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.

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'm standing outside a red brick building on a cloudy day, photographing the sky. Something isn't right.

I alternate between using my camera and my phone, because I can't make sense of what I'm seeing in the photographs: The clouds seem to drift from the horizon, then curl back at a higher altitude like a wave. There are things on the underside of the clouds. Squares, of some kind.

I enlarge the images on my phone, and see that they're tents - canvas squares anchored down. Others are beds, upside down, and high above me - anchored to the clouds.

A rising panic swells inside me. I can't make sense of this. I rush inside to a computer, and open up a memory card on screen. Something is wrong - something or someone doesn't want these images viewed or spread: the icons and filenames of each photograph begin of dissolve into multicolored static. I try to disconnect the drive from the computer, but the drive has smoke pouring out of it already.

Something is living in the clouds, and doesn't want to be found.

I'm standing in the ruins of the old elementary school my father worked at in the 1990s, looking out the front doors. The skies outside are a dusty yellow hue, and very silent. The school foyer blends into that of an condo apartment I once dreamed about years before. There's an open elevator directly behind me. It's doors are open, with the cables exposed as they descend into the darkness below.

There's a podium in front of me, with a draft of a film script I believe I've written. I'm going over it, making notes in the margins using the pencil. At the back of the script, there's pencil sketches of set designs, and characters. I don't know who drew these pictures. I'm fascinated by how difficult it is to write - I cannot draw letters in a straight line. I focus on individual words, but they become like symbols - an "R" is still an "R" as I see it, but I don't recognize it as such until I reflect on the dream later.

The films' tag line is "War, war changed." I realize in-dream this is a take off on the Fallout series tagline, "War, war never changes." Titled "The Psychic Wars", I realize in-dream this is another reference - this time to the old Blue Oyster Cult song "Veterans of the Psychic Wars".

The premise is that in the near future, the world suffers an alien invasion. It begins over Latin America with Ender's Game-like dogfights in the skies. The invaders strategy is curious: nine out of every ten people are unharmed in these cities. Yet, one in every ten humans their ships target become catatonic. They stop responding to stimuli - living in a perpetual waking-dream state.  

The film script revolves around battles in Latin America, with a cast of Spanish speaking (subtitled) actors initially in battle in the skies over Chile and Mexico. However, the focus of the story is more on the effects it has throughout the world.

As the war spreads to other continents, globally cultures change. While most South American nations become palliative-care paradises to manage "the Afflicted" ("los Afligidos"), other countries view them as cursed, or waking dead. These nations exterminate those affected rather than caring for them.
Amidst the chaos, an object is detected by an observatory travelling as it travels toward our solar system; appearing only as an absence of light. It is assumed to be another wave in the invasion attacks. 

The reveal at the end of the story is sad: as the object reaches earth, the other nine-tenths of our surviving population go mad. A Lovecraftian elder god reaches our world and feasts. The alien "invaders" were attempting to prepare our species for a "psychic war".

As "the afflicted" battle an elder god in the dreamlands, their bodies are butchered by those driven mad in the waking world. The story follows the drama of the original Latin cast - some in the waking world, gripped by violent insanity, while others are in the dreamlands, battling the Lovecraftian horror. It's a losing battle: without enough "afflicted" world wide, the battle takes too long. Those in the waking world murder those who sleep before they can stop the Cthulhuian entity. We're lost as a species.

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.

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.

I spoke with a man who purchased an eBay item from me. Somehow, this involved a webcam video chat as well. It was his step-son's birthday, and he needed me to hand deliver the item for it to arrive in time. I reluctantly agreed, and was further convinced by the pleading of his wife to deliver the gift to their apartment.

In the couple's apartment, which now becomes a business or office setting - I'm introduced to the son. He appears about 10 years old, and is being fussed over by his mother. The man comments to me that since he wasn't there for his step-son's 'birth', he will be there for the boy's "re birthing". Both he and the wife seem very proud of this notion. I feel alarmed.

Trying to make a fast exit, the man forcibly guides me to a room, and insists I "share this moment" with his family. The boy has a blank expression on his face, and together we're guided into a room containing from left to right, a 6 foot tall representation of a woman's face, and two domed glass units installed in the floor.

The large woman's face stretches grotesquely as it opens it's mouth, and the tongue extends straight out, which is used as a gurney of sorts. The boy, now dressed in pajamas, climbs on, lays down, and is retracted into the wall-mouth. I'm horrified by what's happening, but the step father and the boys mother proudly look on, gesturing to the 1st dome. The boy ascends from a trap door in the floor, covered in a viscous mucus or gel. His eyes are closed, and his parents take pictures. He then decends, and some time later, emerges in the second dome in a boys school uniform, all traces of 'rebirthing' gel gone. His hair is combed, and his eyes are now open. The father insists I take pictures.

Awkwardly, I raise my camera up and press the shutter button, but realize it's set to 'video', and record a few seconds accidentally. I quickly switch to a photo setting, and capture one blurry image before the boy's platform descends back into the floor. The parents walk me into the next room, and wait for their son to return from the process. When he does, he's dressed again in his casual clothing, and seems older.

The boy insists I show him the photos I took, and when I decline, he becomes impatient. I promise that I'll email them to his father as I edge my way out of their apartment/office through the kitchen.

The father insists I stay and hang out with their son - I decline, telling him that it's already late and I have other commitments. The son (who now appears to be a friend I had in high school, and is much older) escorts me out of the apartment, and though a set of security doors with his key. The apartment building seems decrepit, full of peeling wall paper leaking water and mold. The boy seems oblivious to this.
Again, he asks for me to stay. I look out one window and see the sun is shining and it's day light, and out the front doors where it's now night. Without saying another word, I leave the building and it's weirdness behind.

_____

When I woke up, I actually checked my camera to see if there was evidence of this, thinking some version of it actually happened. Luckily not. The whole process reminded me of a situation I experienced years earlier while working at Blacks Photography: a woman came in with a dog photo, and wanted it printed. I did so while she waited, and looked for a frame to pick out. She used that opportunity to try and convert me to being a Jehovah's Witnesses, and left a stack of their 'Watchtower' magazines on the counter when she picked up her picture. 

People using a financial/customer service transaction as a preface to sell their strange personal or religious values is an innately uncomfortable experience for me. It's strange that it'd manifest in my dreams in such a vivid way.

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.

Somehow I slept through an epic rainstorm. This generated a dream about a television series that doesn't exist.

The conceit of this series was this - the first season was explicitly written as the dream of a writer - one where the spaces, moods and behaviors of the characters reflected the ever changing dreamscape.

The events of the first season operated in a very Lynchian way: Actors purposefully became other characters while maintaining the same appearance, but the 'threat' of the initial season was revealed as the end of the dream - a conclusion to a fictional dreamworld.

The second 'season', as described to me by my father in-dream was equally fantastic:
The events of the first exist in the second as a detached outline. In this second series, the writers dream is made into a series that loosely takes events from the prior season, and fills in the gaps with new fictions. Character relationships shift and meld, often overwritten in a way that the characters themselves are constantly remembering events of their previous lives.

In this shifting narrative, the only hints that the entire series is a multi-layered metafiction are strange objects or writing that appears in the series set design: News paper clippings pinned to a wall, paintings of a man at a typewriter, etc. The whole concept reminds me now of John Carpenter's "In the Mouth of Madness" - a film where the protagonist gradually realizes he's a scripted character in his own movie, controlled by a horror writer with Cthulhuian ambitions.

In the end, the small black/white television in my dream revealed to me that the writer dreaming the TV series was in actuality a product of my own dreams - I dreamt the writer. Circles within circles, layers within layers.

I feel like my entire dream-fiction television show was actually a distorted, meta-fictional version of Twin Peaks - but there was no backward speaking, dancing midgets. There was however, a character who looked like Tom Cruise who hid in air vents shooting people with barbed arrows.

It was a different world. What I suspected was gray ash, but looked like snow drifted peacefully over the tree line near an old castle. Traveling in a car near twilight, I watched as the countryside passed by.

I'm at my house. I'm offered a form of group therapy with my younger brother. This involves the opening of a very large vertical trunk. Unfolding it's self on hidden hinges, what emerges is a traveling museum trunk, filled with strange and interesting objects. Some hang and slowly pinwheel, others play music, while most sit idlely by.

My brother sits in front of the trunk at eye level. I can see him through the various hanging objects inside it from the other side. The therapist just wants my brother and I to take photos of any thing in the trunk-gallery that interests us. She doesn't specify any limit on how many pictures we can take. I'm handed a strange camera: when closed it's the shape of a thick wallet. The camera opens into a trapezoid-shape, and has one large orange shutter button. It is unlike anything I've ever seen.

She gestures to the box. I begin to look at all the objects arranged within. After a time, the only one that catches my eye is a photo hanging on the inside right side. It is a black and white photo of a room containing a full-wall mirror, with the reflection of a man standing in it. However, in the room the mirror reflects, there is no one there.

I never took the picture, but I looked at that image for some time.

* * *
I was standing outside on a blustery day with the sound of a strong wind crackling around the corners of a large Victorian house.
An immaculately dressed Ian and Gabrielle entered the house, as it was in fact a large curio shop fill with all sorts of oddities.

As I walked up the stairs, I could hear the tapping of Ian's cane on the landing above me. Dressed in a Victorian suit and bowler hat, he stood amidst a cluttered, yet ordered loft space. I could see dust in the air as it drifted past ceiling window panes. Gabby was examining a series of old ties hung over top of an old clock. Near a large mirror, was a box filled with turn of the century children's toys. Inside the box was a hypercube, which I picked up. It was made of light, and cast a soft light on its surroundings. Not unlike the expanding/contracting "Hoberman Sphere" toys that expands into a large lattice-work version of its self - my hypercube expanded into a fourth dimensional, multigonal version of its self in my hands.

I could see and understand for that brief moment shapes that don't really exist - math that lacks form in our world. This was both frightening and fantastic. In the back of my mind, I remember being very concerned that my hypercube was knocking over antiques over when it expanded. Gabby and Ian were not pleased.

I was in a spare bedroom in my parents home. There was a wardrobe dresser that had a large, oval mirror mounted on top of it.

I look at my reflection in the mirror, and vividly see someone else. A beautiful girl, somewhere in her teens or early 20s with reddish hair and freckles. She stares back at me. Every facial expression and subtle movement of my body is reflected by the person in the mirror.

I look at my body, and see that I'm still myself- only the mirrors reflection is the girl.

I blink, and my reflection is added to the mirror. Both figures reflect my movements like puppets, moving in unison. I put my left arm around the girl, and in doing so, she puts her left arm on top of mine.

I study the scene inside this mirror closley, and find it facinating.

My sister comes into the room with her friend. They begin playing with a blanket on her bed and laughing. I try and explain the mirror phenomenon to her, but she just giggles.

The clock says 2:00am, and there's music coming from the downstairs vent. It sounds like a trumpet practicing musical scales. I wonder why my brother is practicing music so late at night.

I look again at the mirror, but now I am the only figure there. I'm slightly confused why I now wear a suitjacket with wide lapels.The world turns a shade of gray, and begins to shift and contort.

I stumbled away from the mirror, and fall backwards on to vacant bed nearby. My sister and her friend are jumping on their bed, still giggiling.