Tristan stared into his reflection, and the tiny opening in the metal panel in his chest.

The rest of his immaculate form seemed insignificant in relationship to this tiny hollow.

He’d been in this same position before, feeling strangely perplexed, and gazing into a keyhole within himself.

He suddenly twitched, and then a chill and shiver overcame him.  It felt like a wraith had snuck into the room with him, prodded him on the shoulder with it’s long bony finger, then exhaled an icy breath, causing his skin to prickle, and his body to quiver in an attempt to generate heat.

When the odd moment passed, the bathroom remained as sterile, and innocuous, as it was mere seconds before.

Tristan closed his eyes for several breaths, drew in air through his nostrils, and opened his eyes.

He saw nothing.

To be accurate, he saw pitch-blackness, pure darkness, or, interpretatively, a complete absence of light.  He put his right hand behind him, took a step backwards, and felt nothing.  Maintaining the same approach, he took several more steps in reverse.  At the fourth step, his hands touched structure.  In the void of light, he had no idea what element he was stroking, only that is was smooth, cold, and solid.

Tristan stepped back further, and found what his hand had encountered was, according to his only engaged sense, a wall.  He placed his back against this “wall,” and began to move himself to the left.

After considerable slides, Tristan’s left shoulder met emptiness.  He immediately stopped, and shifted back to the right, firmly locking his physique on the solid structure at his back.   Incrementally, Tristan eased his way around the precipitous departure from his parallel support system, rotated left, and found purchase on another smooth, cold, surface.

Tristan, again moved with his unseen guide.  This one, step-by-step, moved him outwardly, and had a notable curvature.  With no light to guide his path, Tristan edged himself along the path, until once again, his left shoulder found nothingness.  Once again, Tristan eased himself back to the right.  He took a long pause, and desperately, albeit fruitlessly, scanned the ebony expanse surrounding him.

Twinges of anxiousness set upon him.  Tristan had only his sense of feel to propel him forward in this darkest, and blackest of places.  His sense of smell was not impaired, but there was nothing in the air that smelled of a direction away from darkness.

Tristan steeled himself, then inched his body around the void until his shoulder contacted solidity once again.  He eased his body to the left once more, and found, once again, that his whole body pressed solidly to a wall.

As he began to move left again, a sense of familiarity churned in Tristan.  He slid along the flat, cold, surface at length, eyes wary, though unable to perceive anything but darkness.   To the best of his blind calculations, he measured his steps.  Step with left, slide the right to join the pair.

He continued his process, until once again, his left arm slipped into the void.  Recent experience, taught him to slide around this vacancy, and to rest his elbow on the curved surface at the end of the straightaway.

Unwilling to attempt the midnight-shaded unknown that lay steps away from the cold, polished wall at his back, Tristan continued to slide to his left.

The rotations continued, over, and over, and over again.

A long stretch of flat wall-space, followed by an arching bow of cold structure, these forms all in darkness, were the only stimuli Tristan knew.

After countless passes, during the rotation where his back was flat against the wall, a flicker in the distance halted his slide.  He first attributed it to a trick of his mind, generating luminescence for no plausible reason after interminable darkness.

But he waited, still, and hopeful.

For a long time, the darkness remained.

And then it broke.

Not in a sunburst, nor as a burst of flame, but as the winking of a small ghostly light, far in the distance, directly in front of Tristan.

He waited, hopeful, yet with little confidence.  His dark frame was pressed against a solid black wall, in the middle of nothing, as he hoped for the flicker to return.

His patience was rewarded.

The ghost-flame flickered again in the darkness, then held.

Tristan pushed off from the wall, and set his eyes, and body, on the beacon in the distance.

The light did little to illuminate his way, so Tristan fixed his eyes on the white flame, suspended in air, and spread his arms out to his side, continuing forward.  The light never gained intensity, nor did Tristan encounter a significant stumbling block, as long as he focused on the white flame.

Tristan slowly drew nearer to the ghostly flicker as he glided forward soundlessly through the darkness.  Though he couldn’t see any, he “felt” walls on either side of him.  He couldn’t tell exactly how far away they were, but he  had the sense that he was moving down a corridor.  With only the flame as a guide, Tristan had little interest in testing out his senses, for fear that once he took his eyes from the beacon, he would be once again reaquianted with total darkness.

After a considerable walk, Tristan finally reach the flame.  It was hovering around five feet from the ground, and unlike most flames, did nothing to illuminate his surroundings.   Tristan reached out his hand toward the flame, and found that it was neither hot nor cold.

Tristan walked around the flame several times, and pondered his next direction.  Tristan never took his eyes from it, though it remained motionless.

Tristan stared for an incredibly long time at the still flame.  He started to feel panicked, and nervous about his next move and direction.  When he had the wall at his back, at least there was a structure and support that he could touch.  At this point, there was the flame and the floor.  Though Tristan believed there were was a wall nearby, there was no guarantee.  As time progressed, and the flame remained unmoving, he began to inch off to the side, hoping to encounter solidity.

He had moved only several feet, when the flame twitched.  Tristan quickly stopped his movement, and continued to stare at the now motionless flame.  When the flame didn’t move again Tristan began to believe that his eyes were playing tricks on him.  Just as he was about to start shuffling once more.  The flame twitched again.

Tristan moved towards the flame.  When he came within arms length of the phantasm blaze, it flickered again.  This time, Tristan noticed that it moved towards the left.  Just to be sure, he waited until it twitched again.  The direction was the same.

Tristan couldn’t be completely positive, but anything was worth exploring at that point. He put one arm out in front of him, and turned toward the direction the flame was “pointing.”  He knew that he would have to take his eyes off of the flame,  but the potential progress was worth the risk, so he walked forward tenaciously.

He wasn’t counting his paces, but after a few hundred, Tristan’s hand encountered a solid surface.   Tristan turned his neck around to look for the flame, and saw that it was moving.

Tristan frantically ran to close the gap between himself and the flame.  As he was running the flame disappeared from his view, and Tristan felt panic.  But a short sprint later, and Tristan saw it in the distance, to his left.

When Tristan reached the flame again, it was still.  But after a short time, it once again began to twitch to the left.

Again, Tristan set off in the direction that it was indicating.  This time though, he kept glancing over his shoulder, to make sure that the flame didn’t move.

He traversed a similar distance, and once again, encountered a solid surface.  He turned around to find the flame, and despite his tracking, it was once again moving. Tristan sprinted, to catch up to the flame.  Again, there was a brief moment where he lost sight of it, only to regain a visual several strides later.

This same process occurred twice more with the flame flickering to the left.  And then the flame changed it’s direction, pointing Tristan to the right.  This occurred on the right side twice, instead of the four occurrences to the left.

After Tristan caught up to the flame, he waited, expecting the flame to give him another direction to explore.  He waited what he considered the approximate time, based on previous instances, but nothing happened.

He waited a bit longer, then began to pace around the flame.  He began to feel restless, agitated, and frustrated at being trapped in the darkness with nothing but a flame that seemed inclined towards prankster behavior. And he also began to feel warm.

Tristan first attributed the warmth to his seemingly pointless exercises in burst running.  But he realized that it had been quite some time since his last sprint.  Tristan reached towards the flame, and realized it was giving off heat for the first time.

Just then, the flame began to pulse, ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

Tristan reached for his chest, placed his hand over his heart, and felt the same rhythm.

He took his hand away from his chest and reached forward towards the flame.  He took one step, then another, until he could feel the intense heat from the flame, inches from his palm.  He closed his eyes, and wrapped his fingers around the flame, feeling the heat surge through his hand, up his arm, through his shoulder, and to his heart.

Then he opened his eyes, and a flash of brilliant white greeted his vision. The shock stunned him, and he released the flame from his grasp.  Reeling, he closed his eyes and stumbled backwards.

When he regained his composure, he opened his eyes once more.