There you are! You can’t believe your eyes. There has been a mistake, hasn’t there? You thought you’d see the light of the day again. But here you are in a dingy room. Yes, you’ve got out of the water, or whatever that was, but there’s no respite yet. Dripping yet, you crawl into a dark corner. Wait, is there someone else besides you there? Yes, there are. Your partner is still missing, but that’s not your partner. You suddenly hear babies crying.

You see three old women with arched backs.

As you make eye contact with them, they smile at you.

“Welcome, my darling!” they say. “Let us show you the ways of our world.”

“Just like you, we entered the mansion once – the mansion of doom, where we came face to face with our own follies. And now we are entrapped here as you will be in the future.”

With scrawny arms and protruded teeth, they move towards you. Taken aback, you step back flustered.

You want to go back into the tunnel, among the stairs of the mansion and into the arms of your partner.

But here’s the thing. You can’t go back; you can’t change a thing.

Your legs fail you, you limp, till you can’t feel them anymore. You look beneath, and they are gone. You are trapped! You wade through the air and sing along with the witches – a long list of regrets hanging by your neck. Stuck in a reality of your own making, you drown in their screech as they welcome you into their world. Singing along to their tune, you pirouette again and again. You have become one of them now, and forever you will be until another such soul comes knocking onto your door, and take you with them to a time that is yet to be. You hope that they will have more faith and hope in themselves than you did in this life of yours. Until then, ‘round and round the Mulberry bush you go and you go.’