This Is Not My Home

 

I awake in a place that clearly is not home.

 

Looking about in a blurry daze, the expected trappings of bed, chair and scuffed, dirty walls have somehow disappeared during my wretched slumber. All the familiar has slid away, swirling downward, but not swallowed, into an eerily black vortex above which my stiffened body floats unaffected by the devouring maelstrom. My immediate surroundings are an atmosphere of greenish hue that is part of what appears to be sky. Not a sky like I've ever seen before. Definitely a sky. Emerald and iridescent. Suspended amidst the shimmering splendor of undulating waves of a surreal firmament is a golden sphere, which I take to be a moon. The gentle but steady rays of illumination it sends forth warm me. This I find puzzling, as this celestial body is not a star.

 

I continue to have no control over my body, yet I am not uncomfortable nor do I sense any imminent danger. Something has changed regarding the direction put upon me. A force - like what I would imagine to be a tractor beam - draws me upward and away from the strangely silent but malevolent whirlpool below. Coming into focus at a distance seemingly close, but probably an infinite space away in light years, is an incredible edifice of glass, porcelain and adamantine steel - a veritable temple of a night's vision, dedicated to some constellation's god. Opalescent double doors of extraordinary height and hung upon hinges of gold begin to open in protracted slow motion. Blazing through the widening expanse of the closed-become-revealed is a brilliance like that of Earth's noonday sun. I gaze directly upon its supernal glory; in the manner of a dream, I am unharmed.

 

I startle as there emerges from doors now fully opened the likes of which nightmares are made ...