Hope let out a piercing shriek. "What is?!" she cried out, her uneven breathing filling the air about her. She staggered about helplessly for a moment, clutching at her head, before she was able to clearly look about her again, still struggling simply to balance herself. Melanthe seemed perfectly fine. She barely even glanced about her or seemed to care what had happened, though her left eye was also closed.
For indeed, something had happened. Just a moment after Hope had looked at the hallway through only her right eye, the change had become apparent. The hallway, once comprised of straight parallel lines, had started distorting itself. The walls began to wave in front of her eyes, bands of sweltering red over a dizzying spiral of mutated doorways. The sizes and shapes of things were no longer true; nothing was real anymore; the very floor that she was standing on appeared to be sliding sideways and upwards - or was it upwards? Hope couldn't tell anymore. Everything blended together in front of her eyes in a mad rush of objects and color.
The feeling was truly unpleasant. Everything that Hope had understood about the room simply faded before her eyes, and it made her stomach churn. She was dizzy, she was hot, she felt weak, and she couldn't tell anything about where she was anymore. Her senses had completely betrayed her. Yet, somehow, she couldn't seem to think of the logical way to stop the insane movement: to open her eye. Hope simply stood and stared, trying to keep her balance, one eye stuck shut as if it were glued down. Things continued to be the same until Hope felt as if she would pass out if she stayed in this mode a second longer, and at that exact moment, Melanthe spoke.
"Open your eye," she ordered, and Hope did.
The world came flooding back, changing as quickly as it had previously - this time, though, from the swirling chaos to organized walls and doors, perfectly set, exactly in line. It was as if nothing had ever happened. So quick and simple was the transition that Hope wondered whether it really had changed at all, or if it had been just her imagination, caused by unruly nerves.
There was deadly silence for what seemed like an eternity. Hope could only stop and peer at the walls, trying to convince herself that they really were there now, or that they really did change before - she wasn't sure of which. Melanthe stood staring down the hallway, completely ignoring Hope, and acting as if nothing had happened. At last, she spoke. "And who is the insane one, now?" It was a subdued tone, but the most emotionally potent thing Hope had heard in her life up to that point.
"That wasn't real," Hope whispered back, her voice quivering. "It wasn't real."
Melanthe snorted. "'Real'..." she said, shaking her head and laughing as if it were some sort of joke. "'Reality'...what a stupid word." She smoothed her dark robes as she continued. "How do you know, Hope," she asked, "That that wasn't reality, and this isn't the illusion?"
Hope stared around the crimson hallway. Had it changed? She second-guessed herself again. It was true; she wasn't sure what was real anymore, not in this strange place...
"There is no proof," she continued, her eyes closed and head bowed, "that any of what you know is 'reality.' There is no way to prove, Hope, that you even exist."
"Of course I do," Hope argued. "Remember, I do know about philosophy. It was Descartes who proved existence - 'I think, therefore I am' -"
She was cut off by a blunt laugh from Melanthe. "Descartes was a fool," she said.
Hope glared at her, fists clenched, furtively eyeing the elevator door. "What right have you to say that?" she snapped. "As if you know more than everyone!"
Melanthe sighed and shook her head. "You are a fool, too, if you believe him. Descartes didn't see the flaw in his...'logic.' He used a human function to prove we exist - thinking. Yet if thinking does not exist, and he hasn't proven it does, what has he proven? Nothing, except the naive and desperate lunacy of humans, attempting forcefully to prove they're real...refusing to believe otherwise." She pursed her lips together. "The only way to prove that we exist is with our own methods, and there is no way to prove those at all."
Hope sighed. "I don't want to get into this discussion right now," she squeezed her eyes shut. "I just want to go home! Let me out, as you promised you would!"
Melanthe smirked. "I don't think you want to go home, though, do you Hope?" She moved stealthily across the short patch of crimson ground to where Hope was, soon behind her. "Do you..." she breathed softly, placing her hand on Hope's shoulder. Hope shivered. Her touch wasn't physically cold, but it was psychologically. She could only stop and stare blankly down the hallway, tears forming in her eyes. "You're intrigued, I can tell," she said quietly, her throaty voice stinging Hope's entire body. "You didn't believe me at first, but now you do, and you're intrigued. And you know that even if you could go back to your house, you wouldn't be sure it was real any more, would you?" Hope tried to pull away, but Melanthe gripped her tightly. "You can never go back to the way you were now, can you, Hope? This will be a splinter in your brain, never letting you return to your old habits. It's too late," she said maliciously, digging her fingers into Hope's shoulder blade.
A moment later, she released Hope, allowing her to step away and face Melanthe. She stood powerfully before Hope, her arms folded into her shadowy vestments, eyebrows raised superiorly. At that moment, Hope began to cry; silent tears streamed down her face like a river - not because she was confused, not because she wanted to go back home, but because she knew that every single word Melanthe had said was completely true...