Once when I was younger I had a very vivid dream. It only lasted a few seconds from my perception, but it has stuck with me ever since. I was sitting in my room doing… something. Then for some reason I decided to get up, I opened the door to my room and all I saw was darkness. A massive black impenetrable wall where the hallway usually was. Surprisingly this didn’t freak me out. I just calmly closed the door, walked over to the window, and opened my blinds. The same darkness greeted me outside. It was like my room was the only thing in existence trapped in a never-ending empty void. The only things in the universe were me and this room. This existential thought didn’t phase me either. I just sat down and went back to what I was doing, which is when I woke up.

I suppose the meaning of that dream was that this room was almost my whole world. The space between these four walls was where I spent most of my time. Every possession I owned was in here, this was where my schoolwork was, even when Laura came over this was where we would hang out. This was how it was for almost everyone I knew my age. It wasn’t so bad but… sometimes it did feel almost like a self imposed prison, one I’d gotten so used to that no other place felt comfortable. Maybe when I died my ghost would linger here, never wanting to leave this place.

Ah yes, ghosts. That reminded me the reason why I was back in my room letting my mind wander. Our visit to the church was a total bust! I left with more questions than I had to begin with! Those mysterious women just… disappeared. And at the very moment they left I had a deep, sickening feeling, like I was going to throw up. I felt like I was being used. Used purely as a vessel to find my brother, wherever he was, and the worst part was that all it amounted to for me was a big damn waste of time. And who was that woman who looked just like Grayson? Gah! If I ever find that Sabreal woman again I’m going to make her sorry she ever ****ed with me.

It was almost 1AM at the time. I had nothing better to do than wait for a reply to my email. I’d been staring at the ceiling fan circling and the generic ceiling that surrounded it. If I stared long enough at the fan it was almost hypnotizing.

I checked my email again. Still nothing. I started rearranging things on my desk. I crumpled up old school notes to throw in the trash later, found that charger I was looking for like half a year ago, the one I’d given up looking for and just bought a new one instead, I find some candy wrappers that I should have just put in the trash to being with.

Bleh. I figured I should go to bed soon, but at the moment I wasn’t anywhere near tired enough to go to sleep. There was nothing more frustrating than laying in bed wanting to go to sleep but being unable to. My eyes were also sore from looking at my computer eagerly anticipating something to happen. I decided to turn it off so I wouldn’t be tempted to start waiting again.

In the meantime I would attempt to find something non-electronic to occupy my time until I was tired enough to sleep. Next to my bed was laundry basket full of unfolded clothes I’d been procrastinating on for days. What’s a few more days though?

Across the room from the be was my bookshelf which held the various media I had collected over the years. The top three shelves held my books, which included Leigh LeBlanc’s collected essays, their book on Sumerian mythology, and their one fiction work, a fantasy epic about an immortal cast out into the mortal realm entitled Enkidu. Besides that I also owned the Celestine Prophecy and The Secret (both of which were lame, even when I read them at 13), House of Leaves, Infinite Jest (which I bought because I wanted to prove how smart I was by reading it, but ironically I have still not attempted to read), the entire Twilight series (a gift from my American grandparents), the Hunger Games trilogy a handful of Stephen King books I’d never finished, about a dozen volumes of Bleach, multiple books concerning different accounts of ghosts and the supernatural. I also have a few Korean books I got from my grandparents when we visited them in Suwon. I could pick up any of these books and read if I wanted, but I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t think I was going to stay up that long. The shelf below these had a mix of old DVDs, CDs, and the video games I’d either bought or inherited from my brother. That was one of the nicer things about having an older brother, whenever he got tired of something he had, he gave it to me.

So I didn’t feel like reading, and I didn’t feel like doing my clothes. That didn’t leave much else. I sat on my bed and… got out my phone. All the things I was trying to avoid were all conveniently on this device. Only a few seconds I told myself. But I knew it was a lie, I was going to find something on Discord to deep dive in-between checking my email over and over again. I might as well go ahead and open it, see that nothing new was there before I went about wasting my time on the Internet.

Hours pass, I check my email, I go back and forth between apps. I look up at the clock at the top of my screen. 4:27, it’s really been that long. I’m too wired to go to sleep, but too tired to do anything meaningful with my time.

I hear a knock at my door. At first I right it off as me being delirious and mistaking it for something else. But then I hear it again. I get up and creep to my door. I open it.

“Hey sis.”

I wrap my arms around my big brother. “Hey dummy.” I said.

“Admit it, you missed me.” He said.

“Only when you admit you’re lost without me.” I said. “Now what’s with the hair blueberry?”