I dreamt we were outside of the ruined hotel. From the outside, long arcades flee into the vanishing point, which is always pulled close and snug in dreams. Here, in the forest, we aren’t alone. Small camps have spring up, hammocks have been strung between trees, smoke from small fires rises into the night. In this place, I can barely see above the foliage. If there is a moon, if there isn’t, who knows. Maybe there is no sky. The edges curve up like a fishbowl. There are no smells.

The imperative is this: seek something at the interior. To go inside, but not to stay. I search the stairwells, cement ones, windowless, reminiscent of the poorer apartments in grand cities or the employee stair of palace hotels. Maybe there are instructions here, I might be alone. But the doors open into wide rooms, where well dressed men and women are. They do not notice me. I fade back to the forest, there are faces I do not recognize, you are behind me, I am not afraid.

It is light again, I move across the forest encampment and enter the compound. I follow wide, bright hallways to a high ceilinged ballroom. There is no sound, but the moving of lips and heavy objects. White paint is seeping into the room. It ripples under doorways and drips down from the ornate molding. It ruins the wall hangings, scares the small dogs and the children. It begins to bubble through cracks in the plaster. Pressure, somewhere, has mounted. Wait staff in perfect suits maintain poise and present wooden life boats as the gushing paint tears the bottom portions of the doors and floods in. There is a pandemonium of hats and skirts. 

The paint is thick, and flowing, no part of the parquet is visible, and I walk across the room with high marching steps, then run. As the well dressed men and women board the boats, I find the door now open. The long outdoor arcade is deserted, the columns cast no shadows. I run down it, there is no exit, save the gaping space opening out to a parking lot, mostly empty except for lumber, and an old gymnastics mat. As I begin to jump, I know it is too far, but there are hands on my back and they push hard as my feet leave the stones. I feel the sigh of the mat beneath me, and wake to the smell of gasoline.