Snacks From the Butler's Pantry

I feel disoriented as I transition to sleep. My body feels distant, and my imagination becomes more real. Instead of lying in bed, I believe I am sitting at a desk surrounded by high tech equipment. I am hooked up to an array of lights and computers I know is some kind of EEG I can control by flexing my mind. I hear a clear voice right in my ear say, "Find Annabelle, Dream Queen." I know my WILD has succeeded, so I look down at my hands to count my fingers. They look normal, so I look away and check again. This time, my fingers are stubby like a dwarf, and I count 6 on each hand.

I look up to see a beautiful young woman lying next to me. We are in my old house from high school, lying in my old bed. The woman is discussing her sex life, but I am not paying much attention. The way she is laying draped across me is very overpowering and forceful. She is incredibly strong, and holding me down without even trying. I relax, and float upward towards the ceiling, pushing her voice from my mind, and leaving her behind.

The bedroom window fills my vision, so I float towards it. I land on the sill, looking down to the front yard below me. As I leap down to the grass, I remember, "Atlantis." Telling myself the grass is water, I splash right through it. It was only a thin layer of grass floating on the surface like a swamp. Darkness surrounds me as I sink down into the deep water. After a few moments, I feel my feet touch the rocky bottom. I swim swiftly in the total darkness, using my sense of touch to feel along the bottom with my hands. I try to visualize a vast, high-tech underwater city, like the one in the movie "The Abyss." A light appears ahead, and I swim towards it, assuming it will be the entrance to this underwater paradise.

When I approach the light, it turns out to be the surface of the water. I climb out, finding myself on the grassy lawn of my old neighborhood park. I must have just swam underground a few blocks to the park. The grass is swampy, and I am sunken in to mid-calf. Looking around, I see the neighborhood has all been flooded. The houses are all in the right place, but they are abandoned, boarded up, and sitting in shallow water. It looks like a tidal wave or tropical storm has ripped through the neighborhood, flooding it like Atlantis.

I climb a nearby fence, behind which used to be an open field. I want to get a good view of my surroundings. Instead of a cow pasture on the other side of the fence, I see endless rows of suburban houses. They stretch into the night as far as I can see. Sitting on top of the fence, I watch the lights come on in each house, one by one, as if they are turning back on after a blackout. I have the feeling each of the lit windows holds a pair of eyes, watching me. They are not happy about me being there.

As I watch the lights come on, I understand the sad meaning of all this. This is the neighborhood I grew up in. This is my old park. This is my memory of my childhood. It has been destroyed, flooded by the new memories from my life. The open fields from my memories have been flooded by new housing developments making homes for new families building new memories. Just as Atlantis represents humanity's mythological lost golden age, this is my own personal mythology. A lost utopia that seems to grow more amazing the further it sinks into the ocean of the past. I fly out over the hidden eyes of the houses, daring them to see me as I wake myself up.