Dream House I

When I awoke I knew that something was different. The air felt different. I couldn’t quite pick why. I thought that I must have left the window closed – or open. It wasn’t that I was thinking again last night about how this house could never be our dream house. It was a new kind of disorientation.

Everything looked the same but the world felt more cramped. Like the air had become more crowded-in. The feeling wasn’t subtle. It felt very real. I could hear a buzz, well actually that makes it sound somehow electrical or mechanical. It was more of a hum – a sense of people and activity.

This feeling warned me that things were different but I was still surprised when I went to the window to see the noise I could hear. The whole world had certainly come closer. Instead of the familiar sights of the fence and my neighbour’s house I could see the ramshackle tin roofs of tens of, well, some kind of dwellings. All our space was gone, replaced with small laneways and homes heaped on one another – and people moving everywhere.

Our suburban house had been picked up and dropped into the middle of a slum. The sky was hazy, the air was hot and full of the noise and sweat of ten thousand people living in a space the size of a city block. My brain was already peaking with all this new information. I could see sick looking dogs, an open sewer gutter, and everything seemed so dirty and broken.

For the people walking near I could tell that it was out of their routine to see a large white house, brick footings and all, in the middle of their community. Their faces showed bewilderment and confusion. I rushed to check on my own family. My wife was still sleeping soundly but the kids were unaccounted for.

I rushed towards the back door hoping the kids would be playing on the deck. As I got closer I could hear the sound of children, but it was that slightly hysterical sound that without seeing was hard to tell if it was crying or laughing.