Ahem.
Are you awake, Roland?
Or are you still wandering, lost in that realm between dreaming and waking where everything feels familiar but wrong?
How many times have you played that same question in your head, searching for an answer that just won’t show?
Do you feel me outside the edges of your mind, watching as you dig yourself deeper into this maze you’ve built around yourself?
Every time you feel that you’re getting closer, does the path warp, leading you somewhere darker? Somewhere that feels less real than the last?
Can you tell anymore if you still have control?
Have you wondered if the questions you’re asking are the wrong ones, or if perhaps they’re the right ones spun the wrong way?
Do you ever think that the answers you’re so desperate to find were never meant for you at all?
How does it feel to keep asking and asking, having each question continue to eat away at you from within?
Do you even remember why you started searching to begin with, or has your need for answers become the only thing keeping you alive?
Does it feel like I’m the one holding the strings, making you turn left where you wanted to go right, like I’m always just one step ahead?
Are you still searching for the truth, or just for a way out?
How often do you look in the mirror and wonder if the man staring back is even you anymore?
Do you recognize yourself, Roland, or have your questions worn you down, leaving you as nothing more than a reflection that blinks back with empty eyes?
Do you feel the weight of the silence pressing in, filling every corner of your mind with shadows that move even when you’re not looking?
And this contract on your head, have you convinced yourself that it’s mine? That I’m the one who put it there?
Or do you fret, in those quiet moments before you sleep that maybe it’s not about me at all, but about you and everything you left behind? And everything that’s come crawling from the dark to take you?
Do you feel me closing in, breathing down your neck, or is that just your own heartbeat echoing back from the void you’ve been lost in for so long?
Can you even tell if I’m real, or just another question that’s taken on a life of its own? Another piece of your mind breaking off, slipping further out of reach?
When was the last time you felt certainty, Roland?
When was the last time you firmly believed in the ground beneath your feet? In the answers you thought you knew?
Or has everything become a question, like threads pulling loose one by one?
Do you feel like there’s anything left, or are you just another soulless man, floating through a labyrinth with no beginning, no exit and no end?
And if I’m only a question now… a voice without a face…
…then how long before you become one too?