Best of the Brine

My Dream House

In my dream house, the walls are white and the lights are bright. There is a certain stale feeling that never goes away, no matter how many pictures of flowers I draw and paste to the walls. The rooms are many, so many in fact, I haven't been in all of them. Of course there are some I venture into often. Usually I enjoy visiting those rooms, but some of them are like living nightmares. The paint peels away from the walls, bugs litter the floor, and writing that isn't my own is scratched into the door frame.

But I guess that is the problem with my dream house: sometimes it isn't even mine. They say that isn't possible, which is why they painted my walls white and installed those terrible fluorescent lights.I am given vitamins to keep from entering the scary places, and sometimes they even work. Yet, other times I find myself wondering what is in those dark rooms, the ones I have never been to.

What magic could lie there? What adventures? Why am I not allowed in any rooms but the ones with the lights that they tell me I can enter?

So when they aren't looking, I explore my dream house.

The first few floors look like the one where I live. But eventually, I find the elevator. When I step in, I'm amazed at the numbers I can press. For starters, I chance a trip to floor 2,003. It's a place I have been to before, and that I enjoyed very much. Upon arrival, I discover that the walls are still white. It disappoints me that they were able to touch them without my approval. I feel violated, and it makes me angry.

I march back to the elevator and climb even farther up. Floor 6,000. I don't remember this place very well. My heart sinks when I see cans of stark white paint on the floor, brushes wet and ready to be set on the walls. How could they get so far without my knowing? A split second decision fueled by anger sends me forward and kicking over the paint cans, spilling them over the floors. The bottoms of my feet become sticky with the substance as I trek back to continue my journey up.

Up and up I go, past floors I have never been to. The lights grow dim in my dream house. I can feel dawn approaching, and know that my time exploring will soon come to an end. I have to get to the top, before it is painted over and closed to me forever. The elevator screeches to a halt, and the doors slide open.

In the hallway, the lights flicker as they always did before the vitamins and paint and fluorescents. My knees tremble with excitement as I step off the elevator. Everything is as it should be in my dream house. These walls are painted with murals and bright colors that send my heart into a flutter. But it is too soon when the sun breaks the horizon and I am forced back to my room.

That day, they notice something different about me, even though I try to hide it. The man with the thick glasses and slick gray hair asks me questions.

Did I take my vitamins? How many rooms did I visit last night?

I curse myself and then realize I never wiped off my feet. With terror, I check the bottoms of my socks but find no traces of the white paint I kicked over the previous night.

The man eyes me suspiciously.

He asks me what I am looking for.

I tell him the truth, that I should have paint on my feet.

He knows I have been to a floor that is off limits. He seems upset, but stays composed.

In a quiet voice, that I have to strain to hear, he tells me something I have heard many times before.

I am the only one who can enter my dream house, it was constructed for me years ago to help me. The reason it is so large is because it must house all of them; each and every dream. A person will have close to 10,000 dreams in his or her life time. For each dream, a room is made and the door shut when it is over. The lights go out on the floor when it is full, leaving my house dark, except for the white walls and fluorescent lights.

He says that those are my problems. He says that I live in my dream house.

But I don't see it as a problem. Doesn't everyone want to live in their dream house?