The Half-Open Gate.

I never knew that gate was there, until I saw it, that fateful night,
as I walked down the slippery, muddy path.
Lady Luna was bright enough, but insufficient light comforted my fearful mind.
I could not help but look inside.

One lonely lantern cast a dim and jaundiced glow over the shadowed house. Poison ivy curled its sly and subtle way around the arch, and the hungry gate stood half-open.
Beckoning. Enticing me, recognising my deepest, most secret longing for darkness.
I could not help but submit to its covert invitation.
Silhouettes of summer stood starkly against the sombre midnight garden, table and chairs empty of last season's occupants. A sad memory of warmth and life.
A moss-covered cherub stared with sorrowful and sightless eyes at its cold, bare knees....
I could not help but open the door.
It offered no resistance, it wanted me, desired me so much.
I entered the house. It swallowed me up in its damp, dark void, and the door closed behind me.
The hallway was endless.....
And yet I continued, finding the lack of light comforting, soothing. Preventing the harsh reality from meeting my dilating eyes.The soft touch of my cool fingers left a gentle memento of my journey, as they drifted against the ancient dust on the grandfather clock. Fingerprints forever imprinted on time, the tiny specks whirling and twirling slowly down to the floor, settling there.
Finding the parlour...
...the scent of melancholic and hopeless tragedy filled my senses. Dampness settled heavily across my tangled hair. I saw the discarded wine glass, the brittle roses, the open book....the story unfinished. The burnt-out candle, the wax spilling in fixed, funereal  ripples down the edge of the table.
I glanced at the hazy, misty mirror, the gilt edge was guilt edged at the memory of fun, parties, pandemonic mayhem and frivolity.
And there they were; the family, the friends, the visitors who never went home. Waving to me, requesting my presence, toasting my arrival, urging me on....
One step closer, closer to the dusty glass to enter the wonder of Mirrorland and the end of my existence; I closed my eyes.
And entered their sick and twisted Partyland forever, forsaking the light, the air, the sweet touch of humanity.

I could not help myself.

I wept at the finality; no curtain call, no stricken lover to bid me goodbye, no grieving mother to wonder why her errant child was gone....

Never to be seen again.