I knew I lost the game the moment the door closed behind me. So that's it, I think. I chose, and I chose badly. As the everlasting darkness draws closer, I figure that it could have been worse.
     If you get right down to it, it was all Claudia's fault. Yes. Claudia. I wished I had never met her. Or if I did, I wished I would never have fallen in love with her.
     Patting my breast pocket for cigarettes, I try to recollect the sequence of events that brought me here. And yes, it all started with Claudia. I light a bent Marlboro and inhale deeply. Claudia. How could I have been this blind.

“Randall, may I introduce Miss Claudia.”
     Shaking hands. Quite firm a grip for a girl in her late teens. Dominant personality. Her eyes are older than the rest of her. You'd think those eyes have seen the discovery of penicilin. Seen the Great Depression. Seen Rome burn.
     Nice.
     “Charmed, I'm sure,” she utters in precise, clipped tones. Her voice carries an undercurrent of musk and hidden delights.
     Claudia. Yes, charmed indeed.
     The walking to the love seat. The sitting down. The polite, brainless small-talk. Playing nice. Being bored out of my skull.
     “So, what is it you do, exactly, Randall?”
     Yawn. The small-talk just turned even smaller.
     Just call me a freelancer, I say. In communications. I make sure people know precisely those things about a company the company wants them to know. Sometimes, this means to get my hands dirty. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Dealing with the press can be such a bother.
     She giggles. “Well, Randall, you could have formulated that a bit more diplomatically. Hasn't anybody told you I'm a reporter myself?”
     Oh. No, they haven't. Inconsiderate lot they are.
     More small-talk. I learn that Claudia actually is 32 years old already and not all that happy with her girlish good looks. “It makes people underestimate me.” I tell her it's always good to be underestimated. They don't see you coming, they don't see you as a threat. Or a bother, for that matter. They just see you as a symbol, a symbol of youthful naivete, and as writers we both know that symbols can carry deeper meaning.
     We laugh. We have another drink. We share cigarettes; my strong Marlboros for her light Gitanes. I confess I've never read anything of hers. She confesses she hasn't ever dealt with any of the companies I represent.
     We laugh. We have another drink.
     I say, hey, I say, how about leaving this boring crowd behind and go out for a bite? It sure as hell beats this boring reception here. When I say “hell,” her brow creases, but she lightens up quickly.
     “Sure. I'd love to.”
     So we leave together to spend one of those romantic evenings you only ever read in novels about.
     First mistake.

Fast-forward six months. Claudia and I haven't become a couple, really. We're not living together or anything. We don't even see each other every day. The term that comes to mind is “item,” and I'd say it's an apt description of our relationship. We meet, we talk. We meet, we eat. We meet, we fuck. We meet, she expects a present. Items. She doesn't want big gifts. No diamond rings or Fabergé eggs for her. It can be anything, really, small or large, cheap or expensive. She's not choosy. Or very choosy indeed? I'm not sure. The only thing I'm sure of is: don't show up without a present. Claudia seems to work like a binary computer.
     One, and Zero.
     I present her with a gift, she's happy and caring and loving. I show up without a present; tears, rejection, no way our genitalia will come closer than, say, five feet.
     She only half-jokingly calls them sacrifices. I call them peace makers.
     Symbols of my affection.
     Anyway.
     This one night, six months into our itemship, we meet for dinner at this place called eAter-Why. Yes. eAter-Why. The restaurant opened during the New Economy boom a couple of years ago, and funnily enough, it's still A Place To Be Seen At, The Thing To Do. But apparently not A Place To Be Seen At Without A Bloody Present For Your Not-Exactly Girlfriend, Let's Call It The Woman You Fuck. I've seen Claudia angry before, but never like this. She did the whole scene-thing.
     Throwing the contents of her glass into my face.
     Crying.
     Low-level, menacing monologues.
     Standing up, pointing at me, proclaiming that I failed her, sitting down again.
     You get the idea.
     And then, right before the last act of the drama (i.e. Storming Out Of The Restaurant, Fuming), she looks me straight in the eye and tells me that soon, I will have to choose between three options, and that I'll choose the wrong one.
     Whatever that means.
     I really ought have listened more closely. But my shirt is sticking to my chest and I'm still blinking wine out of my eyes. You could say I was annoyed.
     Second mistake.

Being a communications bloke, I should have seen it coming. Small things often herald big things to come, or hide even bigger stuff in the background. You write a press release, say, about a thousand words, and woosh, tens of thousands of people lose their job. You consult a company on the wording of their business plan, and woosh, they get another ten million bucks to burn for their grand big business opportunity. The sign can be tiny, but the signified thing ... let's just say it can go over your horizon.
     When Vinnie told me that there were three ways out of this mess, alarm bells should have started ringing. I should also have been aware of the fact that words often hide the intended meaning. I'm told most people see it the other way around – words as indications for implied meaning – but in my experience, words more often are used as a smoke screen to obscure your vision from the truth. Implied meaning as a detour to fact.
     Ask a squirrel. Any squirrel. It won't understand what you mean by “sarcasm” or “irony.” Actually, it won't understand a word at all anyway but test your fingers for edibility. If you're lucky. Most likely, though, it will just wiggle its little squirrel tail, and take its tiny squirrel legs as far away from you crazy, squirrel-talking bastard as possible.
     OK. Bad example.
     Let's take children, then. At university, they teach you that children don't have a concept of “hidden” meaning in verbal communication prior to the onset of puberty, just about, at any rate no earlier than at age ten or eleven. I don't know about you, but I've met some kids at grade school who take this theory to the cleaners. Cynical and sarcastic and ironic like a 55 years old war veteran. And guess what? Those kids are assholes, even at seven years of age. You knew they were assholes, the teachers considered them assholes, probably even their parents didn't like them. And why? Because to the mind-set of a child, ironic remarks or sarcastic comments are too close to lying. Sure, children lie all the time. But at least they do it in the open. It's honest. Rhetoric devices aren't.
     Anyway. I digress.
     When Vinnie said “Randall, there are three ways out of this mess,” alarm bells should have started ringing. I should have realised immediately that he didn't really mean it. I was fucked, fucked big time, and none of those options would have made any difference. The three non-options are:
     Marriage.
     Murder.
     Madness.
     Things with Claudia went out of hand. Or rather, I realised that she was occupying too much of my time and space to still be happy with the status-quo. I mean, so that I could still be happy. Hence it was either:
     Take the relationship to the next level. In this case, become a couple rather than just an item. It's not actually marriage, but you see what this is aiming at.
     Get rid of Claudia quicksmart. No, not necessarily by murdering her. Just breaking up with her would do the trick.
     Redefine your perception of reality so this merely-being-an-item thing becomes The Grand Goal You've Always Been After, distorting your personal paradigm far enough so that being single looks about as attractive as putting your hand in a meat grinder. Being truly mad isn't compulsory for this, but it certainly helps.
     The secret joke Vinnie was playing at me was that, no matter how I'll choose, I'll be off for the worse. Option “Madness” may look like a safe way to maintain the status-quo and just keep on going, but it would turn my brains into cream cheese in the long run, as it simply doesn't add up. Option “Murder” appears to be the easy way out of those bonds that grew tedious, but I just know I'd spend the rest of my life wondering what would have been if I just kept her close, if I kept on going with the relationship. Similar to option “Marriage”: occasionally, I'll long for those days of freedom, where everything was easier, where I wasn't burdened with all this responsibility.
     Just face it. Things can't stay as they've been for all that long. But what I didn't realise was that Claudia didn't talk of such metaphorical doorways to various options, but something different altogether. Or did she? Anyway, I just lit another cigarette and told Vinnie I'd think about it.

Subconsciously I probably knew right from the beginning that Claudia wouldn't be just another fling, just another girl to pull. But I've known for sure that she was a lot different this one evening she showed up in my flat. Or rather, her ghost or soul or spectre or whatever did.
     There she was, semi-translucent against the rather tasteless cupboard in my living room. She was outlined with a red glow. You know, like those Jedi dudes in those Star Wars movies, just in red rather than blue. And what they couldn't transport on celluloid was the incredible cold that accompanies such visions. Claudia was just standing there, in her night dress, apparently asleep.
     A sleepwalking hallucination. I really need to lay off the booze.
     Or see a psychiatrist.
     Anyway.
     Still with her eyes closed, she waved her hands around. Her voice filled the room, albeit her mouth was closed, too. “You have three options, Randall. You will choose the wrong one.” Three doors materialised behind her, all with the same reddish glow. Every door was adorned with a capital letter M; the one to the left in copperplate, the one to the right in a heavy sans-serif type, the one in the middle in the handwriting of a little child. By then, I was sure it was just a dream. So I played along.
     Third mistake.
     I completely forgot our little sacrifice / gift / present ritual. I just walked towards the doors, past Claudia, amazed about how it grew even colder when approaching the vision in my dream, and opened the door straight ahead. The one with the child's writing on it. The one I now know is the door that leads to madness. Words are important and carry hidden meanings. So do gestures and ritual.
     Signs.
     When the door closed behind me, I realised that I lost the game, that I chose badly. So I sank down on my hunches and lit a cigarette.

Still smoking my Marlboro, I'm sitting in darkness and wondering what would have been behind the other doors. Clearly, there was no way out of it. Her words proclaimed it, so long ago: no matter how I choose, I'll choose the wrong door. So there's no way in heaven or hell I could have chosen the right door; no matter which knob I touched, it would turn out to be the wrong one.
     I'm not afraid. Not at first. The fear comes with the noises. The noises that prove that I'm not quite alone here. Noises as if of great scaly talons. As if of knives getting sharpened. Sobbing.
     You get the idea.
     Why did she look annoyed whenever I uttered the world “hell” during our first meeting anyway?
     No. Don't go there. Therein lies madness.
     But then, I am inside madness already.
     Now how to get out of here if the one thing you truly love is the one thing guarding the door?