re living human beings, almost perfectly motionless. Karl’s rational mind is well aware of this situation’s eerie quality, and yet his emotional state disagrees. Intrigued, he watches one of the figures, a young man with classically handsome facial figures.

The man is in a clear state of wonder, his eyes wide open and his mouth slightly agape as his gaze wanders around the room. It finally comes to a stand when he makes direct eye contact with another man, standing to his right. The two share an intense stare. Karl notices the edges of the handsome mans mouth twitching, soon forming a full, charming smile. His opposite reciprocates and their smiles slowly transform into giggles, which again transform into roaring laughter. Karl is confused by this sudden change, but can’t help but join in. The joyous thunder slowly fades as their laughter is replaced by their previous expressions of quiet wonder.

The handsome man takes a step towards the man he’s facing. Again, his opposite reciprocates. More steps follow. Karl is unable to tell whether their movements were lightning quick or in slow motion. The two men seem to move completely beyond the realm of time, and yet, eventually, they meet. Their faces are mere inches apart from one another. Karl suddenly feels as if he is intruding in something very private, and yet he’s too enchanted to look away.

The less handsome man places his hand gently on the handsome mans face, before slowly (or quickly?) moving it lower. He grips the man’s shirt and elegantly pulls it over his head, revealing his bare chest. The elevations and ravines of his body, barely made visible by the dim light, remind Karl of desert dunes in their perfect smoothness. His muscles aren’t particularly large, in bright light they’d probably be only faintly visible, but something about the light, or the room, makes even the barest curves, dentures and hills on his body stand out. Karl finds it extremely aesthetically pleasing, not in a sexual manner (although he doesn’t mind the company of men), but in a pure sort of appreciation for the human form.

The two men kiss and Karl realises the voyeuristic nature of his behaviour. The handsome man looks at him and raises an eyebrow as his partner kisses the side of his neck. Karl, unsure whether the raised brow is meant as an invitation or an accusation, opts to respond by raising both of his hands in front of his body. A gesture which can be understood as both a polite decline or an apology. Other curiosities await him, and besides, he needs to find booze and return to Betty.

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How long has he been in this room anyway? A minute? Ten? He decides not to waste any more time, check the next rooms and then head back. Karl understands the debilitating effect decisions can have when you give them time to enlarge themselves in your head, so instead of considering which door to enter next he barges through the rightmost without giving it a second thought.

Karl finds himself in an even darker room than before, seemingly devoid of any light at all. He turns arround and puts his hand back on the doorknob, intending to leave and try one of the other doors, but then he stops himself. There is something else in this room besides darkness. A familiar, yet unplaceable sound. He turns his head away from the door. The sound is coming from the end of the corridor. His hand leaves the cold doorknob.

He walks along the long hall, towards the curious noise. It gets louder with every step he takes and soon he manages to make out individual sounds, a repeating pattern and, finally, a melody. A faint melody, one that isn’t sung, or played, or picked. A melody hidden behind a wall of sound, buried beneath beats, waiting to be found.

He opens his eyes, without being entirely certain when he had closed them. While his eyes were closed, the bare darkness had been infiltrated by static lights, white and tiny, like stars, placed alongside the walls. They slowly fade in and out and, as Karl looks at them more, he realises that they are not static at all. Moving up and down, side to side the lights all dance together, in the rhythm of the mystifying music. Karl, intrigued by the magical dance, sits down in the corridor to watch the lights entrancing movements. He tries to understand their dance moves, but whenever he looks directly at an individual light its movements slow down, often coming to a complete stop. Their dance only exists in their plurality.

Why was he here again? He remembers sitting down, a cold doorknob, a pair of enchanting lovers and… searching for something. Some kind of racoon-man? The more he thinks the less he understands.

The lights stop dancing, have they ever danced at all? They form peculiar patterns, patterns which Karl recognizes, patterns which remind him of things he once knew, but now can barely comprehend. At first, the racoon he needed to search for. It seems he has found it, or it him. It’s been in the sky all along, always the last place you look.

The racoon disappears and is replaced by a flame. The image soothes Karl, although he isn’t sure why. The fire flickers for a while before sizzling out. Its smoke remains and quickly transforms into a woman’s face, someone very familiar to him. He stares intensely at the figure, which refuses to take a clear form. Something about it triggers a reaction in his mind, an incessant thought that just won’t let go. There’s somewhere he has to be, somewhere he has to go. But where?

He wanders aimlessly through the darkness, trying to orient himself by the volume of the music, but it stays constant whether he moves forward or backwards. Soon he has difficulty even differentiating between forwards or backwards. Where was he going again?

The music that’s playing, which used to enchant him, now terrifies him. He understands that something is very, very wrong, but can’t even begin to grasp what. His thinking has completely drifted out of his control and is taking increasingly abstract shape to the point where he isn’t thinking in words anymore. Any attempt at forming words which describe his thoughts is utterly laughable. He breaks down on the floor as he realises that even his own identity has slipped away. Karl, Karl, his name is Karl, but what does that mean? What is Karl? Where is he?

He looks up at the sky for answers. To his surprise, the stars have not changed their pattern, it’s still the oddly familiar face looking down on him. The sight lifts his mood instantaneously, and soon his body follows. No matter where he is, or what he is, somebody needs him. As long as he keeps walking in the same direction, he has to find something.

Steps become meters; seconds become minutes. Frequently, he feels his determination waver, as he loses his concentration and his thoughts slip away, but every time his eyes wander back to the sky, back to that face, and he keeps on walking.

Eventually, a flickering red light becomes visible on the horizon. A fire? No matter. Change is progress. He walks faster, breaking into a full sprint. The music is beautiful again, how could it ever not be? The red light becomes brighter and brighter, forming flames and sunrises, as he spots a wooden door engulfed by it. He sprints, faster and faster towards the door.