Halls and Spaces [Undecided Title]

Description of a dream I did for a workshop class.

The dream was as familiar to you as your own hands; you’d dreamed it for as long as you can remember. There was always some long narrow corridor, and it never changed, nothing did. Not the walls, the ceiling, the décor, or the fixtures. There was always a room at the end of hallway and it’s a room you have no choice but to walk towards, even though you knew what was waiting for you at the end.

                The floor was made of a rich mahogany wood with the slats pointing towards the door at the end, vertical lines that kept you moving forward. The hallways swept upwards in whorls and swirls of mulberry and merlot and if you brought your face too close you could smell the sweet scent of Shiraz. The ceiling was concave and the dark reds of the walls morphed into black at the very top. Thick golden chains attached to glittering gilded chandeliers, with glass ornaments dangling from their curved arms. Ruby pendalogues and prims swayed and clinked in time to your steps, a rhythm that rolled along the path.

                There were doors on the left and right, framed in white and bright against the dark and dimly lit background. Crimson slashes screeched across some of them while others were weighted closed with chains and locks. The doors thrrummed if you touched them, the grains of wood splintering into your skin. The door handles were hot to touch and refused the hand that tried to hold and turn them; it was clear that you were not allowed to deviate from the hallway. Paintings hung in-between the doors, paintings of places and people, hunts of hinds, and forbidden foliage. There were no faces on the people but they still followed your back and whispered, leaving the distinct impression that if you turned around what met your eyes would be something grotesquely unpleasant. There was a door with two of the red marks on its surface, and the painting to its right was of a woman in a thin cream dress that looked more like a nightgown with dusky skin and white hair. She stood against a wall of mirrors. There was a small side table with a glass pendulum resting on it at her left. She had no face like the others, but her hands were thin and cracked like some of the mirrors. You look at one of the mirrors very closely and you see your own face a few shades paler than you remembered it being. The mirror next to it had a beating heart, and the mirror below showed your bare neck and shoulder though you knew you had clothes on. You let your eyes roam about to the other mirrors you would see more of your own body parts and organs. When you look back at the lady, she is three steps closer than before.

                You’re not allowed to try to turn and run away from the end of this hallway. At first the corridor simply rearranged itself when you had tried before. If you turned to look behind, you found you were still looking forward, towards the door at the end. If you turned back around, so did everything else. Eventually the hall stops playing and if you turn around you see nothing but darkness creeping along the walls and slithering out of frames and doorways. You’re forced to run then because if you stay still the prisms and glass ornaments will fall and shatter around you, tinkling to the ground.

                That’s when you also discover that you’re now barefoot.

                You flee then, and the spirals and curls of the walls begin to move and dance in time with the swaying of the prisms and pendalogues that haven’t fallen. The paintings turn to stare even without their eyes, and the lady with the wall of mirrors is closer to the frame than before and now smiling with lips she didn’t used to have. There are fewer doors as you run towards the end of the hall; the paintings are beginning to disappear though their whispers are still there. The chandeliers grow more numerous and cumbersome, crystals like dewdrops strung together and flung like a net to connect them in a single web above your head. You don’t see the door at the end that you’ve been running to, you crash into it.

                This door is covered in wet paint and the syrupy scent of overripe fruit drips steadily. The carpet in front of the door is slick and hard to stand on. If you try to turn around and get off the carpet, there is nothing behind you; it’s a void of space and light, consumed by the whispers. You have no option but to open the door in front of you, fall against it as you try and turn the slippery door handle. Your face hits the surface of the door, wet by bitter tears mixed with the paint as it burns your tongue and the back of your throat. The door gives way finally and you fall inside, but it’s not a room that you’ve fallen into. It’s a closet, or rather a very small box where you can’t stand or sit because you’ve fallen face first and the door was shut behind you. You can hear the rasping of the chains and taste the charcoal flavor of the velvet-like lining of the box. You see nothing, you smell your own sweat and skin, and you scream.

                You scream because now that’s the only sound you can hear beyond your heartbeat, you squirm and struggle against the walls and door but all you feel is the furred velvet lining squeezing tighter and tighter around you. Your throat constricts and a pressure builds up in your head and chest because you can’t move, you can’t see, you can’t smell anymore. All you can feel is the soft walls crushing in on your chest and back and all you taste is the acrid sharpness of despair.

Author's Note

It's being workshopped today(09/21/11) so I appreciate any and all extra feedback.