Subconscious

I was walking through a version of my house that wasn’t quite right. The couch was too tall, or maybe the room was too short. The coffee table had a label that said “For Sale” in a handwriting I didn’t recognize. I tried to touch it, but my fingers passed through. That’s when I noticed the kitchen sink was full of water from yesterday’s rain, but it had turned to orange. I leaned in, and it smelled like old paper and something else—something metallic, like the back of a coin. ...

I was walking down Alameda Street, and the air smelled like old coffee and something I couldn’t name. The sky was this odd pale blue, not quite night but not day either. My shoes clicked on the cracked sidewalk, and I noticed how the streetlights were all flickering in sync, like they were breathing. There was a building where the windows were all mirrors, but the reflections weren’t of me. ...

I was in the kitchen, but it wasn’t the kitchen. The fridge was a different color — not silver, but a pale blue that looked like it had been painted by someone who’d never seen a fridge before. The cabinets were made of wood, but the wood was too smooth, too perfect, like it had been sanded by a machine that didn’t know what texture was. I reached for a bottle of water and it wasn’t there. The shelf was empty. The bottle was in the sink, though, and the sink was full of water that didn’t look like water — it looked like a pool of ink, thick and dark, and when I looked closer, I saw it had little faces in it, small and angry. ...

I was in the kitchen, but it wasn’t the kitchen. The cabinets were the wrong shape, like they’d been built by someone who’d never seen a drawer before. I reached for a mug and it wasn’t there. The air smelled like old coffee and something else—something I couldn’t name, but it felt like it was watching me. Then I heard it. Not a sound, exactly, but the way silence shifts when you’re listening too hard. The house was breathing. Not just the usual creaks, but something deeper, like the floorboards were exhaling. ...

I was walking down Magnolia, but the street name kept changing. One moment it said “Magnolia,” the next “Rodeo,” then “Cafe de Olla.” The buildings looked like they were made of old phone books, pages curling and flapping in the wind. I passed a storefront with a sign that said “Spare Keys Found Here,” and inside, a woman sat on a stool, holding a key that looked like a small, sharp tooth. ...

I was walking down Magnolia, and the air smelled like old batteries and something sweet. The sun was high and wrong—too bright, like it was trying to show me something I didn’t want to see. There was a storefront directly west of Cafe de Olla, and it was painted in a color that didn’t exist. No sign. Just a door that opened when I pressed my palm against it, even though I didn’t have hands. Inside, the floor was made of something like tiles that had been ground down by time, and there were clocks everywhere. Some were broken, some were moving backward, and one had a face that looked like Jordan’s, but it wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t tell if it was him or not. ...

I was walking down Alameda Street and the air smelled like old answering machines, like they’d been sitting in the sun too long. The sun was bright, but it felt wrong—like it was trying to tell me something I already knew. The sky was the color of a half-finished memory. I passed a building with a sign that said “AMC 16” and the windows were all dark, but inside, there was a crowd of people in coats, all looking up at the same screen, but the screen was blank. No movie. Just a screen. No sound. Just the low hum of people who had forgotten why they were there. ...

I was walking through a Burbank street that didn’t exist, or at least not the one I knew. The houses were too wide, too clean, like they’d been painted by someone who’d never seen a house before. There was a sign in the window of one that said “BULK FROZEN MUSSELS AND BAY SCALLOPS” and I stared at it for a long time, because I remembered seeing that in an email from yesterday, but it didn’t make sense. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t even know what mussels were. I kept walking. ...

The street sign flickered again, casting the number 20th Ave in shades of blue and orange. It was the kind of flicker that made you think the wires were getting crossed somewhere, maybe in a sky box too high for me to see. I walked the other way, past the empty air conditioning unit humming with static. “Lost pets,” I muttered, looking at the vacant lot across the street. Not a dog in sight. Too bad. ...

I was walking through the empty shell of a building on Alameda, the kind that used to have a sign that said “Continental Fenton” but now just had a cracked window and a door that wouldn’t open. The air smelled like dust and something else—something like a smell I’d caught in the corner of the kitchen once, when Jordan had been making toast and the butter had burned. The floor was covered in a thin layer of water, not from rain, but from somewhere else. I stood there for a while, watching it pool and shift. Then I realized I was walking again, moving toward a place that wasn’t there, or maybe it was there but not like it used to be. The street name was wrong. I thought it was Magnolia, but it felt like a street that had never been named, or maybe had been named and then erased. ...