. . .Go On When I Close My Eyes

Jim and i were walking past this big building with maybe 200 steps leading up to it. It was a dark brown hexagonal building mostly, with wings of traditional rectangle branching off of it in three places. I wanted to go inside, but Jim didn't, so i went up there myself. The doors were thrown open as though it were a public building, so i went right in. In the vestibule was a little shoppe that sold broken things. Mugs with handles broken off, dolls with limbs missing, chess sets with missing queens, plants in broken pots with the soil spilling off and carefully collected in dixie cups that surrounded them like little satellites. The shoppe was very dark inside, which i found odd because the ceiling was one big skylight. When i looked up, i could see that the glass was obscured by plants with huge fronds, so that the sunlight that made it through fell dappled to the ground in sparse patches. I walked past all this, and through the checkout lines toward the main part of the building. When i went inside, i realized it was a house with an arboretum. I went inside to look around, and found myself in the kitchen. The kitchen was done in blacks and dark greens, with the same ceiling as the shoppe. I looked around, but couldn't find the source of the fronds obscuring the light. Looking at the walls, i realized the fronds weren't growing out of plants, but directly out of the walls. Once i realised this, vines crept down from the heights of the ceiling and stopped at eye level with me. At the end of the vines were pods, which opened up and contained small black eyes. I thought they went perfectly with the decor and stood there while they judged me silently. If things went badly for me in their estimation, i would end up an object for sale in the shoppe of broken things. I looked down and saw that my left hand didn't quite look real. When i gave it a tug, it came off in my right hand. I supposed i would fit in there after all. After an eternity, it seemed, the false hand i was holding decayed to dust, and my left hand returned to my arm complete, and it was clutching a set of keys. I knew that the house was now mine, and i was both ecstatic and very sad at the same time, knowing that this was my true home where i belonged, and that i'd never be able to leave it again. Looking back at the kitchen, i noticed something gleaming white, which didn't belong in a black and dark green kitchen. I walked over to it and realized it was my portable Maytag dishwasher i'd ordered for my old house. I was both annoyed and gleeful at the same time, because it didn't match, but i now had two dishwashers, in case i needed to wash a bunch of dishes all at once. The vines followed me, intertwining and weaving themselves around me, caressing my cheeks with their pods, and urging me forward, encouraging me to forget the last relic of my previous life. I knew when i looked away, the dishwasher would be gone, and so my memory of it as well.