My dreams are a circuitous nightmare where I’m in a long, brightly-lit hallway, looking for the door I’m supposed to go through. I don’t know why I’m there or what’s on the other side of the door, I only know that I need to find it as fast as I can. The lights flicker from time to time, but it’s just a mild annoyance as I continue walking down the hallway. There are signs next to each door, just like how the hospital has the room numbers on those bluish-gray plaques, but none of them are in a language I’m remotely familiar with, much less read.
Still, I keep walking down the endless hallway.
I get that feeling there’s something behind me, but when I look back, all I see is the white, sterile passage. Maybe I’m going in the wrong direction.
I turn around and start walking the other way, but the lights flick off completely and stay that way until I turn back around once more and resume my original path. My every footstep is echoing against the walls, a quarter of a second after each foot hits the floor. Off in the distance, I can’t be sure, but it almost looks like there’s an end to the hall. I keep looking at the signs next to each door, but the language written on them is becoming less akin to writing and more like scribbles and chicken scratches.
“Hello?” I call out, but my voice doesn’t even echo.
I take a step and I hear the reverberation.
“Hello?” I call out again, but my voice is lost in the enormous tunnel.
A moderate dose of fear enters me, so I start walking again, looking behind me every once in a while to check for anyone or anything following me, but there’s just the bright, empty hall. I walk a little faster and the signs next to the door are changing color and shape before my eyes.
What I’m looking for must be the other way, but when I turn back again, the lights go out just as they had before.
So, I just keep walking farther toward the white slab about a quarter mile down the way.
Maybe if I get to the end, I can turn around without being left in the dark.
With that thought, the lights begin to flicker with greater frequency. They’re only out for a second or two at a time, but it’s not long before they’re off longer than they are on.
Making my way through the dawdling strobe, even the echo of my footsteps begins taking more and more time until, like my voice, the sound simply vanishes, and I’m stuck in a soundless tunnel where the doors are visibly welded shut. The lights go off again, and this time, they don’t come back on. My heart is racing and I feel for the wall to guide me to the end of the hall.
The feeling I’m being followed returns, only this time when I turn around to see if anything’s there, I’m greeted only by the same complete darkness that’s ahead of me.
My hand grazes a door handle, and not knowing what else to do, I turn the knob. The door won’t open and, as I feel along the frame, it seems that there’s no door at all; the knob is just sticking out of the wall.
I keep walking and the lights come on for a moment, but the hallway ahead of me has changed. There’s color now, but it’s dark and washed out.
The end of the hallway is still there, so I just keep walking until even the handles attached with equal spacing along the walls vanish and I’m left with nothing but the smooth, darkened path.
“Is anyone there?” I shout. “I need help!”
I can’t even hear the sound of my own voice. Even my heart has stopped thumping in my ears.
Out of nowhere, the lights on the ceiling blaze into such a brightness that I have to shield my eyes, though that hardly does any good at all.
Eventually, I have to cover my eyes with my hands just to block out the blinding light.
What’s surprising, though, is that I can see the hallway standing before me. I’m not sure if it’s hallucination or reality, but I can even see my own body. I stretch a leg out and place my foot where it looks like the wall should be, and just when it’s supposed to, I can feel my foot making contact with the wall. The hallway starts to brighten again and so I start running, more afraid of the brightness than I was of the dark.
At the end of the hallway is a large door, the same color as the walls, but the silver handle is catching the growing light.
I’m running faster now, hands still over my eyes, my eyes still forced shut. The walls start to quiver and breathe, and in my head I know that it’s not going to be long until the whole structure above me collapses.
One hundred feet now from the door at the end of the hallway, I’m slowing down. My mind is pushing my body as hard as ever, but it’s getting harder to move with the increasing gravity.
Fifty feet now, and I’m slowed to a walk, using every bit of focus in my possession to keep putting one foot slowly in front of the other.
Twenty-five feet, and I’m barely moving forward. If I were to crawl anywhere else, I’d be going faster than I am now. Still, that door lies ahead of me and no matter where it leads, I know I have to walk through it.
Twenty feet left and I’m almost frozen in place. With a concerted effort, I can inch my feet, one at a time, forward, but it’s so difficult to even move that I’m beginning to lose hope entirely.
The walls haven’t yet cracked around me, but they can’t stand up to much more of this. They’re rippling like water, and the only sound I can hear at all is the dull groan of wood and metal straining against a force that won’t be much longer tearing them apart.
I take my hands from my eyes, but even with my eyes still closed, the brightness of the hallway burns my retinas to the point there’s an afterimage across the entirety of my field of vision.