A stillness hung in the entryway, with a dusty, unlit chandelier above. A raised coffin, piled high with linens stood in the center on the well worn red rug. The runner ran from the front door, and back down the hallway, receding into darkness. I recognized this place, this house. Further down the hallway was the kitchen and a living room of some kind from another place, another dream.

To my left was a different hallway I’d never explored before. It was lit by light streaming in through open windows in each of the rooms. The back wall of the hallway was filled with sliding closet cupboards and hardwood.

A man had died, but he was only a boy. My parents were gathering linens to wrap his body in and lay him on top of this coffin-like canoe so he could be moved. Two layers down, was a tapestry-style woven blanket with Transformers on it. Old and faded, it had raised reliefs of the robot faces cut from longer wool, the edge in blue and white. “You can’t lay a body on this.” I said and pulled it off, scrolling the blanket for myself. The man’s body was placed on the blankets, and wrapped lightly by my mother. She and my father waited for someone to arrive, and I walked off down the hallway.

In the first of three rooms, light streamed in on two bunk bends, and toys littered every shelf and surface. Small Lego buildings and figures stood silently on shelves with their dog-eared, faded boxes behind them “Only at K-Mart!” many exclaimed. Old Transformer figures laid in toy bins, and on shelves.
The man had been autistic, but with the mind of a child. He had lived in this place with his family for thirty or forty years, and this had been his playroom. The whole house was abandoned now, as that man had no heirs or other family. 

I searched through the room, excited to explore what was. It felt okay to collect these objects, as their owner had since moved on. The light outside had changed, and the sun was setting. The walls dimmed, and mildew grew, as if the house had stood unattended for years in a day. 

* * *

In the hallway, the body was gone, as were my parents. I walked along the hallway, and heard noise at the far end of the hall. I glanced into the 2^nd room that contained a children’s style bed and nightstands, and entered the large wooden door beside it – locking it behind me.

It was a room the size of my father’s old classrooms at Sacred Heart elementary school – tall ceiling, rectangular. This one had carpet, and was filled with sofas lining the room, and a large television on the right wall. Beside the television were inset cabinets and a door. Pressing the cabinets allowed runners to slide out – each contained hanging newspapers, ‘Cracked’ and ‘People’ magazines, among many others. I walked up the 4-steps leading to a room behind the television wall to find a bathroom/kitchenette. Dirty dishes lay unwashed in sinks long abandoned. I opened the cupboards, finding only bandages, Listerine, and various cups and plates. I exited the second set of four stairs leading back into the room.

It was night now, and no light shone through the windows. Suburban streetlights cast their eerie glow through the curtains, striping shadows across the dusty furniture. More noise from the hallway, sending a jolt of alarm through my mind. I exit the hallway, and examine the far wall’s closet cupboards, but they’re empty inside, just like the hallway. I return to the toy room, and open a small plastic drawer on top of a cabinet. It contains meticulously organized accessories for old Transformer toys. I begin to pick these up to bring with me, away from this place. More noise in the hallway, this time closer.

I exit the playroom to find a group of 5 people rushing down the hallway. One woman carries two old-style wood/metal school chairs. The others have backs and backpacks full of stolen objects. One man with dirty long brown hair and a beard stops, and slams me into the wall with both hands against my shoulders. “These are MY ruins now, what’re you doing here?” he demands. “Who cares man? Just let it be – we got what we wanted, let’s go” one of the other men says. I start to explain that I knew the man who lived here, but I realize that was a long time ago. The walls are rotted and water damaged now, and the carpet is thick with bootprints. Time has passed while I explored, but not at its normal rate.

The group of scavengers moves off, and out the front door into the long night. The raised relief blanket, with its Optimus Prime robot face on it still lays scrolled up against the wall. Holding it, I sit on the raised stoop in front of the hallway closets and wonder where I belong.

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.

I'm a substitute teacher at an old house in a small town, reminiscent of a house at the east end of my street, on the left.  The sky and air are a hazy grey. I'm not suppose to be here, I feel. People eye me warily as I enter the house, and ascend the stairs spiraling to the right. A police officer is asking me questions about where this other teacher is, as a class of grade school children wait sitting down on the carpet for him. 

Apparently, I know his girlfriend - the person who directed me here. Other adults mill around a room that overlooks the entranceway downstair. Their glass 2nd floor windowed kitchen overlooks the street below, with a sloping nearby roof presenting nearby. 

Two large vehicles pull up to this house, and various tough but skinny looking men step out. One in particular takes point, and shouts something about a teacher to the house, then waits. 

I approach the group outside, and maintain a friendly, clueless persona toward this group. They all appear russian, but the skinniness I noticed earlier is actually a fetal alcohol syndrome-like look to their heads and bodies. The shaved head leader addresses me, looking for this missing teacher. I tell them I'm just filling in for him because he's missing. I don't mention the police, just the kids and adults inside. He asks what else in inside - I tell him "Just a bunch of textbooks". I notice how dirty and unclean his earlobes are. Many of these people look like they haven't bathed in a long time. I maintain a relaxed posture, and try to be friendly-helpful -- pretending like everything is ok, and gesture that I needed to get back to class. The man dismisses me and the group head back to their vehicles. 

In the hazy distance, I see figures moving slowly in the distance. Anxious, I quickly return to the house, and kitchen over looking the yard. In a nearby room on the north side of the house, a man and a woman anxiously await news of what the men want. "They look like Russian mob, and were asking about that missing teacher - and the house contents". I warn them to reinforce the sliding windows with wood door jams.

In the kitchen, a ragged looking woman in her 50s from the street below has scaled a nearby house and is now climbing up the slanted roof toward the kitchen. The house is empty, and I am nowhere. 

I'm standing in an old house with weathered floorboards. Much of feels exposed to the elements, but feels dry and eroded. Peeling wallpaper, dusty, torn furniture. The hallway has walled off glass sections that capture the house as it was - new, with fresh wallpaper and new cabinets. It feels like an exhibit, juxtaposing what was with what is. 

Down a hallway from a locked door, toward the front of the house is a frosted bay window. Yellow light filters in through the grime, blocking a view of the world beyond the house. It feels like I'm on the 2nd story of a home, given the dim horizon in the distance viewable through cracks in the glass. I turn left and walk down a connected hallway. To my immediate right is a washroom that is slanted toward the back of the house. The room is old, with the slanted floor implying the house foundations are sinking, or rotten. I use the sink and move on. From the hallway opens into a living room with a kitchen along one wall. My younger brother walks along beside me, having always been there quietly. We search the room, looking for some clue as to where we are. Along the left wall are a kitchen sink, an old fridge, and a small 4-panel window at the end of the hall/side of the kitchen-living room. An old sofa sits in the middle of the room, with an old chair near the window. Outside the window, it looks out onto a yard that slopes up to meet the window. 

Through the window, we see a man chase a boy out of the back of his house, down a set of porch steps and out on to his back yard. There's a deranged looking elderly woman near the door who emerges as well. The old man chases the boy down mid-yard and viciously beats him to death. I instruct my brother to hide, and I crawl under the sofa, behind the flaps of the furniture's skirt. Surrounded by dust and the smell of aged floorboards, I hear the noise of violence outside, then silence. 

The old man enters the house through our window and discover us. We run, but are caught. I try to struggle, but the man and woman are insubstantial, like ghosts.

 * * *

Everything resets, and I'm back standing next to the glassed off pristine area as I was before. However, the house is filled with people. I search for an exit at the front of the house, and then for a weapon and find neither. I confront the man as he enters the room this time, but my efforts pass through him ineffectively.

Everything rests. Time and time again. I lose track of the number of times I try to escape this loop. In desperation, I run straight out of the side of the house, through the window the moment I reset. I run up the deck past the crazy woman, past the murderous man and the running, filthy child. Into their house I run, and to their locked front door. I open it, and a younger woman -  perhaps the boy's mother - runs in with a hammer and strikes both of the older, crazed people. As she approaches the boy, they all disappear. 

I'm left in an empty house. I follow the hallway down the left side into a makeshift prison area that once housed the boy. It appears that he had a bare carpeted room, a washroom, and a barred 'lookout' tower with a ladder all within the left side of this old person's house. I try to exit the front door, but it's locked. I can see the aged ruins of suburbs outside, but I'm like the ghosts I see trapped inside. The loop broken, I wander. Everyone's gone. 

I try walking around the side of the old man's house but I'm hit with vertigo. Time slows down, pushing me back toward the backyard. I feel that I'm not allowed to go this way, but I push through. Once I make it to the street, the sensation clears. I walk past the decaying mansion and suburban home, looking for meaning before I wake. 

Passing through a convince store, and out the other side into the night air.

I'm walking, or trying to along the side-walk with a co-worker I had years ago. She and I are joking around, intentionally bumping into each other, flirting. It's a nice re-channelling of memories I had, but they're gone. The night air remains.

I'm with two current friends outside - a guy and a girl. We're all thirsty, and start trying to find some house that will give us water. No ones around - the houses sit empty and dark.
We go though various houses, and I stop to look at book cases and books that have never existed. As I walk though the empty aparments and houses, I see the detritus of other peoples lives. There's a set of cups floating in a bucket, but no drinkable water.

The guy hears TV noise in a far room, and I'm nervous. He enters, and quickly re-emerges to explain that we need to leave. We descend the ladder leading to this loft area, and rush toward the front door. We're not suppose to be here.

An older Korean woman is walking up the front lawn, emotionless. She grabs me  as I leave (her) house, and won't let go. I struggle to break free, and realize if I do, I can continue to dream. She squeezes me, and I awake.

There's a threatening presence outside, across the street, and I'm in the parlour room of an old home. There's a shallow grave dug though the floorboards, straight down with a woman laying in it. 

She was alive recently, but became infected or posessed by something. There's a crowd of people in the room, mostly scared farmers or rural middle-aged looking people.

To prevent the body from getting up, someone fires a nailgun though the woman's head. However, it starts verbalizing.

Someone calmly explains it's rediscovering basic vocal structures found in all vertebrates. I realize there's something in this woman that's colonizing her body. It moves on to making ape-like noises, but no real words yet. The limbs are twitching.

The presence outside wants this thing destroyed, but the people inside are fearfully protecting it. I realize the man who spoke with me earlier wasn't himself - he was some kind of colonized body puppeting a person. He has an unfocused look in his eyes.

The woman rises, nail still though her head and starts frosting the glass windows. If the presence outside can't see in, I'm told, it will delay it's attack.

The parlour room is attached to my grandparent's house. I walk past the side door, and trigger something's attack. Sheer terror as the house shakes with wind, screams, and rapid gunfire. I hide beside the doorway, and then crawl toward my old room, seeking a place to hide.

It's daytime, and people from earlier in the dream are gone. Someone whose my grandmother, but not my grandmother is cooking breakfast in the kitchen. I'm sitting in the carpeted hallway, trying to attach a hexagonal lid to a jar of chocolate peanut butter. 

There's still a grave dug through the living room floor though.

Dancing a waltz with ex-girlfriend. She doesn't look very well.

 At first, I'm confused: and I haven't seen her in many years, and there's no music playing. I have one arm around her upper shoulder, and cupping the back of her neck, under her red hair. This is how I realize she's actually dead - the scalp feels like it's separating from the back of her skull. 

I'm filled with terror, and fear that if I stop dancing with the resurrected corpse, she'll kill me. 

 Our soundless waltz continues as dusty floorboards of the house creak.