I awakened (false awakening) to what sounded like cleaning, the shuffling of papers, the steady movement furniture; it looked as though I’d been in the childhood home of my then best friend. Of such, was located on the 4th floor, in building 848.

He had been the one causing the stir.

This childhood home in particular, was a tall tower (imagine a nicer version of a New York housing project) located on Camp Kinser, in Okinawa, Japan. I oftentimes dream back to being here, on this island, as if I never truly left, but I digress.

Almost immediately did I begin packing, getting an assortment of my belongings as I’d inexplicably just knew I couldn’t take it all with me; neither my friend or I uttered a single word for the entire duration.

There had been this lingering sensation of having to catch a train, of feeling late, as if I were supposed to already have been gone from here. As I’d gathered the remaining little bits of myself, I proceeded to the front door and, as I grabbed the door knob, that’s when my friend finally had spoken; he expressed something along the lines of how I didn’t have to leave, at least, not quite so soon.

I recall, very clearly, my response, which was my simply saying, “I’ll text you.” Expressing such as I opened and closed the door to his family’s then living quarters, not once looking back.

Rather than taking the elevator, I decided to use the stairwell, only, it’d taken on a radically different look; the apartments on each floor openly surrounded said stairwell. One could now view the stairs and the railings of such as soon as they opened their front doors versus how they used to look; where there’d been a door seperating the two, isolating the stairwell out of sight, from the main circular corridor which housed all of said apartments.

Although extremely vivid, I wasn’t able to develop the lucidity required to react and/or pay much notice to it all, just simply proceeded to continue my way down.

With each passing floor, the stairwell became wider and much more spacious, there’d been all these red, translucent, triangular, cellophane looking flags with minute texts and words uniformly printed atop of them, I couldn’t make out what they had said, nor was I aware enough to even try and care to be.

Earlier I mentioned how my friends apartment had been located on the 4th floor but, by this time and by the amount of flights I’d already journeyed down, I should’ve been in the lobby by now; for some time, I found myself being greeted by seemingly infinite flights of stairs.

Funny enough, this sensation of repetition hadn’t at all crossed my mind during the midst of said dream. After a few more flights, I’d finally reached a certain floor on my way down, where, there’d no longer been any main circular corridor of surrounding apartments but instead, what looked to be a multi leveled mall.

The floor I’d now been on, looked to be part food court, part auditorium and there appeared to have been a number of business attired young adults occupying a number of identical chairs all facing towards the same direction. They all had notebooks, laptops, smart phones, etc. and also had lanyards of identification adorning their necks.

Finally, a man who had an uncanny resemblance to the late Anthony Bourdain graced them with his presence, who greeted them with something along the lines of “and you’ll all be financially successful, living a most wholesomely good life in no time”.

I’m paraphrasing, of course.

I don’t recall what happens next as something, not sure what, caused me to awaken.