Last night I dreamed that hell was a fancy lounge/club/restaurant. I was looking for someone, or maybe just for the exist, and I kept getting turned around. The place was a labyrinth of rooms and hallways and little alcoves decorated in an elegant but deliberately disorienting style. Some of the rooms were library rooms with dark shelves full up books extending all the way up to imppssibly high ceilings with rolling ladders to reach the top shelves. Some rooms were dining rooms with low light, white table cloths, and indistinct people in fancy dress talking and laughing and eating. Most of it was hallways though, full of random twists and turns and corners and pieces of walls and dead ends. The hallway sections were painted a deep dark green with brass accents and random walls or even the floor and ceiling done in black and white chevron which was dizzying and made it very easy to lose your way. Periodically, I would turn a corner and an "employee" would emerge from a little gap between the walls and block my path telling me I wasn't permitted beyond that point. If I tried to disobey then whatever I saw in that room would evaporate and become more of the chevron hallways.
Even in the dream I knew that this was a strange liminal space and that I was dead. I'm not sure how I died in the dream, but I knew that I had and that I must be in some version of hell, although looking back it seems almost like the trickery of some fairy kingdom. After a while I shoved one of the "employees" out of my way and dashed through their little gap in the wall before they could stop me. I remember thinking "what are they gonna do? Kill me? I'm already dead and if this is hell it could be a lot worse." And then I was out. Not out of hell at large but out of the labyrinth at least. The next place I found myself was a cold, drafty garage with some folding tables and chairs set up and a few other confused-looking people milling about. I only spoke to two of the people because they were the only two who seemed aware of my presence in any way. One of the people was a young boy who asked me what was going on. I didn't tell him he was dead even though I was pretty sure we all were. Instead I told him a partial truth which was that I was still trying to figure this place out. The other person I talked to was an old woman. She was maybe my grandmother's age but instead of the air of frailty my grandma has she was strong and straight-backed but just seemed tired like she had seen too much. The woman told me she had been in this place for a long time and that she likes to come back to the garage to meet new arrivals. Apparently, there are many different areas all shifting and connecting nonsensically to one another and while souls can be dropped in anywhere most are start off in simple, empty places like this garage or an open field or an office waiting room. Normally, she would advise against exploring on your first day but since I've already been through the labyrinth and seem to be "a curious soul" she wishes me well and says she will look after the little boy. She leads me to a pile of junk leaned up against the wall and helps me move it to reveal a passageway. I go through.
In the passageway it feels like I'm experiencing lots of jumbled up stuff all at once. I'm watching a group of friends sing and dance while making clothes as part of an assembly line. I'm befriending a shirtless man wearing Mardi gras beads. I'm a mobile doctor answering health questions for people who take alarmingly bad care of their bodies. I'm with my family and we're trying to find a place to park on a busy street so we can get inside before the storm hits.
I come through the passageway and into a large wood paneled room that seems to be some sort of class or conference room with chalk boards on one wall and desks pushed into the corners of the room. The room is filled with people of a range of ages starting around my age (mid 20s) with a few of the oldest in perhaps their late 40s. It's a roughly even split between men and women with a few more androgynous looking people as well. There is maybe 30 ish people in the room in total. Apparently, the objective is to decide in a sort of democratic fashion who the most attractive person in the group is. It's not just looks, personality is factored in as well with everyone mingling and chatting before the votes are cast and several rounds of voting. Many of the people are familiar to me, like I know them from somewhere and some of them I even know their names in the dream, but where I've met them before I just can't quite place.
I'm a late add to the competition but the first round of voting hasn't started yet so they throw me into the running. The rest of the contestants have chosen black outfits from a provided wardrobe so they look similar enough that fashion doesn't skew the judging too much, yet there's some style/individuality shown since they chose which pieces to wear. This isn't an issue for me because, as I often am in real life, I'm already wearing an all black outfit. In the first round of judging men and women are ranked as separate categories and those below a certain ranking in either group are out of the competition. I'm not sure where this leaves people who don't fall strictly into either camp but before I can say something I'm pushed into the women's line up. In the first round I get a sort of middle of the pack ranking and progress to the next round.
I'm scrambling to think who I will vote for of the men but apparently there's no ballot or anything they just read your mind and I voted for the women too, not including myself. They line up, stand for a moment, then the rankings are written on the chalk board and a handful of extremely unmemorable men leave the room. Now we are meant to talk to each other as each round of voting you're supposed to know the people better. I talk to people but I'm not sure what I talk to any of them about. This is when I wish I could remember where I'd met/seen some of them before, it's so awkward not quite remembering and wondering if they do. I am the way I normally am at parties. Shy, yet brash. Giving sincere compliments and sarcastic remarks in equal measure. I say some things that are rather strange and get blank looks that make me want to shrink into myself and other things that people laugh uproariously at, which is their intended effect. We line up again and this time somehow I'm in 5th place out of everyone, which comes a surprise to me and many of the others who I guess didn't realize they found my antics as charming as they did. We are told to leave and come back the next day for the final round. Now that I'm doing well I'm desperately, vainly invested in the competition. I don't want to leave because I don't understand this place well enough to make my way back to this room reliably and I want to know who wins. I linger. More than caring about the competition I like this room better than everything else I've seen so far. It's warm and clean and bright. The other people are amiable, not to mention nice to look at, and even those who are voted out are pleasant and sportsmanly about it. Somehow I understand that I cannot stay so, reluctantly, I open the door.
I end up back in the garage. The old woman and the little boy are gone. The other new arrivals, who still don't seem to see me, pace and fidget and stare at walls. I find a folding chair and sit in the corner by myself and doze off. My alarm starts going off in real life and I think it is the alarm waking me up to go back to the competition. Even the new arrivals are gone now. I try to go through the same strange passage as before but I end up in the dark labyrinth staring at a chevron floor. Every corner I turn is just more chevron or that dark green paint, no sign of wood paneling or even one of the little gaps the "employees" come in and out of. I was lost and frustrated and utterly alone in an environment that was actively trying to make me feel all those things and that's when I began to understand the madness inducing nature of the place.