It was early evening. Maybe it was early morn. I couldn't tell if the sun had just risen or set, because the clouds in my east window were the same grey as the clouds in my west. It could've been midday, even a really bright midnight.
My study was bruised with heavy footfalls and its eyes were weary, flickering and hoping to be shut. Crumpled ideas spilled over from the waste basket that was hopelessly too small to burden all my failures. I buried my head in my hands, too empty to think.
It was then, as my hands grabbed my hair and my palms pressed against my eyes, that the knock whispered on my door. I turned to it as it creaked open, and there, in my doorway, stood a man with a chain in his one hand, and my dreams in his other.
He had nails like claws and his skin was covered in a mixture of scales and boils and open sores. The sight of the pus oozing from several cracks caused me to scratch my own skin in discomfort. He needed to leave.
He wore a pinstriped suit - several sizes too large around the waist and chest, and several too small around his wrists and ankles. He donned a dirty bowler hat that matched his sickly grey suit that had once been a shimmering black.
His eyes were smoky and unseeing, yet they pierced me deeply as they stared into my own. His lips were cracked and dry, and a trickle of thick, black tar dribbled down the side of his mouth. Boils and swollen punches covered his ears and he could not hear.
His nostrils had grown shut.
He tried to open his mouth, but he could not speak.
He held out his hand, the one with my dreams, and offered them to me as though they were mine, but secretly knowing they were no one's. Foolishly, I reached for them, and he plucked his arm away. He guffawed a silent, haunting laugh from his ever-shut mouth. He dropped my dreams on the floor, and stamped his unkempt foot upon it. He held out his hand, the one with the chain, offering it to me with sincerity and pity. I hesitated.
I obliged.
Carefully and gently, he locked my wrist in and patted my hand soothingly. Then he tugged on the chain, pulling it from his jacket pocket until finally, he produced a small and plain, dark grey ball that the chain was connected to.
He dropped the ball and it lay beside my colourful, trampled, and crumpled dreams.
The message was clear.