Kramer was somewhere familiar but was not sure where. What brought him here? What what that last thought?
Gone.
He tried to trace his thoughts back but couldn't, he was lost again, off on another tangent.
But then noises. Voices echoing down corridors. Children. Then a smell. Can't quite put his finger on it. Then a flash of a stairwell, the middle storey of his old school. Stairs to the left and right, going up and going down. But more than there ever was. Stairs in all directions.
Then the smell again, school soap, chalk, the cloakroom. Familiar smells now, evocative of happier times. But Kramer hated school, and the school hadn't thought much of him.
The landing he was standing on was sparse and cold, the concrete floors amplifying his every step. He looked around, nothing was really as he remembered it. The building was wider and higher yet it felt right. Stairs everywhere. One day ye will smell stairs where there be no stairs. The noises were louder now, whole classloads of children were laughing, chattering, running, but Kramer saw no-one. He walked the familiar corridors, passing rooms from his childhood, the ghost-like voices always just ahead of or or behind. He felt alone.
Then he noticed the pictures. Portraits of old teachers stared down from the walls, each one hanging at an odd angle as if the whole architecture, the whole geometry of the place was wrong. The faces stared at him and appeared to move. Kramer wasn't sure. They'd stopped looking familiar now. Strangers in a Strange Land. Strangers in the night, laughing and speaking in an unintelligible language.
But Kramer caught snatches. "Could do better, could do better". Then a familiar face again, his old maths teacher, the original wicked witch of the west, a hag. He remembered reading her obituary a few years earlier and how good it felt. Bad thoughts. She's come to get her own back. Move on.
The corridor was wider now and it sloped genly upwards in front of him. The walls were bare and no longer echoed. The once cold concrete floor was now covered in a plush, deep piled, heavily patterned Persian carpet which felt good to Kramer's bare feet. And the sounds were louder. The babble of hundreds of young voices, whistles, playground noises danced through his brain. A skipping game was in progress and he could hear the rhythm of the rope hitting the ground, and the accompanying chant over and over again. "Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?" There was no response.
Now there was silence. The corridor had levelled off again and Kramer walked on. He passed a window. The first he had seen, and gazed out. His home town stretched before him, but he recognised nothing. The roads and building may have been in the right place but then were somehow different. Bigger or smaller, back to front, even the wrong colour. Kramer's dream had colour, it was the first time he noticed it. Everything was vibrant. Bright primary colours. Colours that danced. Colours that had sound. The world was a rainbow suddenly and each band a different note. Kramer reached out and play a chord. Richard of York gives battle in vain. Every good boy deserves favour. Never give a sucker an even break.
Kramer's mind was off again. Rapid eye movements. Kramer's 3rd movement in the key of J . . . Roll over Kramer and tell Tchaikovsky the news.
Do you dream in colour? Do you dream at all?
Kramer almost woke, but not quite.
He did roll over though. Rolled over and walked on down the hall. He wasn't sure where.
