"Hello?"
My voice feels small in such a large, empty expanse, seemingly swallowed up by the oppressive silence. I look around, trying to determine where I am, but I can see nothing but pure white, stretching so far it seems to go on for eternity. There are no walls, no ceiling, no sky, no horizon, no floor: only white.
I reach my hand out, trying to determine if what I see is real--or, more importantly, what I don't see. When my fingers meet with nothing but air, I take a tentative step forward.
My step breaks the silence like a thunderclap, echoing as if I were in an empty warehouse. But that can't be right; there had been no echo when I spoke.
"Hello?" I call again. This time my voice is amplified, booming out as if coming from a thousand loudspeakers. It startles me so much that I stumble backwards, landing on the ground with a squelch.
I look at my hand to find it covered in sticky blue substance that oozes between my fingers. Puzzled, I look down, but all I can see is shifting burnt red sand, with no blue goo in sight.
"Hello?" I call again, the growing sense of panic tainting my voice. But my hello is swept away in a sudden windstorm that picks up the dust and hurtles it into the blackened sky. Thunder clouds roll in so quickly that the space goes from bright to black in seconds.
The dark clouds swirl together, converging in a single spot. An ethereal figure begins to take shape, gradually becoming a woman wearing a billowing gray dress, silver locks of hair tumbling down her back and blowing in the wind.
"Welcome," she says, her voice filled with thunder and electricity and the fresh smell of rain. "Welcome to the Space Between Dreams."
I blink. The storm suddenly stills, and all is quiet, save for the storm that continues to play out in the figure of the woman. "What?"
"You are now in the Space Between Dreams," she says again, and this time her voice sounds like the rushing of pouring rain. "Here, you are God. You can create and destroy, build and repair, command and rule." She pauses, her dress and hair floating upward in defiance of gravity. "But beware--the longer you spend here, the more you will lose yourself, until you, like this space, become nothing."
"Um...." I trail off, not knowing how to express my thought.
"Speak," she says, her voice now a gentle breeze. The Space around us has become still, as if waiting.
"I'm not really interested in being a God," I say sheepishly. "I'd rather just get back home to my books and model trains. How do I leave?"
Her face shows no expression, and I realize that there never had been any expressions on her face in the first place. But her hair and dress suddenly fall, pulled almost straight by the sudden force of gravity. "You are God. By only your will can you leave this space," she says, her voice containing the distant rumble of thunder.
"Huh," I say. I look at the empty space in front of me and imagine a door. Gradually the space blurs, like water on a window, until the emptiness washes away, revealing a stained oak door with a curved, rubbed iron handle and carved fleurs de lis. I grin, place my hand on the handle, and pull the door open.
"Farewell, young God," I hear from behind me. "I will see you again, as I have before."
By the time I realize what she has said, the door has closed behind me, and I am back in my study, surrounded by my books stacked in random piles around the room, with my latest model train sitting on my desk where I had left it.
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