I am in a loosely boarded house with a back room and one front door, among a group of confused people. Many seem terrified or confused - no one knows how they arrived here. There are no windows, but someone opens the door to look outside. A soft night breeze blows through an unseen jungle. There's a group of three thin, manic looking people outside, down a gravel path near a crumbled pavement road. Illuminated by moonlight, they hurry excitedly toward the door and greet the man looking outside. The strangers are let inside, and they carry a brown paper bag that smells like chicken nuggets. They present this as a gift to the large group of people inside. Some ask the newcomers questions, others wander around nervously, eying the bag of food. The three bring it to the back room and set it on the table. They present it as a welcoming gift for "new friends" to this place. I don't trust them, and politely declined their food. The three slip out the front door and stand on the road, watching the house. Many people eat the food hungrily, but others like me just watch. A scream from the back room and commotion - I get to the back to see people wreching and see why: the nuggets were battered human toes with the bones still inside. It's chaos in the small building. Some shouting, accusing, others flee the building in terror into the night. I understand now what the strangers did - divide and conquer. They gave the 'food' to break a large group of new people into smaller packs. Already, the three are attacking a man outside and stealing his shoes. I make eye contact with a girl and a man - we are staying inside the building, as others run past - some to attack the manic bunch. Others simply flee into the night. Wake to an early alarm, and fall back asleep immediately. I am back in this dead world. It is a grey-blue twilight outside, and I am in the backseat of a pickup truck's cab. The girl and one of the men from before are in the truck with me. Someone I don't recognize is driving it. .my sudden reappearance gets everyone talking about this desolate world - and why I disappear and reappeared months later. To me, it has been a minute. We pull up to a shanty house, and climb up on top of the roof from the truck cab's roof. Strange animals graze in tilled fields beside the house. In the hazy distance, the shape of a low mountain. There are no stars in the night sky. Inside, an old man and woman sit at a card table, lit only by candles. They look haggard, and project an aura of disdain. Despite appearancea, they are non threatening. To stay, we must give them objects we have or those we find. Barter to stay safe and hidden from those outside in the jungle. I show the old man a soap dispenser. I was holding before I was transported here - he takes it, and scuttles away with it to his room. "It's a start" he says. The two guys are out somewhere looking for things to trade. The girl goes to the bunk in the side room to sleep. I remain in the main room with the card table, cautiously watching the old man through his half-open doorway on my left. The old man is in his room, lit by the glow of half a dozen monitors and flat screen TVs. He seems to be watching security cameras. I awake to another alarm, and fall back asleep. It's just the girl, but she looks injured and dirty. We're in a dusty jungle, surrounded by thin, manic looking people. One recognizes me from before. He urges me to join them, understanding that unlike most who arrive here, I come and go - and can return with specific objects or supplies. This is valuable to this group of scavengers. I agree, as long as they leave the girl alone. I walk away with them, looking back at her. She's sitting in a jungle clearing, lit only by a fading torch when I awake. I wounder if the scavengers kept true to their word when I disappeared. This dream reminded me of another long ago with time dialiation occuring in an old house. I feel it is the same world as the timelooped ghost house I visited with my brother as well. It is an empty world, populated only by dreamers who arrive there. Time moves differently for many - a few hours for are years there for most. Yet for me, minutes.

I am in my grandmother's Lakefield downstairs living room, her chair is in the corner. A small child's table with a painted checkerboard sits in front of the fireplace.

My family is asking for my advice about how to best accomplish a task: "how do you best sort the recycle?", and other seemingly mundane household patterns. I answer and show them - for recycle, I crush waterbottles and reattaching the caps so they fit more to a bag. 

* * *

I am in the same houses' kitchen, sitting on a desktop computer facing the stairs. I am working on a Photoshop document with multiple layers. I composit together different sources to create a unique image - one that represents something else from an earlier dream. In it, there are 4 characters, 3 of which are in the top right corner. They are looking/speaking to 1 other in the bottom left corner. The creatures are blue, and are saying something to the person, who I think represented me. 

My mother stands in the room while I work. She is very angry about the state of her kitchen. She points to dishes, and the organization of cabinets. This is not my home, but I listen. I stop working on the computer and give her calm advice about the kitchen, much like the recycle sorting I gave my sister and brother earlier. 

I return to my work on the computer - there isn't much time left: I need to finish it, as another document exists just out of frame. This unseen one feels important and could reveal information that can help my family.

My mother continues to be agitated about her mother's kitchen, and begins to act strangely. She stands increasingly closer to me, staring me down while I work. She begins to strongly jab me with a finger, then angrily stare at me, seemingly trying to provoke an angry response. I finally lose my temper,a stand up telland  her "Please, stop that! Why are you acting this way?", she immediately becomes hurt and gestures to the kitchen, saying nothing. Having transfered blame for the kitchen to me for my provoked reaction, she stands near the sink, and continues to stare me down. 

I sit back down to finish the work I must. I take a cartoon image of "Garfield" and photoshop-remove everything except the tail and position it hanging down from the top over the 3 creatures. They now appear to be a single blue cat - the whole scene resembling an old Garfield comic with John Arbuckle, speaking to Garfield on the ceiling. 

As I colored the orange blue, and set the layer style to "color", it blends with the cartoon. However, Brody sits next to me. He studied the true nature of the image, and suggests that I change the layer's filter settings to another blending mode. I do, and it integrates better into the overall image, clarifying the whole. "Why is that?" I ask. "Because our filters are based on those we used in childhood," he responds.

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 came upon a sloping hill that led toward a cliff face overlooking the ocean. Sparse evergreen trees  dotted the slope, and between two was a bird's nest with two giant birds guarding a nest of blue broken eggs. One was a white swan, and the other a bluebird. The birds were angry, and were pecking and biting at each other over the broken eggs. While they appeared to be birds, I knew neither could fly.

Now they were very small, small enough to fit into each of my hands. It was my job now to carry them up a long winding set of stone stairs that ran parallel to the sloping hill.  The birds were struggling to get away, and my hands strained to contain them. They pecked at me and each other, struggling to break free. I needed to bring them with me up the stairs away from the dangerous cliff face. The birds attack intensifies, and I can barely hold them within each of my hands. As I climb the steep, winding stone stairs away from the ocean, my body experiences vertigo and it's very difficult to move forward. I forced myself to continue onward and upward towards my goal.

* * *

I realized upon waking that this was a metaphor for my job -  the two divirgent international offices that were large are now very small. When I came on my tasks it was like broken eggs with other squabbling about them. Now it is my responsibility to bring them back from the cliff's edge. I cannot fix the damage that was done to the company before me through bad decisions on the original owners part, but I must bring them up the stairs to the future and beyond in my role as content manager and course designer.

Interestingly, when I thought about what happened prior in the dream, finding the large birds was something I saw on my way to somewhere else,

I was walking toward a house that was part of a grassy sloping hill. I had walked around to the right, and on top of the roof-hill slope, and was moving toward a group of people around a camp fire on a cliff overlooking the ocean. 

I recognize this area as the Stone bowl/Stone stairs of Jeju Island. I may have returned there if I hadn't found a job at this company back in 2017.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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. 

My mother is running a small hotel. The foyer is large, and looks like a converted orchestra hall; like something off of the titanic. Immediately behind the foyer is a single hotel room. I don't believe it odd that my mother maintains a hotel with just one room. This fact seems very normal. No one seems to visit this hotel, and I do not remember seeing my mother, although it is her business.

I'm visiting, and I'm aware that mother allows me to stay at the hotel in this room. My wardrobe of suits, dress shirts and ties hang in the sliding door closet beside the bed. I organize and reorganize the closet's multiple tiers. Perhaps for efficiency, maybe due to worry or boredom.

An old woman enters the darkened lobby, and rings the front desk bell. She wants to book a room. I (and I assume my mother, although I never see her) experience that sensation of being unprepared for a professional interaction: like the first person who shows up at a yard sale in the early morning - you feel woefully unprepared, and rush to compensate.

Leaving my clothing in the room, the woman simply walks in, and sets up in the room - closing the door behind her. I'm left standing in the darkened foyer, as the last light of day filters in through the windows.
I set up spare sheets on the sofa on the foyer right side, underneath the stairs. Echoes of structure from my high school flicker around me. A party, a situation - both those are all dreams within a dream.

The next morning, the old woman who rented the room demands breakfast, and I stumble over setting up a cafeteria meant for hundreds of people for the sole guest. Large packages of shrimp, giant bags of ketchup.

The woman leaves on errands as I clean up. Afterwards, I sit down at a glass table at the top of a staircase above the rented room. I notice the old woman left her knitting and a leather bound tome. Curious, I open the book and see "Spells, and ways of speeding up time" is the topic of the first page.

Outside, a large group of people are on the beach. It's evening, and they're concerned over how to cook an entire dismembered elephant. I offer my help, using the information containing in the old woman's book. I speed up the cooking process of the elephant in a matter of seconds, and the strange beach-goers consume the elephant whole - legs sitting on the sand like sitting logs at a campfire.

The process of speeding up the cooked flesh seems to continue long after the people consumed the elephant: the meat's accelerated time frame causes it to putrefy and rot minutes after it's been consumed. People rush away from the beach to be sick somewhere, except a single man sitting by the campfire. He smiles, and offers me some of the french fries he'd been eating instead.

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.