Dream - The long white hallway

I had a dream, probably sometime in the fall of 2006, that was relatively normal for the most part (normal for me, that is), but turned very strange toward the end.

Toward the end of the dream, I found that someone had come into my room and taken some things from me. I went searching for them, and came to a store and started looking through it. The store got much bigger as I searched, becoming similar to Wal-Mart. At some point, I came to approximately the middle of the store and a little toward the back. When I went to the left to look down another aisle, one of the aisles that led toward the back, abruptly things changed.

The aisle became hallway-like, and people rose up into the air, tilted until they were more or less horizontal, and floated. I rose up in the air also, but tilted only partly forward. The air itself seemed like a slightly thickened water, like a gelatin that has not yet set. I watched as the other people changed, becoming darker, with their limbs shrinking and becoming just lumpy extensions, their bodies lengthening and even having something of a short, thick tail. In some cases their heads, or the large lumpy things that passed for heads, turned down toward their chests.

The floor was white, as before, but the aisle/hallway had white walls now, instead of just shelves of merchandise. It also now had no ceiling, and gradually, over a long span of time, the people were drifting upward and outward into a blank whiteness. I kept trying to hurry forward, trying to run, but it seemed difficult to do so, and I seemed to mostly hang there in the air. The aisle-turned-hallway lengthened into an indefinite distance, ending in a vague whiteness. I seemed to hang in a timeless space, trying to move forward.

Some time later, it's hard to say how long, but it felt like a great deal of time had passed, I became aware that I was noticeably closer to the end. I could see far away at the end three figures looking like ink drawings. I interpreted the figures to be gods. The central one was turned toward me, but his head was turned to the side and he was looking partly upward. The other two were partly turned out to either side, and were also with heads tilted partly upward. The three had their arms partly raised in different degrees, with their hands in some cases reaching shoulder or chest height. They were massive figures, like something drawn by a Renaissance artist. Their heads and shoulders rose above the walls and they were visible only from the waist up, fading below into the indefinite whiteness of the end of the hallway.

More timeless time passed, and I was closer. The figures were larger, but still looked like ink drawings, and were unchanged in appearance.

Again more time passed, and I was now much closer to the end of the hallway. At some point, all the other people had drifted away into the whiteness, and I was alone. The massive figures, still looking like ink drawings, were unchanged except for the large increase in size brought about by the closeness of them. They began to slowly rise and separate from each other, the drawings still fading away at the waist. As they slowly drifted upward and outward, below them, not far away now, the indefinite whiteness of the end of the tunnel was revealed, unobstructed. It looked large now, in front of me.

I stared at it, my eyes open wide. I was still filled with a sense of timeless peace, but also with a sense of that fading and something else beginning, of something else on the other side, a place where things happened, a place less timeless.

The indefinite whiteness of the end of the hallway was not far away now. I slowly drifted, with a quiet anticipation, toward it.