Despite my seemingly infinite years of travelling, I couldn't help but feel startled as I found myself standing in a strange room that held no kind of familiarity to me whatsoever. The lighting was dim but I could make out a black door, as well as a carpeted floor surrounded by fading pastel blue walls which both bore unfortunate stains of mustard yellow. The room was narrow and the only kind of decoration around was the straining metal hooks attached to the crumbling wall, bravely carrying two large coats- one masculine, one distinctly not. 

I wanted to turn my head. I wanted to see more. I didn't feel comfortable with the unknown, but for some reason power was flowing through my veins and I wasn't scared. I just needed to look. I needed to see what was behind me.

The world heard my plea and I turned.  

The lighting above me brightened and my senses boldly sharpened. The dying green carpet fuzzed like static as the scent of alcohol wafted through my nostrils and poisoned my thoughts within, suffocating with selfish determination. 

There was a figure in front of me. A girl. I knew her. I knew her very well.

Carmen looked dazzling in an emerald dress with tendrils of her ebony hair escaping onto her exposed skin. She looked beautiful and I was alone with her but something didn't feel right. I wasn't excited to see her, and her green eyes sparkled with terrified tears. 

My normal reaction would have been to comfort her, but there wasn't any normality in this foreign place. The silence that had rested between us was suddenly disturbed by the sound of a slow, ominous violin, which played a muted sequence as I took my time to study the girl in front of me.

My gaze wondered down the angle of her face, noting the twitch of her nose and the tremble of her ruby lips, drawing attention to the fear that shined in her eyes like a newly revealed secret once hidden and now shown to all. I disliked her weakness. Prey that was too easy to discover wasn't enjoyable, and mystery was perhaps the greatest strength they could have. But she was too pathetic to demonstrate subtlety. And I hated that. 

I looked away from her trembling face and took a step closer, my eyes landing on her shaking arms, the rapid rising and falling of her chest, the frailty of her unstable legs. Gritting my teeth, I tried to disregard her lack of dignity, as the violin's strokes became more and more prominent within the depths of my dark heart. The beauty of music could be recognised by any individual with some sort of imagination even if, perhaps, that imagination was tainted. 

My gaze focused on Carmen's emerald orbs once again, and as her lips began to open the stench of liquor surrounding me strengthened to smother the nagging of morality. Maybe I could be free forever.

"Loving you has been really hard and," her bottom lip trembled as her voice caught and stuttered like an annoying broken record that I couldn't turn off. "...and I...I don't want to d...do it anymore."

There was a silence that, for a moment, was as deafening as any kind of noise to come. In the calm before the storm I felt a diverting sense of confusion: she loved me? Since when? We'd only been dating for a few weeks, and she'd have to be crazy to love me at all, let alone love me already. Why did I feel like I was missing something? 

But the cloud of confusion in my head was quickly dissipated by a sudden boom of noise: the eerie violins began to consume the atmosphere around us as the sudden rumble of drums pounded deep inside my brain, deafening my thoughts of restraint. A red haze drenched the world around me in blood and I was taken; enthralled in a fantasy of predatory instincts of an animalistic nature. 

This was desire at its most potent. Anger made all kinds of restraint disappear and the beast inside was unleashed.

I took a step closer to my prey. She clumsily stumbled back. I followed. Her back hit the wall with a thud. Drums pounded. Violins screeched. Love darkened. 

"What the fuck did you just say?" My voice was menacing, quiet, eerie. 

She cowered away from me. "I said...I said..." 

"Spit it out!" I roared, closing in. 

"I don't want you any...!" 

She was gasping. Her eyes were streaming. My hand was wrapped around her neck and I had her in the air. No breathing. No control. She couldn't leave. 

"L...let me go!" She rasped out, grabbing my arm in an attempt to fight. 

I let out a booming laugh and threw her to the ground- drums pounding, heart racing, animalistic desire burning me to the core- as I revelled in the beastly nature of violence. I was dominant and she could never leave me and take my dominance away with her. I would always come out on top. She was trapped. 

As my dark mirth faded into a triumphant smirk, I turned my gaze back to the woman who I had broken down, who I had bullied into staying with me, and my expression faltered. This wasn't me: I took no pleasure in beating up women. I didn't understand what was happening. Was I having a break down? 

This couldn't be real, could it? But then again, there was nothing more real than the anguish and pain I saw in my girl's eyes some mere moments ago.  

I suddenly began to see the full reality of the situation: Carmen was crying, curled up in a protective ball, purple splotches already starting to darken her neck as she cowered away from the monster who had hurt her. 

What had I done? 

I tried to move towards her, but my feet would not go. I pushed and pushed but my body would not budge. I let out a cry of anguish as I tried to comfort the woman I had wronged so badly. My vision blurred. 

I couldn't take back what I had done.

If I had thought I was past redemption before, I was now certain. There was no bright light at the end of the tunnel for me, just red. Red, like the colour of Carmen's skin; red, like the colour of my enemies' blood; red, like the colour of my eyes when the fire of my rage completely consumed me.

In this world, I knew deep down immortality wasn't forever. 

And they knew that too.

Suddenly, I felt myself falling backwards, into darkness, into nothingness, leaving my poor, defenceless girl behind. But in fact she was safer. Protected from the horror that was myself. 

Tormented by my hideous actions, I almost didn't register a bright light bursting into life in front of me- glimmering against the surrounding darkness like blood diamonds- and I almost missed a voice that sounded vaguely familiar as it penetrated the empty silence inside and out.

"I can see the past, present and the future. Memories and outcomes are my dreams. Believe the truth that I tell you, Roman, before it is too late."

The Oracle had spoken.

I tried to reply, but I was still paralysed. I needed her to tell me where my girl was, if she was okay, if she could ever take me back. But the words didn't come out. The light of The Oracle's truth left me and once again I was alone.

I looked down at my hands as I was falling; my tools of deadly abuse, my weapons of  romantic destruction, my mind's worst enemy and best friend, to find myself stopping short. 

My hands weren't my hands. They were pale, smaller and softer than the large, rough hands I looked upon on a day to day basis. Gaping, I couldn't begin to comprehend how I had managed to acquire a stranger's hands, but then I realised it wasn't just my hands. It was my arms, my legs, the size of my torso. All different. What the hell? 

I wasn't me. Nothing made sense. I didn't want this anymore. This life was not worth living. 

The darkness began to end and coming up was the cold gravel of the pavement of death...

"Roman! Roman! Wake up!" 

Panicking, my eyes snapped open as the pavement disappeared and was replaced by blurry, dimly-lit surroundings. But even before my disorientation dispersed I was certain of two very important factors, two very detrimental things that I had to cling onto in this moment of dizzy fear: I wasn't dead, and I wasn't someone else anymore. 

I rubbed my eyes to clear my gaze and sat up, changing my posture to try and establish myself back in the world I knew and belonged in. 

I looked around at my surroundings: Carmen's purple curtains were swaying softly to a gentle, natural breeze; I was clutching a cobalt blue duvet with big, tanned arms that were mine; and Carmen was lying next to me with her hand on my chest as she looked up at me in concern, no bruises in sight above the neckline of my shirt. She was safe. It was all a dream. Nothing but a vision. I didn't hurt her. 

I let out a sigh of relief and laid back down with her, wounding my arms firmly around her causing her chest to rest against mine.

We gazed at each other in silence for some time, as her reassuring scent of strawberry shampoo calmed me down, until her gentle voice broke the quiet tranquillity of the early hours after sunrise. "What happened, Roman? I went to go have a shower and by the time I'd gotten back you were shaking and shivering in your sleep." 

"So that's why you smell so good then." 

Her brow furrowed and her expression of chastity made a husky laugh vibrate from my chest. "Don't change the subject, but thank you." 

"It was nothing," I reasoned with her, tracing her soft face with my thumb. "Just a nightmare. I get them from time to time."

That was a lie. I either slept like a baby or didn't sleep at all. There was no in-between.

"Are you sure?" 

"Yes." 

I made sure my voice was steady in my response and I was convincing enough it seemed. 

"Okay. Goodnight," she kissed me on the cheek before nuzzling her head into my chest and closing her eyes, but I couldn't bring myself to do the same. The guilt from my dream was keeping me up. 

And also I was confused again by yet another one of The Oracle's cryptic messages. It was obvious that the nightmare I had just experienced was a vision sent by her, but to what end, I could not interpret. Obviously I hadn't beaten up Carmen yet, and I couldn't particularly see myself doing it anytime soon, so I didn't see how The Oracle had shown me a 'truthful' vision of the past, present or the future. Was she trying to verify the opinion I already had of her of being an unreliable fraud? 

But, and this was a big but, the hands that had hurt Carmen were not my hands, and therefore it could be possible that I was looking at the vision in the wrong way. Perhaps The Oracle was showing me a past event that I had nothing to do with. 

Could the bastard Carmen was arguing with have something to do with all of this? It seemed a bit of a coincidence that The Oracle sent me this 'message' quite soon after meeting the guy for the first time, and he seemed volatile enough to fit the bill. But it was a big accusation to make towards someone I didn't know, let alone a situation I didn't even know about. 

I gave Carmen's sleeping face an uncertain glance as I pondered on the idea that, maybe, just maybe, the angelic face resting on top of me right now was hiding a past full of ugly scars. And the only way to discover if I could actually trust The Oracle's mysterious words, was to uncover the question right in front of me.  

What was Carmen really hiding?