The Long Road home part 3

They walked upstairs to the long lonely stairway corridor. The stairs winded for what seemed like an eternity, and he felt as if they might be stuck in the upwards vortex for all eternity, yet he didn’t seem to mind. He looked at her from behind, following her; she was beautifully shaped, long legs and firm hips, a midsection made for love. And yet, he couldn’t smell her, and he barely even longed to taste her. He didn’t understand the point of following her, and yet he continued to do so. He felt rats skitter under his feet, startling him, almost making him fall backward into the abyss he felt as he had spent his entire life trying to climb out of. Maybe this was all there was. There was the stench of death in the air, like burning jasmine leaves through a mid summer’s drought, beauty lost. And beauty was lost. As he looked at the beautiful girl he was following he didn’t recognize beauty, only a hallow shape of a well endowed female.
They finally reached the top of the winding stairs.
“Cmon,” she said, “My room is just up the way.”
He noticed the wallpaper coming off the walls, the humidity causing the cheap brand paper to lose its stick; it smelled something awful, like a sweaty obese man refusing to take a shower. And yet, he followed. He wasn’t sure if he was following her for sex, for love, or for no reason at all. He didn’t remember what love felt like, and he was sure he remembered that he liked the feeling of sex, but he felt as if he didn’t deserve such bodily pleasures. He tried to remember the feeling, but his mind was blank, he had tried to forget himself for so long that he didn’t know the difference between consciousness and sleep. He was in a state of drift, drifting through life (was he alive?) and drifting through death, a no man’s land through the ugliest depths of the human consciousness. The hallway seemed longer than the corridor, and as he walked past the rooms every sound revealed its own ugly scene. He heard screams in one room, and laughs, a woman pining her way for freedom against a ruthless assaulter. He put his ear to the door, and heard the vicious cracks of bones and the maniacal laughter. He wanted to help, but he didn’t see how he could. He heard sniffs and sighs in one room, and then nothing in another. He was clearly not alone in this cruel existence.
“We’re here,” she said.
“Where are we?” he said.
“Here, yknow, my home.”
“You live here?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it living, would you?”
He was bewildered by the question, and yet he thought he instinctively knew the answer. Hesitantly, he followed her in to the tight doorway, and shut the door behind him with a powerful thud.