A-Are you all right...?
That stoplight fell from a considerable height and hit you right on the head. Normally it would have killed you.
However, this is a dream. Because it’s a dream, you’re fine. No problem.
You pull yourself together, as if to demonstrate those thoughts. What fell on you was a stoplight intended for pedestrians. A typical stoplight, with the green and red signals indicating “go” and “stop,” stacked vertically.
At the moment that stoplight hit you, it expanded in a bizarre way — almost completely concealing your body. Like a costume.
Your legs protrude from the base. You wobble along in this bizarre new form — looking like a stoplight that has sprouted a pair of legs.
You begin playing with the signals, switching from “go” to “stop,” perhaps trying to see how it works, and you seem to be enjoying yourself. You’re like a small child playing with a new toy.
There’s no way you can see in front of you, and yet you distance yourself from the run-over corpse without losing your way, lighting up “go” and “stop” with rhythmic clicks all the way. You’re like a baby, unable to express anything other than “yes” or “no.” It makes you seem so innocent.
With that stoplight covering your entire body, you stroll along.
Perhaps it’s because you can’t see, but you’ve stumbled down a side road that you passed by earlier. But the fact that you can’t see is likely the only reason that you aren’t afraid. Your steps carry with them a courage that suggest this is the case.
But it is dangerous.
Right in front of you, right in the path you’re heading down, is a manhole.
A wide open shaft.
This is not good. If you keep going this way, you will fall. Yet you can’t see it, have no sense of the impending danger, and there is no benevolent force there to warn you.
However, something does entangle itself in your feet as you’re toddling along — something that’s bright red and looks something like a snake. That something, that looks like a string, is sprouting out of the manhole like a plant. It moves in an uncanny, but living way, wrapping itself around your legs, knocking you off-balance and causing you to fall.
You topple forward, head over heels — right into the manhole.
Downward. Farther in. Deeper into the hole.
After a complete free-fall, you abruptly land on your backside.
Luckily, it doesn’t seem to have been that deep of a hole. It doesn’t feel any worse than having fallen off a jungle gym. Fissures run along the surface of the stoplight, which has likely absorbed most of the impact of the fall. Your shocked face pokes through those cracks.
The stoplight must have taken most of the shock of that fall, leaving you unharmed. You stand up right away, as if in no pain whatsoever.
Staring at the stoplight, now cracked into pieces, you sweep the dirt off of your skirt with the palm of your hand. When you look away, the fragments disappear, as if in a dream (metaphorically speaking).
You then lift your face—
You are dumbfounded by what you see.
A giant face is staring down at you. It has an unsettling form to it, reminiscent of an octopus, so much so that it makes you imagine a fishy smell. This face is a vivid red, the same blood-red color as the string that wrapped itself around your legs earlier. Like a giant man stained in blood.
With that creepy red string still hanging in the air, the face stares at you with a vulgar look in its eyes.
With your skirt somewhat disheveled, your rear end is on full display, as are the contours of your breasts — aware of that stare, you shield your body with both hands in an attempt to hide yourself. However, that red string wriggles in the air around you, like lust itself.
The palm of a large red hand inches ever closer. It seems intent on gradually making off with you. You vigorously shake your head in disgust and run away. However, like the inescapable nature of fate itself, no matter how far you run, the red string creeps its way into your line of sight.
At a bit of a loss, you grab onto a bundle of thread. Then, twisting your body uncomfortably around it, you begin to climb. It’s a compulsion — you’re being forced to do something unseemly. That’s what it looks like — as you seem to hate it so much, you can’t stand it, yet it’s like you have no choice but to hang on.
You continue to slink your way up that red string.
The red string wraps itself lasciviously around your bust, your ankles, the nape of your neck.
There seems to be a hole at the very top that leads somewhere. It’s like the slightest ray of hope; an exit from this hellish scenery. Latching onto that ray of hope, you accept this hardship, clinging to the blood-red string as you make your way to the top.
Like a sinner wriggling his way out of hell on a spider’s thread.
However, what exactly was the sin that you committed?
Courage wells up from within you as you head desperately for the light with a vitality that seems to scream, “I want to live, I want to be happy.”
That vigor has a divinity to it, the sole proof that you have not yet given up.
Your breathing is ragged and, with the slender arms of a girl, you reach the top, looking more like you were playing at rock climbing than actually doing it.
You poke your face through the hole, then use both arms to pull yourself up and through.
You hold your hands at your chest for a bit, then begin to vomit, as if you’ve eaten something disgusting.
The scenery surrounding you has once again undergone a transformation.
The dense forest and highway from earlier had a realness to them, like they actually could have existed in reality. But this place is different. You’ve arrived at a place with a bizarre topography, almost like you’ve traveled to another dimension.
This space appears as if it were created by a child who had been handed a clean white piece of paper and allowed to scribble all over it to his heart’s content — like it had been created with an untainted instinct. A boundless expanse, mostly white as snow — and standing on it, several unidentifiable structures that look like they had been sketched in here and there with messy lines.
One of those structures looks like the head of an adult male.
It could be the surface or exterior of that space from earlier, the one swirling with those red strings — as that head gazes at you with the same sense of desire. With bloodshot eyes. The rain is still falling and, seemingly using that as your excuse, you open your umbrella to shield your body.
To conceal everything that you are.
At least, you seem to be hiding yourself from someone else’s gaze.
With the umbrella still open, you circle around the back of the head, as if in an attempt to avoid its gaze — and there, you find something that looks like an entrance and hesitantly step inside. It seems that you don’t want to be out here anymore. The idea of slipping inside the man’s head gives you a bad feeling, but you can’t find anything else that resembles an entrance or exit. There is nowhere else.
Gripping the umbrella tight, you force yourself to go inside.