I stumbled through the door. The end to another shambolic week had come and my chaotic mind, free from coherent thought, spilled forth from every pore.

No more than five steps from the entrance and my groping hands had found the opened bottle of wine amongst the half unpacked boxes. Drinking deeply, I surveyed the accumulation of my life thus far – ten rather battered boxes of personal effects.

“A nice round number…” I mused bitterly.

I spent that night like every other, fingers curled around the wine bottle, asleep on the plastic wrapped couch; in front of a television I didn’t know how to tune. And as always I dreamt of an alternative world, one in which I was happy.

The next morning I decided I should explore my new home and quickly discovered that in the month I had lived there I’d never really looked around. Scaling the narrow staircase I pushed against a heavy oak door. The room within was modest and thick with the haze of stale air. Amid a chaos of abandoned dress-making mannequins, dusty closets, cloaked forms and glittering spider webs sat a jewellery box; untouched by the eclectic maelstrom created by the rooms other inhabitants.

Gripped by curiosity I navigated a path through the room and halted, uncertain, the box at my feet. And so I sat, questioning the ethics of opening something which did not belong to me and was reminded of Pandora’s Box, however fleetingly. I gathered it cautiously in my hands and heard the ancient fabric that hinged the box to the lid rip. Watching with horror hundreds of sepia photographs spilled onto the floor, their accusing faces staring up at me.

I looked more closely and noticed an oft recurring figure. A young woman, with long dark hair and laughing eyes; smiling broadly at the photographer, or dancing with friends; partaking in family festivities. Slowly  as I gazed at her I became convinced that she was smiling not at the photographer, but me, and my mind slipped easily into her world; her life.

In the days and weeks that followed I visited the photographs more and more frequently. An amorous and fervent devotion developed, and I soon found myself kneeling on that thread bare rug, in eager worship of their antiquated world. The small yellowed scraps of paper became my confidants, my children and my lovers. I turned to them to abate the fierce loneliness that accompanied my steeping age and soon their familiar faces, trapped by the fraying boundaries of the crackling paper on which they lived, began to replace the family I had so desperately longed for. Piecing their lives together, their faces began to haunt me. Each day a new story, placing my anachronistic desires upon them to fit my mood and fulfil my dissatisfied existence.

Outside the world continued; ignorant of my defection from society. Each morning I would emerge from behind the oak door, pull on fresh clothes and go to work, only to return that evening to my preferred life, bottle of wine in hand. As work became increasingly stressful I retreated further. I was no longer merely a voyeur.

Dancing amongst them in a full skirted dress which fell, immodestly, just below the knee, I decided simply to stay. For weeks I ate and talked and danced with my adopted family and was free from the social anxieties that had plagued my ‘real’ existence.

Slowly however, the gravity of my decision dawned on me. I was to be trapped, contained within this polarised moment of jubilation forever, and somehow the loneliness I had tried to escape pursued me, even here. The superficial nature of this faded and age worn world seemed only to highlight the inadequacies of my actual life and glancing around their garish behaviour scared me, their smiles appeared malevolent.

Did they know of my entrapment? Was it of their design?...

I stumbled back from the circle of dancers, landing gracelessly on the sparse lawn. An urgency to escape gripped me and I rushed over to the table were the men still sat, drinking copious amounts of wine, debating passionately. I searched arbitrarily, toppling dishes and chairs and disrupting the avid debaters. I climbed on top of the table, somehow mounting the low pergola from there and out of desperation, wildly raised my arms, reaching for the edge of the photograph. I pushed against the fabric of this world, straining and stretching it and looking at my fingertips I noticed the colour start to drain. Throwing a confused glance at those still feasting I watched their olive skins bleach; the flushed pinks wane from their dresses and the burgundy fade from their wine. The laughter quietened, emotion froze and activity became static. A golden sepia tide washed the scene, as the material that bound me gave beneath my fingers and I was expelled.

Once again in my dusty attic I collapsed and clutching the photograph, sobbed. I was alone again and this time without an escapist avenue. The shuddering loneliness that wracked my body would now have to be confronted and resolved. Terrified by the very prospect my groping hands located the wine bottle, glad for the solace it would provide.