The complexity of the apartment complex was not that complex. It was the nature of the architect who built it that was so. In those serpentine tunnels, it was not that odd, then, that I should have found myself lost, unable to return to where I was supposed to be, though where that was, I could not tell you. If I found a person going in and out of the apartment doors, I might have asked them for assistance, questioned them in some self-deprecating fashion as to prove my own inability, bowing to another for assistance. I might go into a ramble or two about the unnecessarily tricky hallways of this structure, exploiting the architect’s inability instead of my own – I am no great man. Or I might have asked nothing but nodded at the passerby and moved along my tracks that I was laying down quicker now, placing them with a sense of purpose so as to not seem lost - still a lie, still a lie. 

These apartment doors, closed as they were, neither comforted nor frightened me. If there were monsters on the inside, the doors were thankfully shut; if I was the monster, thankful were the people inside. Monster, eh? I felt scales pop up from my fingernails and up to my nose and, itchy with the process, I scratched at my arms until the scales started to tear off like petals from a flower, (I counted: he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not…). Now there was blood on the floor pouring out from my scaled form, staining the velvet carpets a deeper red (the owners of the apartment would be

grateful for the retouching!). Unfortunately, they would never have the chance to thank me as my reflection on the silver vase nearby reminded me that here still stood a man without red in his eyes.