I sat in a small room with a box of old books and papers. I sit on this military-style bunk with a single lamp overhead, and open  up one of the comic books. It was similar to "Dante's Inferno", rendered in a black and white "ashcan" art style. It reminded  me  of some comics my father used to buy when I was a kid. These independent titles  were not always made for children.

This one story seemed like it was from another place - it was not meant for this world. As I pages through it, the book seemed to reveal disturbing truths One page showed a view of heaven - a white cloudy sky over top of long ocean horizon. There were what appear to be angels flying through the sky in layers - all circling like birds, riding the air currents above the ocean. A girl appeared to fall into them from high above, as she had died, and was sent to heaven. However as the comic panel reveals all the creatures in this area are harpies. They are all monstrous humans with bird wings, each covered in what appears to be seagull poop; flies buzzing around each. Two harpies grab the falling wingless girl. This is intensely disturbing for me. I'm reminded that some things in life cannot be unseen.
In the comic, there is another group of these creatures further below heading into a cave. The comic's narrative box reveals they are going into the cave to "help keep up their numbers".
In horror, I close the comic, discarding it back into the box. 

(...)

It is night time, and I exit out of this small room. I stand in my father's parents dining room - their grandfatherclock chiming 3, then fading to silence.
I have a collection of papers in a basket, each detailing strange knowledge. I want to share this with J-, as she expressed interest in it at some point before. I call her to see where she is, and she's outside - but leaving. 

I rush though the kitchen, and the house is a hospital ward. The power flickers, and many banks of lights remain off. I can't go down the right hallway. A female medical technician or nurse stops me, saying I can't see J-, forcing my exit into a stairwell. 

I need to get to J- in time. She's leaving, and seemed distraught. I run around each bend in the concrete stairwell. I go so quickly, I swing around corners - pivoting on a central pipe at each level. I run past a group of people who seem surprised I am there.

I bust through the push-bar doors into a beautiful sunny day. People are celebrating, with soft music in the distance. Many sit on picknick blankets, quietly enjoying the afternoon.

I'm frantically looking for J-, but I can't see her. My phone rings, and it's her. She doesn't want the papers I collected. She doesn't want to see me, and she has to - my phone screen garbels and breaks, disconnecting the call. I try to bring up the last call number, but it's not listed. I try the last number, and it's a restaurant.

This sunny place reminds me of my old elementary school yard playground - an innocent time when I was able to live in the present moment, not shackled by the past. I stand on the concrete outside area, surrounded by beauty, and feel the happiness and warmth of my surroundings - and the crushing sadness of my circumstance. I'm sad for my loss, but more worried for J-, I don't know what happened to her, or if she's all right.

Under the sunny cloudless sky, I sit down on the pavement. The festival continues on around me. I know in that moment how wonderful life is, and how innescapeable the loss and pain are for me. The sky darkens as the sun sets.

A small child offers me a lollypop as he walks by because I looked sad. I accept it from him, and he waves at me as he walks away, shilouetteted by the setting sun.

[...]

Any time life gave me exactly what I wanted, I realize was only ever seeing what I wanted - not what truly was.

I've gotten exactly what I wanted in the past - but it was an illusion, painted on the inside of my own head. To mourn that is to be sad a dream ended, rather than happy for the experience.

I'm on a hillside overlooking a sparkling ocean in Korea. It feels like the north east coast near Incheon, but everything is older, ancient. Wooden boats glide slowly through the harbor below, and Yui stands beside me. 

We explore the streets, looking for a house. They're all empty - devoid of even furniture. 

We're in a boat at sea, chasing another wooden ship. Aboard are Koreans, attacking the Japanese ship ahead of us. A man fires a bow and arrow, hitting the mast of the other ship, and angering it's commander. He wears riveted bamboo armor, like a Samurai. 
The dream splits in two - the chase continues, but we're simultaneously-  we're at dinner on a boat. The beams are made from solid wood, and the L-shaped table before me is lit by candle light. Yui, or a very similiar Korean girl sits beside/behind and to my right. The seafood on the table flickers between different dishes, even as I serve it. Yui pulls me around, and in close. [...]

We're back in the old city streets, north one block of where we we stood before. All the houses are dark, and crickets sound quietly in the distance. A park is behind us, with a white fence obscuring the memory of what occurs beyond. 

Yui and I are looking for a house - her house. / We're walking up a street, and into a 2nd floor house. The room is narrow, with windows facing outward into the night on one side. There are four beds, each with their own shelf to the left of it. The bed at the far left end of the room has a TV on the wall, but it is off. The room is empty, except for us. Yui tosses herself on to the bed, and begins studying a book in Korean. I notice a 3A-like figure on her bedside shelf, and begin to apply weathering to it by wiping off excess paint. She doesn't seem to notice. The robot looks like a thin 'Bertie', but wears a WW2 era german army helmet. I put it down, and join Yui on the bed. 

She teaches me Korean phrases and reading. She smiles back at me, and I realize this is just a memory - a closed loop within my mind. The rest of the room is falling dark, like a store in the mall as someone turns off the power for the night, bit by bit. Even she fades, transposed between memory and dream until it's only me on the bed, looking out into the nightscape beyond.

It’s night, and I am outside. Surrounding me are the ruins of old stone buildings with their skeletal timbers jutting upward toward a dark sky. The landscape feels like the property of my old house, before it was renovated. There’s a chill in the air, despite the torchlight that illuminates a few points in the distance.

There’s a group of frightened people waiting to the left of a cellar doorway. I step over the shambles of a wooden farm fence, and find that they’re arming themselves with makeshift weapons. Pipes with large bolts, kitchen blades, Molotov cocktails, and other less intimidating things. 

A man rushes over, and presses a grenade into my hand. “They’re coming!” The crazed look in his eyes frightens me more than his dire prediction. “He shouts to no one in particular, “Get ready!”. People gather on the lawn, facing this cellar door. The doors are missing, revealing concrete stairs that descend down into a dark hallway beneath the ruins of a large house. I recognize this as the ruins of my old home.

Undead emerge from the cellar steps into the torchlight. I’ve released the grenade, and tossed it down the stairwell. The explosion sends shards of concrete everywhere, and as I fall down I lose my glasses. Scrambling to retrieve them, the world devolves into blurs of movement, and torchlight.

People sound like they’re panicking, and attempting to run while other attack the undead. I see struggling forms falling to the ground, and back away while still laying on the ground.  In the darkness, I retreat away from the cellar door, toward the road. Still without my glasses, I find a heavy steel pipe weapon nearby. Up the stairs and toward me move a woman and child, both dead. A man takes down the woman, and with startling speed, the child bares its small teeth as it rushes toward me.

*  *  *

The rest is a blur. By the time I can hear anything beyond a high pitch whistle in my ears, I realize that I am covered in blood, and slumped on my knees next to an oak tree. I feel like I'm in shock, and have a deep sense of vertigo. Gradually, I regain my composure. 

To the right of the house is another ruin, but one that has a door and first floor but no roof. Side stepping the corpses the litter the ground, I walk over to the house and sort through the garbage can next to the doorway. I hope to find something useful. Inside, I find a box-cutter, an empty DVD case, and a bubble envelope. An old man stops me as I back away from the can, and explains that he “put them there for a reason”, then returns the objects to the garbage. 

I walk through the door, and up a short flight of stairs. I am standing in a kitchen that has a window facing the road. I turn on the kitchen faucet, but realize it’s too short; a stubby bathroom design. The water doesn't reach the sink. Instead, it pools all over the dusty counter top. 

My father is standing nearby, reading pages from a binder. It looks like he’s seen battle, and his pants and shirt are tons and frayed at the knees and elbows. “I need to get out of here”, I tell him. He explains that he’s going ahead to Quebec to locate a safe zone for the family to move to, but he needs me to stay here to watch out for the family while he’s gone.

I can’t do this though. It’s his responsibility to look after the family, not mine. The dream reasoning blends with reality as I realize that I am moving overseas for work, and I can’t stay behind. The sounds of the undead echo off in the distance as my father remarks “Do what you need to do.” He turns back to studying his binder of papers.

I don't want to abandon my parents to the threats outside, but I know that my presence here can't stop what's coming. I walk outside into the night, but there’s no longer any torches lit. Looking out over the ruins of the house, and the featureless sky above, I feel a deep sense of dread.

I'm in a car driving down a heavily wooded highway. Cars are abandoned by the roadside every so often, and there are people with backpacks walking in both directions ahead. 

We exit into a clearing next to the forest to avoid the scattered wrecks of abandoned cars that clog the road . My driver is a woman who speaks very little. She gestures that I get out of the car with my belongings in front of an old wooden house. There are two others, but she gestures to this one in particular. 

I exit the vehicle, and she pulls away. I go inside, and other people notice this. A man starts running across the lightly gravelled front yard toward me. I run inside, and down a small set of stairs. At the midway point on the stairs is a sealed hatch-door. I get inside, and press it closed. The man throws his whole weight against the door, while another behind him hit it with a sledgehammer. They're desperate to get in. 

I tumble backwards down the remaining set of stairs as other people flood in. Men, woman, children. There's a few infants too, carried by their mothers. As the last of them enter, the door is hastily sealed with the inside valve. It reminds me of doors on a submarine, or fallout shelter. I look around, and realize it's the latter: a single long room, stretching back 300 meters is lined with tables and lockers. Canned and preserved food lines the shelves. To the right is a small hallway with two public wash-rooms. There's an argument among some of the people - I was going to let them die by sealing that door early. I didn't know what was going on. The room shakes, and light flicker. I know what's going on now. 

I open my small carry on suitcase to see a few dress shirts and pants and an old notebook. Inside the notebook are torn pieces of pink and beige silk laid between blank pages. The people around me busy themselves settling in while creating a feast from the provisions available. Soon, everyone is sitting around a long fold out table eating mashed potatoes, meat, and apple pie. I sit beside an attractive brown haired girl as she chats about where she grew up. My grandmother sits in a comfortable chair knitting as Stan Lee sits at the end of the table, serving himself more potatoes. "Aren't you glad you let other people in?" he comments. "It would be a terrible thing to be locked down here alone". 

*   *   *

The scene snaps in an instant. I'm alone in this bunker, standing in my underwear, wearing a plastic Halloween mask. There's no overhead electric light, but through the dimness of the emergency light bulb, I see a table mockingly set for 12 people. From the time I entered the wooden building, I experienced a hallucination powered by the madness of being sealed in a bunker alone during the apocalypse. 
I stand at the table, and gaze back into the room's receding darkness; listening to the silence above.

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?"

After being x-rayed on a tilting science table at the hospital today, I walked down the road to my old Elementary school where my father now works.

The schoolyard was empty, so I went around behind the school, past the basketball nets and over the aged concrete. This place has so much memory and dreams wrapped up in it for me - somehow, all rolled into one, taller than life, and longer than the lunchtime recess.

___

I have reoccurring dreams in two particular places at this school - the back yard concrete area, and the schools stage area/gym. Some defy description, while others are full of fun and wonder - colourful Chinese dragons rippling through the air of a darkened gymnasium like water, or the time when I was Spider-Man, but hooked up to a series of pulleys that allowed me to jump and cling to walls.

___

None of these images are real in any physical sense, but they're bound up with the glowing experiences I had in this place - the times I put aside my fear and doubt by going on stage in annual lip-synchs (or 'air-bands' I've heard them called), my first kiss on the tall hill at recess, my first real friendship, or countless other memories.

I went into the school and signed in with the office, letting them know I was Mr. Scott's son and I was waiting for him. I was directed to sit on the bench outside the office to wait. Over the next 15 minuets, each and every teacher or educational assistant who walked by made a point of coming over to me, and with no sense of kindness or warmth demanded "Who are you?" or simply "What are you doing here?" After the fifth person to address me like I was selling crank to their children, I just felt crushed. The welcoming atmosphere I remembered for both visitors and students was non-existent.

When I approached the school, it was with the same sense of awe I had as a child. I wanted so badly to stand in the darkened gym and remember. Instead, like an unsettling dream, there were walls where there was none before - the hallway murals of children's characters were painted over with beige - and all the playground equipment was gone. No longer did the images drawn inside my head of places, people or how I was treated match up with the world around me. Sitting outside the office, I wished to have never visited - if only so I could still cling to my dreamscapes.

While the dreams and shining memories of my childhood remained static, the rest of the world moves on.