I slid down in the red love seat, thudding to the floor. Only an hour ago I had made love to Sigurd here, and now he was in the room behind me making love to the one he really loved.

He didn't really notice me. I was dilluding myself because I loved him and he said a few nice words to me every night. He was fucking awesome…

"Fuck!" I exclaimed, dropping the faceted crystal glass to the floor with a musical shatter. I hoped Sigurd would hear me. The red wine splattered across the hard wood floor like a rushing river. "Damn you…" I muttered. My wine bottle was empty. I thudded to the floor.

My hair slowly fell out of the up-do, curls cascaded down my shoulders. I did it just to please his fetish for big hair, but mine would never meet his standard of beauty. I lost too much hair when I was sick last winter. He didn't know about that since I never said anything to him if it wouldn't impress him. No one wanted to hear my stupid life story, him least of all. His life was too perfect for me to ruin with emotional prattle. That's why I never told him how I felt about him. His life was better than mine and I didn't want to drag him down with my own depression.

For some reason though, all this depression over Sigurd enthralled and amused me. After all, life needs drama or it becomes too dull to bear.

I never felt as good about my relationship sober as I did drunk. Now that I was utterly trashed, I laughed about all the stupidity.

I felt like I was floating. I stared down the white stair way, my head spinning. As I pulled on the railing to get back up, my vision swam.

I saw this stair way once before in a dream I used to dream all the time of exploring this very house. The dream varied, but it had been recurrent for years. In every dream about it, I explored rooms that hadn't been seen before by anyone alive. In the first dream I had of this sort, I found some sort of hidden passageway from a room downstairs.

The place I always teleported from was right next to the place where four people had died. There was a small room off of the living room that was a sick room before it became a storage room with the walls plastered in old maps.

In the dreams I barely noticed that small room though. I found myself in the lost rooms of the house. The ones I saw in real life no longer existed.

I saw a white room that continued so far it was rediculous, supported by a forest of white columns.

My thoughts were suddenly jolted from this reminiscence of dreams by the door near the red love seat thudding open.

I was aware of my surroundings for a brief moment. I was jolted back to reality for a moment as Sigurd tore down the stairs after me, like a shadow in his perfectly tailored black suit but like a ghost with his fair complexion and light hair.

I was at the bottom of the stairs. I had taken a longer fall than I thought after that glass shattered and I could no longer sit upright.

My legs couldn't move; my legs were restricted by my tight white satin skirt that had wrapped around me when I rolled down the stairs. There was a brocade train wrapped around my legs over the satin, tying my legs together in a graceful spiral of ivory fabric. I was vaguely aware of the fact that I was wearing a wedding dress that had hung in the back of a store for a century now. It had once belonged to a young bride, now it belonged to a collector who always tried to live outside her time.

Who was I kidding wearing a modest white gown? I wasn't getting married any time soon, and in my heart I was no birgin. It took forever to button the top of the dress because there were dozens of buttons.

There was a time when brides were nervous virgins who wore dozens of buttons on their wedding dress. There was one final barrier between their life as an innocent maiden and their life-long fate as a wife and mother.

That wasn't me at all. I was living in an abandoned mansion with a man I wasn't married to. I dressed like this because I was in love with the past even more than I was in love with him.

The very thing that drew me and Sigurd together was the past. I recalled how we had spoke of the past every day in March. The snow fell heavily and we talked of our childhoods. I said to him, "Imagine if we had met back then…"

"Yes, it would have been so sweet…"

"Indeed, so sweet."

We had so much in common. I thought for sure that if we had met when we were young my life would have turned out differently. He wouldn't have changed on me like everyone else did. He would have stuck by me through thick and thin, he would have kept me popular when my popularity declined. We would have been happy all through the years that as it were had been so full of pain.

I lay at the bottom of the stairs now, crying for all the memories that rushed back to me, for the emotional pain inside, not for the bruises that pained me from my rapid descent down the stairs.

I wondered if I was still conscious. Was it Sigurd that ran towards me in a blur of gold and white and midnight blue, or was it just an illusion brought on by another night of heavy drinking?

"Sigurd… you came for me," I cried as he picked me up, placing one arm under my knees and the other one behind my head. He whispered something unintelligible and brushed the hair away from my face. Was it just me or was he crying with me?

"I… I'm sorry to drag you into all this. There's more to it than just you…"

"There's no need to explain. Just be quiet now."

"But Sigurd—"

"I've told you before, she isn't real. She's just a picture on the wall."

"But you said…" I was so confused I couldn't enjoy being carried up the stairs by him.

Something about it was ghostly; the ivory gown tying my legs together, the echo of footsteps up the large white stairs, the feeling I was still weightless and floating.

He set me down on the fading red love seat. It needed new velvet, but the Victorian carvings on it were still beautiful. The blue and white wall paper had turned a yellowish shade and was peeling, revealing red paint under it.

"Sigurd…" I mumbled, keeping my arms around his neck even after he had set me down. "Don't leave me…"

"I told you already, she isn't real!"

"Then what were you…"

"Come in the room and I'll show you, she isn't in there!"

I nearly landed on the floor again I was staggering so eratically. I tripped on the hem of my dress only inches away from the bed.

Sigurd was right. He had been all alone in here.

"What in the world?" I said as I grabbed the edge of the bed spread and pulled myself up.

"I told you, she isn't real." He had a distant, brooding expression.

He was right. The room was as it had been for years; cold and empty.

"She's no more real than I am," he said as he backed away towards the door.

"Sigurd! Don't leave me!" I screamed, struggling to run after him in heels and a long skirt.

"Sigurd! Wait!" I screamed, pounding on the door only a second after he lockes it behind him. I looked around desperately for a way to unlock it before smashing it down.

He moved down the stairs slowly, but even when I ran I couldn't keep up with him.

He was at the bottom of the stairs now, only a few steps from the front door.

"Sigurd, you have to listen! I don't care who's real and who isn't—that's what brings us together. We're hopeless romantics, in love with an idea and not an actual person—speak to me, Sigurd! Don't walk out on me."

"Wait me."

"Do you mean… you want me to wait for you?"

He was gone already. The only answer was a cold breeze that flew through the freezing mansion and the flapping of doors loose on their hinges.

"Wait for you… I will."

Author's note: This is completely unedited from the night I was drunk except for one paragraph I omitted when I typed it up. Be as harsh as you want with reviewing this, since it needs to be editted.