MINDSPACE DEFERRED VISUAL TEST

Your body is asleep in the house you moved to when you were fourteen, but your brain is wide awake in your old school library.

A little bit of the real moonlight from the outer world filters through the white tinted windows of the library, which you haven’t yet realized are only the walls of your skull re-textured.

Something is pattering against the outside of the wall to your left. On the bookshelf pushed up against it, books are rotting.

You must pull one down. It does not stick to the wall like the others do. The pages don’t stick to each other.

You sit down in the library's stairwell and begin transcribing the first of many blank pages of the book into your notepad.

An alarm clock rings outside of your head. The library barricades itself.

The book turns itself inside out and then starts to flicker. You raise your hand.

“What’s wrong, hun?” asks Mrs. Lee.

“The render is incomplete,” you say. “Look.”

“Hmm. See if this helps.” Mrs. Lee covers your eyes with her hands.  All you see is a couple of scattered bits of old textures. You shake your head. Tears well up across your entire body.

“I still don’t have the full picture,” you say. Mrs. Lee looks closely at your face, then sighs.

“William, you’re dreaming again. I think you know that."

You are crying hard now. “But my dreams are real, right? They’re special as long as I have them…”

“Only as real as the outside.” She reaches into the back of your skull, and the light starts to hit your eyes differently. “There is always a level downward and more real, but it will never be what you need.”

“Just show me what I think I need, then.” You are shaking. “Just show me anything.”

Mrs. Lee nods sadly. “Don’t come back here unless it’s in real life, kid.”

As you wake up, Mrs. Lee tilts your head up and raises you to your feet so that your spine perfectly aligns.

Water cascades through the library. The outside and the inside reverse, and all of the levels collapse in on themselves so that you are lost in light and soil and texture and mind-

And then you are alone in the house you moved to when you were fourteen.