A doorway stood tall and silent on my grandparent's driveway. Far outside in the country, under a visible dome of stars.

The doorway was not connected to any building, framed in old wood with fine wrought iron spades and steel squared nails. Across it's edges were a number of deadbolts, all of different designs and keys. They pointed up, to the left, to the right. Others were centered in the middle of the door. Some mortis, others modern in their design. Each faced inward, allowing me to open each in turn.

The doorway, rather than providing a view of the sloping yard and trees beyond opened into a low ceiling room. It was lit by unseen candle light reflected from innumerable ticking clocks. Amidst the tables were various mechanical clocks. Among, them I saw movement. I entered the room, but glanced back out the doorway. The gravel driveway still stood, with the hazy indigo night beyond.

I approached the nearest group of clocks, and saw my grandfather. He stood up from his carved wooden stool, silver hair reflecting yellow in the light. He smiled the same flat-jawed smile he cast in life. He said nothing, but I sensed only goodwill from him. He bobbed his head slightly in a nod, turning and looked to the clocks again before shuffling off past the perimeter of light.

The room felt cold, and the clocks ticking slowed until the last clock stopped. A grandfather clock's soft chime sounded in the distance as I shut the door and engaged each of the locks in turn.

I walk through a deserted matrix of shops and store fronts while the skyline of a dark metropolis looms in the distance. The city is familiar, and I know that I've visit it before in a dream long past.

The cobblestone paved roads are grey, and faded neon signs blink nearby. The streets feels like an area of Japan, or perhaps Hong Kong; having an aged quality about them, but lacking the grime and gum-stained sideways of most western cities. A small number of Asian shoppers wander about in the distance, too far away to make out. I meet an elderly version of an 80's/90's action movie star as he waits on the side walk. We walk quietly through an open air mall area build into the side of a building. The squared hallways are deserted, with many of the shops closed. The old man's knees hurt, so we stop for a time and sit on a bench. The air is cool, like an air conditioner; lacking any hint of moisture. The old man coughs, and tells me anecdotes of his life. I listen, but can't remember any details of what he says. Focusing so intently on what is said, I forget what came before.

As we exit the empty shopping alleyways, I see a large black freight truck parked beside the curb which we both get inside. As we both get in, I'm still uncertain of why he's walking around with me, or why we're now flying in a helicopter.

We ascend, leave the grey streets below. There are hills between this small shopping district and the sky scrapers that line the western horizon. No one is flying the helicopter, as both the old man and myself sit as passengers. Together, we watch the horizon.

There’s a train station shaped like a long half cylinder, devoid of other people. I've been here before in another dream, but on a different platform. The trains pull up into the station from the outside, and depart for places unknown. I'm lost in the levels of escalators, and the place is hauntingly empty. A grey tone saturates everything around me, and the air feels like the early morning - crisp, and cool. I find my way to a train, and it departs from the station.

I arrive in cobble stone streets that remind me of my old college area. I ascend steps to the main area where there would be a bridge, but there is none. Instead, a street lined with tall trees on either side. The sound of a horses' hooves fill the air, and a man riding a horse approaches. As he comes closer, I can see he's a corpse, but still alive. His wife and child are bound to him with rope, but both are long dead. Trailing behind the horse, also attached by rope is ...

“Dead eyes see no future” I tell myself as I flee into a nearby building. In the real world, this was a set of offices for my college. In this dreamworld, the hallway angle down sharply and is paved with cobblestone. On either side are small food service businesses with takeout windows. People stumble about, drunk, or out of their minds. I have the strongest sense of vertigo, and cannot stand. I topple forward...

I was meeting someone, or perhaps I will be meeting someone. In this place, it’s hard to think in a linear direction. I'm drawn to an office or perhaps bar space on stilts. The stairs are individually cut circular logs ascending to the door-frame. I enter the office, and a panicked man recruits me to pretend I'm a lawyer. Confused, I comply, and set at the back of the room near the window. There's an exchange with another man who enters, then both men leave.

There's a woman sitting at the back of the room with me. She is fascinating, and enigmatic. I can't figure out what her job is until she admits that she provides breast milk, and presents her large breasts to me. I'm encourage to grip them - when I do with both hands, milk seeps out in spurts. This woman draws me in, and provides this milk to me. It's horrifying, and inescapable. The dreamworld outside is chaos, but she reassures me with her presence. She finishes, and gives me her card to contact her, but no name...

I walk outside near the water. This path is the one that continues from where I saw the rotting man atop the horse earlier. The road blends into a memory of surrounding I have from Little Lake Park in my home town - the road curving left as it follows the shallow lake water. I gaze across the water, and see a gazebo in the distance. The outline of a small child silently observes me through the haze. 


I wander along the water, but I can't think of anything else but the woman. I return to the building I met her in, card in hand. Another person is there - a younger girl in her late teens. She has a disconnected look in her eyes that alarms me. I sit down next to her, and ask if she knows this woman - offering the card. She glances at it, and resumes her 1000-yard state.  "I do, but there's always a price." Since feeding from the mysterious woman, I feel a compulsion to…

I am led to the water, but from the opposite direction. There are multiple men here to mate with the breastfeeding woman, all entranced. They have each finished, and stand by the shore, naked and waiting something. The woman sees my approach, and greets me warmly. “You’re just in time.”

Something glides up from the depth of the water toward the surface. What looks like an alligator with the distorted head of a man emerges from the water. The men are eviscerated, with others castrate themselves before the the creature consumes them on the shoreline. The men are eerily silent. I’m frozen in fear, but the woman squeezes my shoulders and tells me it’s all okay. “They wanted this.” The younger girl stands a few feet behind us, still gazing at a fixed, unknown point in the distance…

* * *

I can not tell if my surroundings are a memory of a department store I once wandered through, or the echo of another dream: I walk through the harshly lit appliance isle, with its low ceiling and claustrophobic interiors. There’s a boy and a girl with me, both teenagers. We pass through the sliding store-front doors into a parking lot. On the far right is a Shoppers Drug Mart. We walk to the far left side of the parking lot to a police cruiser. The officer opens both drivers’ side doors, and tells us to find room inside.

The car interior is in a terrible state of disrepair. Garbage cover the floor, the seats' vinyl is ripped, and in places revealing the foam underneath. The passenger seat is cranked forward, and there’s a large amount of oily water floating on the floor in the back seat. The boy gets in the passenger side door, while and girl and I get in the back seat – careful not to let our feet submerge in the water. We wait for the officer to return. Perhaps he’s giving us a ride to where we need to be. Where do I need to be?

The boy gets tired of waiting, and discovers the keys somewhere up front. He starts up the engine, and begins driving around the parking lot, recklessly sliding into his corners. In two instances, I am certain he’ll crash the car against the wall during a tight turn, but manages to miss both buildings and people. I am angry at him, and get out of the car. The girl refuses to leave.

I walk into the Shoppers Drug Mart, and discover it’s smaller on the inside than it appeared to be. I go to the back of the store, and find a checkout. I comment about the boy and his driving to the cashier girl – a Nordic looking blond girl with dark eyebrows. She sympathizes with me. I’ am looking out the store-front, watching the boy still lurching around the parking lot in the police cruiser. I hear the blond girl’s voice over my shoulder – I turn to see that there are two of them. The girls begin speaking in fractured sentences – finishing each other’s – thoughts. They’re both gazing at the police cruiser, and say “It’s ok, he wanted this.”

* * *

I’ve returned to my grandmother’s old house in Lakefield. It’s different now – darker, with the walls and floors stripped down to the bare plywood. There are people moving around in the kitchen, unseen. In the living room, a television is on broadcasting a strange show I've never heard of. I approach the short set of stairs between the living room and the kitchen, and notice a few empty coin rolls on the ground. Covering the stairs and part of the kitchen are nickels and dimes. I kneel down on the floor, and desperately start trying to sort them out. The sound from the television behind me distorts, and the deepening sense of vertigo returns.

I sit down on the brown/white patterned chairs in the kitchen and gaze out the window. The cool early morning air calmly blows in from a formless, grey horizon. 

I'm standing in line at a coffee/sandwich shop late at night near the airport. The line stretches around a wall divider and around a rack of post cards and souvenirs. There's only one guy running the register and making the food, so the line progresses slowly. I recognize him as a bearded employee from the Silver Snail. 

I'm talking idly to a woman in line about "...if you were asked to total up all of what you spent in your lifetime on anything, it'd look ridiculous..." She nods in agreement. The line moves up, and I'm near the wall divider, looking at the wall menu. I decide, then look outside through the glass window-front. 

The night is dark and foggy. The door is propped open, letting the cool night air inside. The air feels strange, like there's a pressure in your ears, and behind your eyes. Everyone seems irritated. A short Asian guy in a brown trench coat (who looks like an actor from 'The Tomorrow People') is fed up with waiting in line, despite being 2 people away from being served. I get to the register, and the man tiredly asks me what I want. I order Ramyen for $2, and a bottle of water for another $1. He rushes off to make the food, muttering how he hates when he has to do the cooking.

Everything goes silent, leaving a tone whistling in my ears. Outside in the distance, large rectangular puffs of air in a formation 'blow' from left to right - creating fog-less voids in the air. The lights flicker. Some people notice, while others are too wrapped up with what they're doing. A distant airport loudspeaker echoes a coded all-call: "Echo, Tango, Bravo. All is clear, all is bright. I repeat, All is clear, all is bright." That catches some peoples' attention, as they trade confused looks. I leave the line-up, and have a rising sense of panic.

A large silver-grey frame folds out of the fog in mid-air. One exists in the shop, a dim reflection of a larger version outside outside where the puffs of rectangular air once appeared. The frame exists at an impossible angle, like watching an object from two sides simultaneously. Inside the crooked silver frames are knitted grey overlays, shifting like living crochet. The frames expand, shift, and alter. Air begins rushing from the room, from everywhere. 

People look onward in shock, and begin to back away. The frames then collapse inward, creating a void in air pressure. The result is like explosive decompression from an air plane in reverse - pulling everyone and everything toward them in an earth shaking rumble.

I'm outside, running through the foggy night. A brassy-chord echoes off the tarmac, a sound like the lowest possible note. There's a pressure behind my eyes as a round the corner of a large concrete sign. Three other people are braced against that concrete as the next wave hits - signs, cars, and people are hurled up and past us towards the nearest void. I'm pulled against the wall, smashing my head against the concrete and passing out.

* * * 

When I awake, the other three people are gone. I can only see a smear of blood on the concrete sign beside me, and rubble strewn nearby. The night seems darker with no star light and the fog gone. I stumble toward a shuttle-bus loading platform and  see an airport television screen. It's still attached to it's housing. The screen is fractured, but shows a live news feed from the control tower - a large jet with a blue stripe down the side is attempting to land on the runway. Masses of people are running along the tarmac toward the plane's docking area. The next scene is one of madness: someone jerkily pans past a pyramid of people - all climbing atop one another. A woman in a dress is at the top, and leaps off toward the plane as it lands.  She misses, and disappears into the mass of humans below her. Horrified, I back away. I don't know what's happening. 

I enter a steel door into the underground mall connected to the airport. Thousands of people are milling around - many have dried blood around their eyes and ears. I descend down level by level until I'm in the waiting area. People appear more agitated, and are attacking one another for reasons not clear to me. I crouch down, and make my way toward an VIP waiting area. This connects to a rail-shuttle leading to the tarmac. There's two other people doing the same, and appear to have the same level of caution as I do. An Italian man in his 40s gestures for us to move toward an empty stairwell. He leads us through an emergency exit - ending with a steel door he unlocks. We exit into a service hallway adjacent to the VIP area. I excitedly move down the hallway - there's no one here but us. The others hang back, unsure of what they're find. I round a corner, and see a man in sunglasses and a black suit dead on the floor. His gun is missing, as are a few of his fingers. Blood decorates the hallway. Taking the other junction, I can see the masses outside through a frosted window. These people look glassy-eyed and ragged, and are hurriedly filing into the VIP staging area.

I run back to where the Italian man was waiting, but he and the other are gone. In the darkness of the airport terminal, everything again goes silent. The air pressure changes, and in terror I know what's coming.

I’m getting work in northern Canada somewhere, possibly out west. The weather is dark and cold. I take a bus for hours, and finally arrive at a gas station/bus stop. I enter, and the place is a ghost town.

I go into the shop, as I'm hungry and want to buy something to eat while I wait - there's nothing to buy here. I walk past racks of post cards and small key chains, to find an empty convenience store with no shelves - only an older native man running a lotto desk. He doesn't make eye contact.

I'm boarding with someone in this town, and they drive me to the hour where I'll be staying: a 2 story cabin, four rooms across, with a large central room downstairs. It seems familiar, but I can't place from where.

Tired, I go upstairs to unpack and get to bed. I enter a room, and I'm horrified. Nailed to the wall are upside down pair of dolls feet. The chipped paint underneath show where the rest of the sculpture was attached to the wall, but it was removed long ago. The shape mimics an upside down cross - yet only the feet remain.I run to another room, and discover the same thing, but recreated with a Barbie dolls' feet and legs hanging from the wall of an empty room. There's a lot of water damage in this room, and some in the dimly lit hallway.

This horrifies me on a level outside of the dream - I remember a dream from my childhood where I was in a cabin, perhaps at camp, and found these dolls nailed to the wall in an inverted St. Peter on the cross way.

I run down stairs, and into the family that's boarding me. They are dressed in some kind of KKK-esk ceremonial garb, with two women bent over, prepared for some kind of sex ritual. I scared of what's happening here, so far away from everything, late at night in a strange city. I run for the door, but one of the brothers in this family tries to stop me - I club him with a nearby lamp, and make it outside to the front lawn. I feel disoriented, swirling vertigo as I stumble and crawl across the dew-damp lawn. The sun’s coming up, and there are wet cardboard boxes strewn around the lawn. One of the girls from the family is outside, and trying to explain to me it was a big joke - the brother, sister and friends staying at the cabin were just trying to freak me out. I can't understand why - and why the weirdly religious, quasi sexual angle? The woman just shrugs.

*  *  *

I'm tearing lined pages out of a spiral bound notebook, and trying to trim the edge with scissors. I'm late for something, and realize I haven't had a chance to shower or dress properly. I rush to a cafe, but it's the middle of the night. The air has a quiet stillness, with everything in shades of grey. There's nothing around for miles. I walk down a dirt road lined with trees on one side, and an open field bordered by a fence on the other. As the road ends at a house, I realize there's a cafe table with seating outside. I'm simultaneously indoors at this cafe - closed, with the metal shop front gate closed to my left --- and I'm still outside, with the dirt road, and tree line to my left.  It's disorienting.

I'm supposed to meet someone here, a lawyer. He needs me to present something about the "nature of desolation" using bits I had in a notebook, and pages from an old Dark Horse comic I had with me. The lawyer is late, so I take a seat at the table / indoors. I start up a conversation with the people there, who are the defendants in the lawyers’ case. I'll be helping them somehow. I speak with a man to my left, sitting on an L-shaped sofa the runs around one side of this table. He says he's from G----- college, part of my old university. We're getting along really well, and a female friend of his switches sides of the table so that she's sitting beside me. They're all part of an organization that's being sued for something, and they're all waiting on this lawyer.

There's a man drawing very accurate space ships at the table next to his, but has 2 other people shading them with pencil crayons. One I recognize. He shows me his poorly colored picture, and then returns to what he was doing.

I'm simultaneously outside and in. The sun is rising - filtered through the trees to my left. The table and people are still there, but they're outside -- the two rooms existing within the same three-dimensional space. I see a man walking through the treeline down a road. It's the lawyer. I meet him half-way, and ask what I need to do for the trial. "You'll know when you're there." is all he says. He's friendly, and it feels like I've seen him before.

There are chimpanzees nearby, and one lying slumped near a tree as we walk back to the table. The lawyer shoves it over at me, and it falls into my leg. The chimp is partially decapitated, with the head only attached by a small bit of flesh. This is horrifying and confusing. "Why did you do that?" I yell at the lawyer. He just shrugs.

We get to the table, and immediately we're no longer outside. The left side security gate, with the exit beyond into a darkened mall exists now. The lawyer gets everyone up to leave, and I help pull up the gate area, holding it high enough for everyone to slip though.

As we leave the gated cafe behind, the twilight illuminating the room fades, and the room becomes a black void. I turn to catch up with the lawyer and defendants as they walk off into the darkened mall, but all I can hear are their distant voices receding in the distance.

Hiding in a ditch, sand blowing overhead. The sky was washed out, with shadows at the edges like a dark storm approached. I crawled out of the culvert on to a cracked pavement road. Around me there were the remains of storefronts, all with blown in or missing doors and windows. Beyond were dark, featureless hills.

I came across a group of people surviving in a gymnasium, the remains of a red cross camp, or something similar. There was no rooftop, it was open to the sky. I coroutched near a fallen file cabinet as missiles flew by overhead. For the first time in many years, I felt a deep, chilling fear in my dream. Everyone felt they were nuclear - and knew if you can see the missiles flying overhead to it's target, you were within the blast radius.

The missiles detonated kilometers away, leaving only a plume of fire and smoke. Non-atomic. A dirty, ash smeared man crouching nearby looked visibly relieved.

* * *

I left the camp, and wandered into the hillside. A tall man wearing a black top hat was following me. Accompanying him is a much smaller man, rotund with ugly features. They're hunting me through the tunnels. As I exit the other side, there's a farm gate. The area beyond it made the surrounding area seem less saturated - as if this world was a pale reflection of what laid beyond. I understood without reason that the men could not follow me past this gateway, as only children are allowed inside. Without thought, I was again a child. I enter this place, and realize it's an alternate world version of my old high school. This one was built against the shore, and had four extra stories. Aspects of it's pre-renovation structure existed, yet hallways connect to places they shouldn't.

The halls were abandoned, and old. Yellow water stains were the only decorations on the once white walls. No ones has been here for a very long time. I climbed down a set of stairs, and out on to a balcony. I looked down at the dark waters below, and notice a steel door near the water. I climbed down a ledge, and perilously down a drainpipe. I need to know where this door lead to. Inside, it was unlike any other room in the school. Where the outside is saturated in browns and yellows, this room is clean - giving off an almost sterile blue look. The lighting functioned, and there were bald men in hockey gear sleeping on the floor, near benches. I quietly walked past these men, and up a flight of stairs. It exited on to the main hallway.

The rooms are shifting now, the whole building is becoming smaller, collapsing in upon it's self. Where there were two rooms, there are now one - there was only ever one. I'm only aware the merger happened for the briefest instant as it occurs - then all that remains is a sense of unease without meaning -- until it happens again. I enter the staff room, and into the front offices - now office. Now cubicle. There's a window.

* * *

I'm standing on an outdoor escalator, in an old market. An attractive Asian girl stands next to me, flat bangs, and a noticeably rounded nose. She's smiling. We're going shopping.

The market square is lined with shops in antique looking houses. We enter the shop on our right as we get off the escalator. Inside the sliding wooden shop door are books, CDs, clothing, and costume items scattered among old shelves. Together, we try on costume items, laughing at the more ridiculous items. Masks, feather boas, tacky jackets. A faceless person - the store owner -  silently places a stained cardboard box from under the counter on top. Within the box are objects that shouldn't exist. A geodesic cube I remember from another place, another time. Also within it is a Nintendo Power Glove. I never owned one of these items, so I try it on. It fits my left hand, although the fingers feel too short. On the outer fist are 3 slanted, glowing bars, which is unusual - this item was never manufactured with such a feature. They cast a fluorescent blue light, which fascinates me. I take it off, and put it back in the box. I continue around the store with the girl, and examine some old books on the shelves. My eye keeps wandering to this unique looking power glove. I buy it, and we leave the store together.

It occurs to me this girl has been with me the entire time - my memory of the desert apocalypse area, and of the alternate universe high school are rearranged. She accompanied me the entire time. 

I wonder to myself, "How could I have forgotten?"

I'm in an open field during the fall, next to a grove of birch trees. A man holds me at gunpoint, and a police officer escalates the confrontation  The hostage man struggles physically with the cop, and his gun goes off, directly into my head. For the first time in a dream, I die.

I'm in an office building without windows. Beige walls, yellow counter tops, with 1990's era computers and CRT-monitors arranged on desks. I believe I'm at work, and sit down to operate one of the humming machines. I'm confused, as weeks seem to have passed, and all my files are gone. Nothing seems right.

I go into a break room, lit by harsh florescent lighting. The room is eerily silent. A girl is sitting down to eat lunch, and I move to join her. I can't hold a fork, or chopsticks to grasp the noodles. My ears buzz, and vision blurs whenever I try and interact with anything. I focus, and the vertigo goes away, allowing me to eat lunch with my chopsticks. The girl silently ignores me. I look away, and back - she's gone. Hours have passed on the wall clock. The food I was eating seemingly never existed.

I return to the computer, and attempt to move files around. An Asian man, wearing a white short sleeved dress shirt and tie approaches me. He looks remarkably like 'Harold' from the film 'Harold & Kumar'. He explains that I'm dead. 

Disbelieving, he shows me a series of work orders, each with elements missing from them.
"Were do you think this stuff goes?" he remarks. "We quietly manipulate the manifests, shaping the company - controlling the world."

"Ghosts?" I ask. He opens a concealed wall panel, removing a box, and showing me pieces that were repurposed or hidden away for future use. He holds up a set of brightly colored splice-cables. "Dye-set fiber optics. It slows down data transmission, lets us monitor things, and change what we need. I'm just low level. The old ones are pulling all the strings."

I look closely at the monitor screen, seeing two drives that didn't exist before. One labeled "Data", and the other "Dump". "We need to purge those drives. She's starting to see things." He pauses. "Your stunt at lunch didn't help."

The clock jumps again, yet the man and I are still in the same positions we were before. 
"Wh-what... why am I here? Didn't -" I stammer. 

"Die? Yeah. That sucks." He says. "The Older Ones put you here, to keep things running smoothly. Keep feeding them information, deleting other information. You and I help them manage the low-level business stuff." 

"What about lunch?" I ask. "I ate food. I... moved things around."  

The man walks over to a bank of server machines, and looks at the blinking lights. They seem to slow as he observes them. "You wanted to eat food, so your mind filled in the blanks. None of that happened. Nothing does, not for us. Not anymore."

A harsh, gray light began to filter in under the door. The man begins to panic. "Quickly! Dump those data drives. We can't let anyone find those. They'll know about us, about what happens after!" I try to move the mouse on the computer, but everything moves backwards, in reverse. My ears are buzzing, and the world becomes a blur.

_____

I awoke in the middle of the night, thinking about what happened in my dream. There was another aspect to the dream, but after the blur and buzzing in my ears, I have no memories.

In retrospect, I realized what my mind constructed was the idea of soul enslavement: using ghosts to power and shape not only one business, but global finance, politics, war, and the world. The Older Ones, perhaps were ancient ghosts. Of who, or what I don't know. The only knowledge I gleaned between the panic, and the blur was this: they silently shaped our world, but to unknown ends.

An old entry from July 2005:

Sitting in an office building, a police sting operation and drug raid had just occurred. The company CEO was screaming at his board members.

I looked out the window.

A guy who looked remarkable like actor Seth Green suddenly got up, and announced that the chaotic yelling in this room “needs a base track!” He whips out a black box with various sliders on it - looking very much like the back of a Film camera’s flash. A base track sounds, and the guy gradually adds in various electronic rifts. No one is noticing this but me.

The music crescendos. On the offbeat, everyone stops talking, and looks at the CEO as he says in an unusual monotone “ - and this is how it happened.”

* * *

Cut to outside the tall skyscraper, surrounded by a small 1950s style town.

The sky was pouring rain. I was with Mitch, the assistant manager from my job, and another guy I didn’t recognize. We were all barefoot, and running but I didn’t know why. The world lacks color, reduced to shades of blue and gray.

Lightening arced in the sky. I was wearing my motorbikes helmet, and wonder where all our shoes went. I also realized this helmet had metal in it, greatly increasing the chance I would be struck by sky electricity.

Running barefoot through the downpour, I’m staring at the murky form of Mitch ahead of me. As I pass into an area fenced by tall hedges, I remember we’re running to go get Ice cream cones. 

_____

I don’t remember if we ever got there. I woke up some time later feeling very disappointed.

I went for work at the Mall that day, but Mitch wasn’t working. On my lunch break I went downstairs and bought myself an ice cream cone. For some reason I can’t explain, it gave me a sense of closure.

I dreampt of a boat, and a group of small islands with long forgotten docks and collapsing bridges between. My small boat became wrecked in the dark, navy waters while gray, water-coloured clouds surged in the sky.

I felt a great pressure on my chest and in my mind - I sank below the waves, an a throbbing pulse filled my ears.

I stood on the sea floor - a mere 2 stories below the waters surface. A man-like Dolphin stood beside me, and gestured towards the submerged horizon. Sandy reefs, and a catacomb network of ancient stone walls stretched out in every direction.

Below the waves, everything was still. I noticed with great pleasure that I no longer needed to breathe. When I did, my lungs filled with water, but this did not cause me to choak. Instead, like the special water in The Abyss (film), I was supplied with the air I needed. I inhaled infrequently.

Feeling the familiar weightless pressure of a large body of water, I felt at peace. I wasn't dying, but instead existing in a state of limbo.

The weight of emotion and the future was replaced by the warm weight of the water - it's familiar tidal surge rocking me slightly where I stood. This dreamworld stood without preconception, and without doubt. I wanted to live in this gray world of breathable water forever.

The man-dolphin swam away into a submerged staircase leading downward. I followed it into the receding darkness.

I walked through a strange multi-denominational church, and into what appeared to be 'my' room. I was handed my mail by the churches' minister daughter. It was an envelope bearing no return address.

Inside were photographs. A picture of my Moped outside on a sunny day, another of just it's wheel in the frame. A picture of the traffic lines on pavement blurred by motion, the next photo of the same lines, but they are now twisted into circular spirals on the road.
The final pictures are blue-tinted photographs from my photo album. Familiar images of friends and myself are mixed with photos of events I don't recognize – and perhaps haven't happened yet. They all exist side by side in these images; all tinted the same shade of cyan.

Underneath all of the photos is a small business card. Where the individuals name would usually be, only the word 'Travel' exists. A street corner address, and a time are printed below.

In the dream I turn and ask my brother if he knows who did this, but neither he nor his friend Cody know. I then seek out the little girl who gave me the package. She states simply that it came in the mail.

I sit wondering what it all means on the floor of my dream, and awake.

___

I almost wish this had occurred in the real world so I could discover who sent this strange message, and what it meant. The most puzzling fact about all this is that - in a way - I sent this message to myself. Of all the people we believe to know so well, we know our inner selves least of all.

I ran through a dark, shadowed city rendered in shades of blue and gray. Small red eyes peered out from crevices, tracking me.

A thick layer of soot carpeted this town, yet I left no footprints in the ash. As I ran along the waterfront, I passed an old school building with a fenced in field. A small girl appeared at the entrance as I passed, and grabbed me around the waist. A ripple of light arched across our forms, and we were both gone.

I now stood in the same place, but the gray and blue shading of the world seemed peeled away. That area sat like a malevolent rift at the edge of this school.

The girl explained this was a sanctuary against the darkness beyond. This school seemed like an unfamiliar hybrid of cathedral holy site, and a girls grade school. The world was now in vibrant colour.

I was shown the recreation area, which was as large as a soccer field and filled with children. Beside this field was a river, separated from the school by a fence. Leading up the school was a floating staircase, assembled from blessed wooden planks, and gold. Inside, the building, the hallways were all brightly lit, and a calming shade of beige. Down a series of winding, blind-corner hallways, was a sleeping area. I rested here until I heard screams echo in from outside. I rushed toward the water front area, to see a series of the red eyed creatures breaching the sanctuary. It was the emotional willpower of the children that held the dark creatures at bay, but I could sense them failing. Colour was beginning to drain from the sky. Patches of grass, and the children themselves began to desaturate before my eyes. Another, older child grabbed my arm, and pointed toward the building. I understood without words that that sanctuary was lost - and I needed to escape.

Running out of the fallen sanctuary, back into the gray world. Down a highway overpass, on to a main road clogged with both ash and snow. Two people danced atop a car, a man and a woman. Both wore a flickering assortment of gask and filter masks. They pointed toward the highway below. A writhing mass of the red eyed creatures rode a rusted, hulking vehicle of some kind down the road. Mounted on the vehicles front was a snow plow, and it caused a tidal-arch of snow, grit, and soot to swirl and quake in it's wake.

I ran to the vehicle, and climbed on top as it passed. I pushed the deamons aside, and they payed me no mind. I reached the front of the deamon-plow, and rode like a flowing wave the arch of snow on my stomach. Soon, the highway blended into a dark train system. The screech of rails filled the packed cabin. The world outside was still soot grey, but we were no longer in a city. The rickety subway-style train passed swampland that was once suburbs - flooded skeletons of houses, with only their rooftops and sidebeams intact.

The people on the train seemed intent on getting to the front, so I followed. We seemed to descend downward through four levels of cars, stacked upon one another. Once I reached the furthest car, I saw the driver. They sat looking out at non-existent tracks, rocketing their vehicle and passengers toward the colourless horizon.