#oneaday Day 237: Tower of Dreams

I wrote back in December about a series of recurring dreams I'd had about what Project Zero 3 made me think of as my own personal "Manor of Sleep". Last night I had a dream where I was reminded of another recurring "setting" — I believe this one is completely separate from the "Manor", but given dream logic, I can't rule out the possibility that they're connected somehow.

The Tower of Dreams, as I'll call it, has a fairly opulent-looking — if somewhat dated — lower floor. It's all rich red carpets, wood panelling and ornate staircases. I actually don't really know the specifics of what is on the ground floor, because in my dreams I inevitably find myself going upstairs. It feels somewhat like a hotel, but as you'll see, I'm pretty sure that it isn't.

Ascending the stairs leads to a balcony that overlooks the majority of the ground floor's main hall, and a corridor runs around what appears to be the perimeter of the building. Every so often, there are a few stairs up and the corridor opens up into an area with several rooms coming off it; these areas remind me strongly of the halls of residence I lived in in my first year of university, and indeed on some occasions I've opened one of these doors and found my university room behind them.

I'm usually in a hurry when I'm passing through this part of the Tower, for some reason, so I tend not to stop and look in any more detail at what's going on in these "flats". Eventually, I find myself coming to an elevator. I get in and ride it to the 18th floor — which I believe is the top of the building. For some reason, every time I ride this lift I feel like I have something I urgently need to do before it arrives at its destination; the exact task varies from visit to visit, but suffice to say they are typically not the sort of things one would want to be caught doing in a lift.

Last night, when I reached the 18th floor I was planning to immediately ride the elevator back down again, but two thuggish-looking men got in. One of these men bore an uncanny resemblance to someone I knew back in secondary school; I wouldn't necessarily describe him as a "bully", but he had a bit of a reputation for being a hardnut, so I tended to keep my distance. As such, I decided that spending 18 floors of descent in a lift with them might not be safe, so I disembarked, and thankfully they stayed in the lift and departed.

The 18th floor of the Tower is very different from the opulence of the ground floor. It's akin to a council estate block of flats; all raw concrete, open-air balconies and unwelcoming-looking front doors with chipped, faded paint. The unusual thing about it is that one side of it appears to be completely covered with glass, looking out onto a steep slope covered with dry, dead grass and small rocks.

There's another elevator in this glass wall. It's likewise almost entirely made of glass, though its floor is opaque. Stepping into it reveals something unusual: it doesn't work in the way you'd typically expect an elevator to operate — in other words, it doesn't go up and down. Rather, it seems to operate more like a train; it follows a track, ascending the hillside visible beyond the glass wall of the 18th floor and gradually picking up speed as it continues its journey.

I don't actually know where this elevator ends up, as I either wake up before it gets there, or I simply don't remember. But last night was my first visit there for quite some time, and it left something of an impression on me; so much so that it almost felt like I was actually remembering something rather than just dreaming it.

I wonder what it's all about? The unconscious is a mysterious place, for sure.