I slip away into darkness. Images begin to roll by, confusing at first until they coalesce into solid pictures yet still making no sense. I have seen this before. This place in my mind. It is not the first time I have been here. People I do not know yet are familiar to me as I walk these halls. Where am I? Work, school? School it seems to be. A cafeteria where we all gather to talk and eat, yet I do not eat. The food switches from one thing to another, never really settling for very long. As if I traverse many days in a few moments. I am in the hallway, going to class., my books in my arms, something important in my hand. But what is it? I talk to others but do not remember what I say. Then I am back in the cafeteria. The lunch lady tells me that they have yet to find a book for my numbers. I say that I can bring a composition book, but she smiles and tells me they have no room for something so large.  It must be small. I can do that, I reply. Students come to buy food. I weave in and out of them, still undecided, still nothing looks appetizing. I find some keys. Going to my table I see my things. They are books and notebooks, yet something much more important. I go to a door and with the keys I find I open it, curious to see what is on the other side. As I walk in the room is empty. We have been lied to. There was suppose to be the furnace in here, but the room is empty. There is an unfinished bathroom and as I walk further into the room I see it leads to the kitchen that is also not finished. But wasn’t it finished when I saw it from the outside? All I know is we have been lied to and something is wrong. Terribly wrong. I hurry from the room, locking it behind me. I run into the custodian, the owner of the keys. He smiles and asks me what is wrong. I cannot tell him for he will know I know the truth. He seems friendly, always has, and I feel no danger from him, yet I keep quiet. I tell him I found his keys and hand them to him. He asks me again what is wrong and again I say nothing. That I am late and have to go. I gather my things as he watches and hurry from the cafeteria. The dream changes, images move. I am in a house that I have been in many times before in my dreams. As I walk through the cluttered basement to the stairs I wonder not for the first time what it is trying to tell me? Why do these dreams haunt me time and time again? What must I do to understand?

© 2014 Heidi Barnes

This was written as a sort of free write. As the words came I put them down. If I tried to make sense of it I would have lost it, and that was not my purpose.

Reoccurring dreams are not new to me. I have had them all my life. Some have answered themselves and have never been seen again, others still haunt me. Where I do not have them as much as I did when I was younger, when the come back I wonder what they are trying to tell me. What problem I am trying to solve. These two I wrote about have never been together before that I remember. I guess I will never know.