It was only last summer that I returned to my childhood home in northeast Maryland after a seven year absence. I had just completed my first year of college; I had no luck locating a job for the season, so I was in need of something to do. I discussed the situation with my father, and he suggested that I take a trip by myself, and put forward Maryland as a destination. He even graciously agreed to pay for air fare and transfer enough money into my account to cover a rental car. It would have gone further than that, but I insisted on paying motel fees myself. This was entirely possible, as I had saved up a good deal of money from previous summer jobs. I spent a few weeks preparing for the trip, and so it came to pass that after a three and a half hour flight I was driving north on interstate 95 in mid-June of that year.
The weather felt ungodly hot, but it was quite cool compared to the Texas summers I had grown used to over the years. However, I had always been quite sensitive to heat, and even as a small child I had preferred the indoors and air conditioning during the summer months. As one can imagine, this did not make me the greatest judge of how comfortable things would be outside. Luckily for me, the rental car, a brown, two-door sedan that looked like it belonged to a low level fed, had a fully operational air conditioner that kept my environment roundabouts a comfortable seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. I had also luckily managed to avoid rush hour traffic, and for once the state of Maryland was not conducting an utterly pointless construction project on the Baltimore beltway, so the driving was smooth and free of frustration for at least one day.
The motel outside town (which I shall not name for personal reasons) made for comfortable, if somewhat seedy, accommodations. The bed was nothing special, but at least it was clean. The walls were covered in what looked like faux oak paneling, and the bathroom floor was set with linoleum instead of real tiles. It was on the plain but serviceable bed that I planned my activities for the remainder of the trip using a county atlas I had purchased at a nearby gas station. I found the location of my old school, the mall I remembered visiting often, and other frequent haunts of mine from the days of old. Last of all, I found my old neighborhood and the street I grew up on. That place I planned to visit last. As I finished making preparations for my stay, I looked over at the bedside clock (digital, not analog) and realized that much time had passed quickly, and that it was now very late. I set the clock's alarm function so that I could get an early start the next morning. After lying in bed for a short while, I fell into a deep sleep.
It was that night that the dreams began to haunt me. I dreamed that I was standing on a great height, overlooking an enormous city. Upon observing the many buildings, I saw that their geometry made no sense and that the angles did not precisely meet up in any way. However, they still came together to become part of a seemingly impossible whole. I was scared stiff by this, but I felt drawn to it against my will. Despite all my conscious effort to stay where I was, my feet began to carry me towards the impossible city below my high vantage point.
As I descended lower and lower, I began to see what looked like tiny blurs moving about on what could only be described as the streets of this bizarre metropolis. I surmised that these must be the denizens of the place, and once more I wanted to turn around and run, but my feet kept moving me forward. My descent came to an end, and I alighted on one of the strange streets, and got my first close look at the inhabitants. They were essentially formless beings, and when one turned a corner in front of me, it looked completely different from the different angle.
Suddenly, my feet stopped moving, and I froze in place in the middle of the street. I tried to move but my body was completely paralyzed. As I struggled against my paralysis, the denizens of the city began to take notice. Seemingly at the same time, a group of at least fifteen of the creatures turned their heads and looked right at me. I would have screamed right then if I could have. Their faces were almost completely featureless, with the exception of a single, piercing red eye. At the exact same moment, they all let out a bone chilling wail, and began to move towards me in concert. When they began to bear down upon me, my throat broke the paralysis and screamed. Their wail only got louder in response. As the horrible creatures finally got their hands on me, their wail faded into the sound of my alarm clock as it went off and woke me up.