Dreamland

Rat in a Maze

I live alone in a shabby apartment in a rundown tenement building. (Why do I always get stuck living in shabby apartments in rundown old buildings in Dreamland? If you're reading this right now, maybe you'd like to psychoanalyze my dream and give me your opinion?)

My son is grown and has moved away, my wife left me, and I'm stuck paying alimony. I work a fast paced high pressure lower-middle management job for a nondescript major corporation, a cog in the machine. I put in long hours, and go home burned out and irritable.

It's late in the evening and I'm sitting in my old recliner watching some inane sitcom on my cheap color TV. After downing my third scotch and soda it occurs to me that the life I've been living is really artificial. I go to work to make money to buy things and pay my bills to keep a roof over my head so I have a place to go to sleep so I can get up in the morning and go to work to make money to buy things and pay my bills etc.,

Kinda like that old Jackson Browne song: "...and when the evening rolls around, I'll go on home and lay my body down, and when the morning light comes streaming in, I'll get up and do it again..."

Maybe it's not real? Maybe I'm just a "Rat in a Maze"?

Now that I think about it, many of the people I work with don't seem to be real... Some, if you ask them out to lunch, always refuse. If you look for them outside of usual business meetings or try to call them on the phone, they are never there. Maybe they're just simulations to fill out the experiment?

So... how to I find the Observers? The scientists/doctors/aanalysts overseeing my Maze?

I start to think and look around my shabby apartment. I notice a stairwell behind a pile of dirty laundry that leads to a second floor hallway that is blocked by a spike-tipped iron gate. Above the gate, I spot a small security camera mounted on an overhead tripod, pointing down at my apartmnet. "Aha!! I've found them!" I think/

I push the pile of clothes aside, climb the stairwell, and shake the gate, trying to open it. That doesn't work, so I grab a couple handfulls of dirty clothes to insulate my hands, grab the top of the spiked iron gate and pull myself over. I start walking down the hall... The floor is carpeted in a threadbare blue oriental rug...

A woman confronts me in the hallway. Stringy blonde hair, shabby jeans and a faded pink tee shirt... She appears to be about 30 years old...

"Who are you?" I ask her.

"My name is Sharon, but that's not important. You shouldn't be here, you'll ruin the experiment!"

"I figured it out, and I no longer want to be a Pawn in your Game!" I tell her.

"Wait here while I go talk to the Boss." she says, pointimg to a high-school type desk-and-chair set.

I try to follow her, but find myself repelled by a force field once I get a few steps away from the desk. I resign myself to my fate and take a seat...

Sharon returns: "The Boss says you can stay, but you're working the other side of the experiment now," she says, handing me a notebook and a cheap ballpoint pen.

"What do I do next?" I ask her.

"Well, shift is over now, so we go back to the apartments and sleep for a while. I'll introduce you to your new partner, she'll tell you what to do once you start work in the morning..."

The apartment building looks about the same as the one I was living in, cheap stucco, painted a pale yellow... Sharon knocks on the door of one of the flats in the middle.

"Michelle? Open up!" she says

A plain-faced petite black woman, early twenties, opens the door. "Come on in!" she says.

"I'll leave you two to get acquainted," Sharon says as she walks away.

"Where do I sleep?" I ask Michelle.

"You can take the bed on the left... unless you wanna share mine?" she asks.

I take a closer look, she's not especially pretty looking, and I am kinda tired.

"I'll take the bed on the left," I tell her.

I sit on the edge and strip to my underwear, getting ready to go to sleep. Michele strips completely naked, walks over and stands right in front of me, pushing her breasts towards my face. "You know it's been a while since I've had a man..."

"She turns slowly around and bends a little, showing off her heart-shaped ass. Looking over her shoulder at me, she says "I know I'm not the cutest girl around, but I'm willing to do whatever you want... You sure you don't wanna share my bed?"

"BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!"

"Shit!"
I roll over and shut off the alarm...
It's 5:30, time to get up and get ready for work.
Guess I won't get to finish this dream...