Something is chasing me through the house. Actually, it's a massive submarine stranded in a field at sunset. In my dream I can run forever, up clanging metal staircases coated in peeling cream paint and through deserted rooms with too many exits, across grate-floored hallways to duck through hatches into narrow custodial passageways. The price of this is that I must run forever. Whatever is chasing me, I can't let it get me. I have to keep moving. Every part of the maze is the same, like a fractal.
No, it was once true that there was something after me, but not any longer. In the submarine it was my brother, transformed into a monster, his footsteps loud and echoing on the metal floors. But back then, the dream would end: I emerged from a hatch into the field at night, leaving that rusted monolith stranded and out of place behind me. Leaving him trapped. In the sprawling college campuses and subway tunnels and industrial buildings I dream now, there is nothing outside of them and no-one inside of them. Maybe I am just moving through my own neural architecture, the gray fatty passageways inside my skull filled with abandoned conference tables and steam pipes. Every dream is different, but they're the same too, and I remember them all. I can bring to mind the layouts of house-labyrinths I dreamed years ago, decades ago. My mind collects these images like a photo album, like rooms in a house.
Sometimes I feel consumed by it. The houses inside the mind are the real ones.
I don't know why I said that. Sometimes I feel compelled to say things that feel right even if they aren't really true. It's such a strong compulsion that it feels like a voice in my throat speaking the "correct" words, like if I put down anything else I'll bring about a curse of wrongness. Or something. There is a right way for the world to be, and it is filled with bones. There are a lot of right ways for things to be that aren't. I wonder what would happen if I only listened to the voice in my throat.