he woke up that night with an unfamiliar fear smothering the air around his stuffy room. it didn't take long for this place to enter his nightmares, the ones he thought he had escaped for good. the ones he thought had disappeared forever as they did as soon as he stepped out of this house so many nights ago.

the dream, he had thought of it as that before they kept recurring again and again, reunited him once again to the man in the mirror. the man that he had modeled himself after when he first embraced the persona of the wanderer.

"what are you running from? is it the pain or the happiness that escaped your grasp?"

"do you really feel nothing? or is it just a facade that keeps you functioning?"

and then he saw her walking into the man's arms. she turned towards him, smiled, revealing the dimples that captured his heart, the two reasons he kept on tirelessly trying to make her smile.

his heart skipped a beat as the familiar feeling of longing stirred up in it.

she opened her mouth and said the most heartbreaking words he would ever hear, "you were just a whisper in my ear darling".

she then embraced the man in the mirror and locked lips with him for what seemed an eternity as he slowly transformed into the faceless man whose name she always mentioned. as his heart broke, he could never ever recall this name no matter how hard he tried..he only remembered the initials M.B.F. those three letters were enough to shatter the whole world around him as he broke down for the most brutal, heart-wrenching low he ever faced, these three letters that the wanderer had etched into the sole of his boots as a pathetic symbol of subjugation that he never did achieve in real life. for he never saw the good in that, not for him anyway. try as he might, he was always in their shadow only lighted up when the man left for brief moments when he would always try to but never totally successfully step in as a worthy replacement.

then he woke, the pillow drenched with his tears and his chest aching as if a massive weight was suddenly thrust onto him. it was the heavy weight of reality that ironically only metastasized from his soul in these dreams.

these dreams pushed him out of his home, out of his life as he knew it...and the wanderer was born.

all that stopped him from collapsing then were the moments he spent with her before. the ones he held on to as he told himself that these were real moments filled with emotion and chemistry that he questioned again and again. alas these moments were fleeting and became mere memories almost instantaneously. he held on to those as he wandered around these all years...but now, back in his home, they came back to mock him as his dreams reminded him of reality.

he was definitely back home. to where it all began. to where his life as a man of love ended. the wanderer was born here many nights ago but today and probably many days to come, he was visited by a reminder of the man he once was.

and it hurt him so.