Mark stopped short as they turned and started walking down the corridor with the red velvet curtains on either side of the red paisley-like carpeting. “Uh uh,” he said as he dropped Cindy’s hand from his.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Cindy asked Mark, noticing the beads of perspiration that had formed on his forehead.

“It’s that rug. I can’t look at it. It makes me dizzy and I feel like I’m going to pass out if I take another step,” he said. Mark turned around so his back was to the corridor.

“Can’t you just keep your eyes up and not look down at the carpet as we go through the corridor?” Cindy asked.

“No,” Mark insisted. “My eyes are drawn to it, I can’t help it. But when I see it, it triggers my vertigo. I just can’t do it, Cindy, I’m sorry.”

“Okay, how about this,” Cindy said. “Let me hold your right hand in my right hand, and I’ll put my left hand behind you at your waist. That way you can close your eyes and I’ll help guide you down this corridor.”

Mark sighed. “Thanks, but no,” he said. “I don’t like this place. Let’s just go somewhere else.”

“We can’t go someplace else, Mark,” Cindy said, but as she said it her voice changed, becoming deeper and gruffer.

Mark looked at Cindy and her skin was red, her eyes like those of a snake, and her forked tongue was darting in and out of her mouth as she spoke. Mark jumped back. “Who are you? What are you?”

“I’m your guide, Mark,” it said. “I’m escorting you to your personalized hell, Mark, where you will be spending an eternity in a place where all the floors are carpeted in this pattern and all the walls are covered with red velvet curtains and you will be sending the rest of your post-physical existence in a constant state of vertigo.”

“But there is no afterlife,” Mark said. “I must be having a nightmare that I’ll be waking up from soon.”

The guide laughed a villainous laugh. “This is one nightmare you won’t be waking up from, Mark. Ever!

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Written for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Photo Challenge. Photo credit: Sarah Whiley.