Well this is mildly terrifying, but I had better do it now and get it over with. The following is one of my very first attempts at writing. It's a description of a dream I had about a decade ago.
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I no longer remember how this dream started, I assume it started with the usual mess of imagery, nonsense and memory that makes up most of my dreams. I do remember I was traveling through a city with a group of friends on foot. We stopped under and elevated train track beside a moderately busy road. I remember a boy's arms around my waist holding me back from traffic, I think we were on a particularly narrow shoulder or sidewalk. I was looking out across the damp, grey street at a building that had caught my eye. Unlike the rest of the standard urban construction around me, it was skyscraper sized, blue, and cylindrical. More like a tower than any sort of modern apartment or office building. I was struck my an intense sense of recognition. I know this building. I leave my friends without explanation and walk across the street toward it.
I am in the lobby facing a reception desk. It seems the middle of the tower is hollow, an empty cylinder inside the larger exterior cylinder. Stairs spiral up along the wall. I've realized this is an apartment building. I also realize that I used to live here, but the details of exactly where and when are just beyond my reach. But I am absolutely certain that this used to be my home. Somewhere in here there is a space that I belong in.
There is a man sitting behind the desk, wearing some sort of bellhop uniform. I ask him if he knows me or knows where I used to live. He does not, but he suggests I go upstairs and ask some of the residents. So I start to climb the stairs, getting several hundred feet up before I find a floor that I feel I might have lived on. I am hoping my random choice will lead me where I want to go.
I am now in a cavernous hallway. The light is odd, dark and green. The ceiling is 15 feet over me, the floor at least twice that in width. It stretches on into darkness. There are doors on my left every twenty feet or so, the wall to my right is blank. On the carpet by the blank wall I notice there are toys. Blocks, bears, something that might be a Fischer Price Ferris wheel. It is very dimly lit, so I can just barely make them out, but after trying to see the toys for several seconds I notice some sort of small movement. I see that the toys are moving, but no one is in the hallway with me. It is as if invisible children are playing with them, or the toys are playing themselves, drawing from memories of children's play. Instead of the usual sounds that accompany children's play, there is only silence.
As I walk through the building, I can almost remember what I am seeing. Every new sight is expected, everything achingly familiar. I cannot, however, pull up where my apartment is, what floor it is on, or even what the interior looks like or when I lived here. But I am certain that my forgotten home is here, somewhere.
I start knocking on doors, mostly being greeted by just the silence. After a few attempts, one finally opens, spilling out a brighter shade of green light out. The door only opens a foot or so, and behind it stands a strangely withered old man wearing a sweater vest. I cant tell if his skin is green, or if the light just makes him look green. He quietly informs me that he doesn't recognize me, but he suggests I go downstairs, to a room under the lobby, and ask the people I find there. Apparently they are the people who know about everything that goes on in the tower. He closes his door, leaving me alone in the grimly lit hallway.
I decide to keep looking around on the floor before heading back down. I find a door that looks like a janitors closet, or maintenance room. It opens up a small empty room, the walls are white, the floor is white, and even the light itself is bleached and dead. Ten feet up the back wall there is a small window that looks out on an overcast sky. More notably when I open the door I am not only struck by the air that rushes out to meet me, but an overwhelming sense of rage, fear, and misery. I am utterly repulsed and horrified by this space. I close the door, back away and resolve to try to forget that I ever opened it.
I head back down the stairs in the middle of the tower, through the lobby and down some more. I arrive in a dark, ill defined space. I cannot see the walls around me or the ceiling. In front of me I can see a fireplace and mantle. Between me and this, the only light source, is a semi circle of overstuffed chairs. Most of the chairs are occupied, but the dark seems to cling to the occupants. I cannot see their faces, only their outlines. They sit in silence.
I walk until I am in front of the fireplace and facing the chairs. I ask if these people know me, or know where my home is. They say they do recognize me, I used to be one of them. I even had my own chair. But they say I will have to find my misplaced home on my own.
After this point, the dream fades from this weirdly solid place back into standard dream fuzziness and confusion. I never found my apartment, and I am not certain I want to know what is in it if I do.
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