I'm walking through quiet streets in an old, shade-ridden neighborhood. Everything is clean and the lawns are well manicured, the smell of grass and trees is on the wind. It's peaceful, not a person in sight as I navigate the streets. This is not my destination, I'm just passing through. I round a street corner, passing a light green colonial with a lovingly-tended garden out front and onto a street leading to an older, less beautiful part of the neighborhood. This street seems infinitely long and straight, cracks riddling the pavement as well as the collapsing, tired houses. It gets worse the farther I walk, the cinderblock homes now not much more than rubble, and the trees growing bare, almost fossilized, few and far between. This area reminds me of other dreams I've had; normally from here I would start a slightly downhill run through tall, thin pines and broken concrete, but this time I found a different street intersecting this one, so I chose to walk in that direction instead. The new street seemed empty of anything at first, like walking in a desert or through old, disused parking lots. I think my mind didn't have anything to go on. Eventually, like recovering from an optical illusion/mirage as the sun beat down in waves of heat, I found myself walking down a road lined with tall, glinting metal structures. It was trash. Cans and garbage had been compressed into large blocks and were stacked like distressed pyramids and mountains. There were plastic grocery sacks tumbling through the air and along the road like tumbleweeds, and I could now see the flapping of worn fabric in places within the garbage structures. People were living here! They had hollowed out some of the blocks and laid mats down for sleeping, the remains of dirty homemade candles could be seen through some of the hollows. The road came to an end at a cul-de-sac, a mountain of compressed trash surrounded the small circle of dirty pavement, letting very little sunlight penetrate the area. In the center of the cul-de-sac was a shiny metal grating that gleamed like chrome. It was perhaps a 5ft x 5ft portal, and it had a long bar for a handle inlaid into the grating surface. I couldn't see down into it, but more of those candles were clustered around it, offering a feeble light source. I gripped the handle and pulled upward with ease. The door hinged outward and I climbed inside. From here I was walking through tall but narrow tunnels that would occasionally transition into a wide catwalk overlooking large, open rooms. Every few hundred yards the tunnel walls would be broken up by small alcoves housing ordinary doors whose rooms would branch off in different directions. Passing some of these doors I could hear water, and through others the benign chattering of voices. This was when the dream took on people, as well as an inexplicable video game vibe. I started peeking around corners before continuing through the underground complex. Sneak mode: activated! I was avoiding guards, looking for one door in particular. I eventually found it and walked through to an open, sprawling space. Water ran through like a river, dividing the room. It smelled like a swimming pool. The large room seemed to function like any normal home, there was a kitchen area, living and sleeping areas, and an interesting collection of swords and guns were dotted around the space. In the far back of the room, the "river" rounded a corner to a large drop in the floor, creating a roaring waterfall. The room was occupied by a friend of mine, and he already had more company sitting in the living area chatting while he came to greet me. There were perhaps five or six guests, none of them readily familiar to me, and they were sitting in a circle of couches and chairs like a meeting. From here the dream gave me a new objective, and I magically knew what needed to be done. The doors along the tunnels each had a large string of numbers etched into them like addresses. I was supposed to find a blank door, enter the correct number onto it, go inside and lock the door. The number is obtained by pressing a button on a screen from within someone else's room. The catch? You would be hunted and chased by something horrible upon pressing the button, which means you have to quickly memorize a long string of numbers, find a blank door, enter the number and get inside before the creature catches and kills you. I walked to the section of wall where the screen was in my friend's room and immediately felt like I was being watched. I pressed the button and a string of numbers several digits long appeared on the screen. I was panicking as I tried to remember them. Being a dream, it was very difficult work as they seemed to fade and change the longer I looked at them. I heard a clicking, clattering above me, but saw nothing. I ran out of the room and gazed wide-eyed at all of the doors as I ran past, rounding corners and getting severe looks from strangers as I ran. Guards would point at me whenever they saw me, but none took up pursuit. I was already being chased. The tunnel seemed to get darker the longer I ran, but then I saw it. A blank, friendly door lit by a bare bulb on the wall beside it in the alcove. I slammed into the door, coming to a complete stop, and heard an animal hiss echoing just behind me. There was a prickling sensation on the back of my neck as I fumbled clumsily with the door numbers. The process of entering the numbers is abstract to me, I don't remember what was involved at all. I through up a jumble of numbers and tried the doorknob. It didn't budge. I couldn't remember the numbers at all and I beat on the door hoping that it would open magically. It didn't, then I felt something slam into me and I was crushed into the door. Luckily, video game vibe! The fear I felt as I was chased was real, but not real enough to wake me. It was fear for your character, and as I died it was an "Aww, dang it" moment before reappearing into my friend's room. He looked at me exasperatedly, asking what had happened (duh Bob, duh). I explained my failure, and some of his guests, there seemed to be more now, gathered to hear the story. A blonde woman whose face I don't readily remember offered a solution. She said that it sounded like the door was too far away and that that didn’t seem fair. She handed me a walkie-talkie and told me to try again without looking at the numbers. I pressed the button again and was immediately greeted with a hiss and scurrying from above. I fled the room and sprinted to the door again, sliding to a stop in front of it and ignoring the dirty looks from the guards and strangers. I asked for the numbers via the walkie-talkie, and I got frustrated as the voice on the other end struggled to read them out to me. We went through the sequence slowly, number by number, changing a couple of them as we went. I wanted to scream! I felt a very strong prickling sensation all down my back and neck as I screwed at the knobs again. The door gave! I slid through on terrified jelly legs and slammed the door shut. There was a small key dangling from a string in front of my face on the door and I fumbled it free as I felt something heavy heave itself against the door. I thought the whole door frame would shatter before I could get the key in the hole. I heard the lock click. I made it! The room was much smaller than my friend's watery palace, but it was laid out like a normal apartment. There were even windows and a sliding glass door leading onto a tiny balcony. It was very peaceful, and not remotely underground.
