So close.
I was living in a very tall hotel. The stairway to the rooms was located inside this square prism of a building, and the room were only located on one side of that building. Every hall and every room had a light yellow wallpaper plastered to it, and they were all set to 68 degrees. This hotel also had no ground floor; rather, it rested atop an eternal black abyss.
I returned home (to the hotel) carrying two brown paper bags full of vegetables and loaves of French bread. I walked in at the bottom and climbed a dozen sets of stairs, which, for some reason, were built on alternating sides of the hotel so that I had to walk down the hallway of every floor to make it to the next ascending stairway.
When I finally reached my room (the third to last room at the top floor), I, with great finesse, managed to pull out my keys, unlock and open my door, and safely set the groceries onto my dining room table. I proceeded to unload the tomatoes, heads of lettuce, potatoes, ears of corn, etc. into my cupboards. When I was about done, I heard a knock on the door. I left the groceries and opened the door after peering the the people at the little taxman before me.
This guy was actually not a guy at all. He was a gorilla, yet I treated him and thought of him as a man. He was wearing a suit and tie and was carrying a briefcase, from which he pulled out a large stack of papers and handed them to me. The gorilla-taxman explained without words (mainly using gestures and eye contact) that the paperwork had to be completed in one hour, or else I would go to debtor's prison.
I panicked and, after grabbing the papers, slammed the door in his face and rushed into my bedroom. I closed the blinds of my window that overlooked the city and turned on a red lamp next to my desk and began working like a madman for what felt like hours. I flew through page after page, but the pile seemed to never end.
Finally, I had only about ten pages left to finish when I heard a knock on the door. I looked up at a clock in my room and saw that an hour had passed. I ran to the door, with the papers in my arms, and saw through the peep hole that the gorilla was there, with two cops, waiting for me. I wasn't ready!
I kicked my own door open and leaped over the cops and the gorilla taxman and even over the guardrail of the hallway. I began falling down past the several floors in the hotel as onlookers waived to me.
Before falling into the black abyss below me, I managed to grab onto the safety rail of the first floor's hallway, the papers still tucked under my arm. I held on the rail with one hand and shoved the papers into my pocket with the other. Then I started swinging like a monkey on the rails as I headed for the exit. I saw that the cops and the gorilla were nearing my location, so I tried to sling a web from my wrist like Spider-Man, but that didn't work, so I continued to swing toward the exit.
I finally made it. I was met there by a half gorilla-half rhino wearing grey pants and a purple vest. I was at first scared of this thing, but he managed to (without words) tell me that he would buy me as much time as he could, but I would have to try to finish the paper work.
I thanked him and began to run again. I went out the exit of the hotel, which led to a grey hallway with doors lining both sides of the hallway. I ran all the way to the end of the hall, where rested a final door. I tried to open it, but it was locked, so I opened the door to the left of it and jumped in the room (which resembled an office that my dad once worked in) and frantically began to finish the final papers.
I was on the last page when I heard the rhino-gorilla say that he couldn't help me anymore. I popped my head out the window and saw the whole community coming after me. Some were even carrying torches and pitchforks.
I took a quick but deep breath and finished the last page just as the crowd got to the door. I held the papers above my head so that the people would know that I had finished. The rhino-gorilla started the crown in a slow clap that lead to an applause by the time I made it to the end of the crowd where the gorilla-taxman stood, arms crossed. He ripped the papers out of my hands, sifted through them, then signaled to the crowd that they were indeed complete, and everyone began to celebrate. The vest-wearing rhino-gorilla came a patted me on the back.
Then I awoke.
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