Room in the Clouds

My mother lived in a rather strange house.  It was a tall house, composed of three apartments stacked on top of each other, and there was a staircase that spiraled around the outside of the house like a corkscrew, each flight taking you up to the next apartment.  My mother occupied the middle apartment, and my aunt had the one at the very top.

One day my mother sent me up to my aunt's place to borrow something.  After climbing the dizzy heights along the open staircase, her apartment felt like a cramped, dim, collection of rooms in the sky.  But it was a lively place.  A bunch of my family were there, laughing and talking.  I settled in for a pleasant visit, and that's when someone mentioned the attic room.  There was something stored away up there that my cousin wanted to get.  I laughed and told her how I always had dreams about an attic room, tucked away in a closet just like this one, the same lonely switchback stairs.  I told her that it always creeped me out, but I wasn't sure why because there was never anything up there.

But everyone's smiles quickly faded, everything grew hushed and sober, and it dawned on me that this was one of my dreams.  That's why the attic room was here.  It was like a marker or a talisman.  I would only ever find it in a dream.  That's why it always troubled me.  It signified the dream state, like a dissonant cue.  They were all watching me now.  They seemed to be waiting for me to go up there.