Ah mon amour, et moi je arachnophobia...

His bare feet thudded against the ground as he ran and ran. The sounds of his joints creaking rang in his ears. He twisted and turned, around corners and bends and hallways that seemed to last forever. The mansion exploded before him, so many floors, so many stairways, so many doors, so much...

And it was warm, unbearably warm. He paused for a moment, to let out a strangled cry, and then kept running. So many things he stumbled into. A dark, cold, dank, crummy alleyway that felt so familiar...and then a room crowded full of people dressed so decadently, enjoying fine food and wine...to secluded passages of dead trees...and the spiders in his chest, oh they haunted him so...

But he was always running, never stopping, never ever stopping. For a moment he had tripped into a puddle, that suddenly wasn't a puddle anymore, and he was falling, drifting, drowning, in dark, cold, unforgiving water...

and then standing, monochrome tile underneath his feet. The water slick and dripping off his pale, fragile porcelain skin, blonde hair clinging to his cheeks and frills of lace stuck to his limbs.

Bicoloured eyes caught sight of Her, and to Her he ran. She opened her arms, to embrace her -- yet soft bosom and velvet cloth he did not meet. No, he ran right through her, and behind him, he heard the sound of her shattering into a million pieces.

But now the cobweb castle, which should have been reduced to ashes,
Has once more appeared the same as it was from long ago. And so I must once more go to her side.