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Tuesday, May 10, 2016

The N-Dimensional Railyard Funhouse

In the dream I'm a blonde-headed toddler, but my adult self is there in disembodied form, watching helplessly.

Toddler Earl has found himself again in the land of the railyard funhouse, a place where all the dimensions are tangled together like a German expressionist film extruded into a hypercube. A locomotive charges toward me, black with red and gold trim; it's flat in all dimensions, impossibly real, but I fall away just in time to avoid being crushed.

The boxed-in, cardboard town surrounds me like a terrarium, a maze of golden carousel poles, narrow passageways, and worst of all the green hallway that dead-ends into the room with the man in the ape costume; he's trapped too, and terrified, because the shadows moving behind the room's translucent curtains are rabid and malevolent beyond belief.

This small and young I can't do anything but run and scream and cry from room to room, street to street, the pastel-coloured false-front buildings with their angular, off-kilter doors and windows staring down at me with wooden jocularity. A flat yellow bumper car chases me; it has no driver, but it honks nonetheless, lights flashing gaily.

This is a dream world I visit every couple of years, and it's never pleasant. One day perhaps I'll manage to see it as an adult, with the ability to protect myself from its terrors. I hate this place. 

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