The Brook

I am sitting on a small walkway between two houses. The back doors of each face me, their shiny brass knobs and square covered windows stand still, motionless.  It is a narrow five foot space of cracked cement, an old walkway covered in a tiny layer of moss. The green is thickest on the sides, creeping up from the dark moist earth like a premonition, as if to remind me that soon all of man’s ingenuity will be covered in a thicket of leaves and mushrooms. 
The cement is cool and moist, ten degrees colder than the air gently floating by me. The space is shielded from the sun directly by a set of worn, slumping wooden stairs and a tiny square landing. The staircase starts a few feet from the backdoor on my left and leads swiftly, without any meandering, to the second story, where another door, this one without a window stands closed. 
Only narrow bits of sunlight reach the short walkway between the houses, and though the space is not covered in warmth, the light is bright. 
I am sitting outside on the concrete, my legs and bottom quite chilled by the temperature of the ground.  The door to my right, three feet away, is a faded blue. There are yellow spots along the edges of the door, created by time and salt and elements with complex symbols. The wooden planks on the exterior of the house are a very pale yellow, almost white. Large strips of paint are gone, revealing a spotted gray wood battered by the ocean air.  Opposite the blue door is another house, this one with a new coat of thick beige paint and shiny veneer. 
On one side of the walkway is a running brook.  It emerges from a depressed bit of earth just below the cement, travels above ground for three feet, then disappears into the earth once again. Along the edges of the flowing water, which trickles gently over smooth stones the size of large hands, are tender stalks of green foliage. There are leaves with wide heart-shaped leaves that search upwards for the sun. Beside them are small white flowers on thin single stems sprouting from the brook. Dark colored moss verging on black grows over the sides of the rocks lapping against the water. 
Wedged into one of the green stalks is a tiny brown incense stick.  A thin stream of white-gray smoke wafts upwards, dancing like the branches of an old oak tree in constant movement- curling, jagged lines, beautiful ballerina swirls that leave the scent of amber.
The air around me is alive and full.  Cool and moist.  I breath it in deeply, inhaling thick, nutrient filled earth.

Endless School

The hallways extend in all directions, connected by stairways and ramps. Each hallway is lined with doors that lead to classrooms. There is a constant noise that swarms through the place, bouncing off the walls, seeping through little holes, taking sharp turns around corners. The walls are of different colors, some white, some blue, some bright red. The stairways are all metallic silver. No area is the same as another. The colors and turns intersect in unpredictable ways and form new structures in every direction. Most of the doors are closed, each with a number and a bulletin board to the right, most of them empty. There is a sense of a crowd but no sign of it, loose words and laughter flash through the noise here and there but nobody can be seen walking through the halls, up the stairways or into the rooms.
The building complex sits on top of a large grassy hill and continues inside of it. The structure extends under the earth and pokes out from gaps here and there, along the slopes of grass and between little patches of tall ancient trees. A wide concrete stairway cuts the hill in two and leads to a center plaza, a round space covered in concrete with a tall single sculpture at its center. The sculpture is a very abstract representation of a man with arms extended upwards. It towers over the plaza impressively, at least 30 feet tall. At its base there is a large bronze metal plaque that says "above" in a vast number of languages and alphabets. From afar the surface of the sculpture seems to be light gray, up close, it has a slightly green color.
The large central stairway leads to a secondary building complex at the bottom. Its first level is lined with glass doors, all of them closed and dark. Its second level is twice the height of the first one and it is made of a single large window that acts as a huge mirror, reflecting the buildings above it. There are further stairways on either side that continue moving downward. Inside the main building there is large lobby, with couches and tables. There are newspapers still open and scribbled post it notes scattered over the tables. Wooden doors to the south lead to a small movie theater. The main screen is blank but the projector is on, spilling pure light onto the white surface. There is a book open on the podium and a stack of papers on a small table to the right.
To the left of the screen, there is a small doorway. It leads to a dark staircase going downward. It ends in an even darker hallway, where the walls are painted black and the only light comes from small lights that are over 50 feet apart from each other. Beside each light is a door, unmarked and locked. The hallways extends back into the depths of the hill. As it reaches deeper, the air becomes more oppressive and the walls are covered in moisture. The sound of the crowd above is deafening, almost making the ceiling shake, and it is contrasted with tiny drops of water that echo with a bright crystalline clarity.
At the very bottom of the hill, the hallway opens up into a circular room. There are three other long hallways extending away from this room. In the very center, there is small pool. Above the pool, the ceiling is open and it extends upwards as a smooth concrete cylinder. In the center of the pool, there is a small concrete pedestal and on top of it, a golden chalice full of blood. On its side there is a large bronze metal plaque that says "below" in a vast number of languages and alphabets. The noise that extends through the whole underground seems to be loudest in this place, resonating through the cement cylinder that extends up towards the plaza and the tall sculpture above.

Ash World

There are stairs which climb and bend endlessly. Formed of concrete and carbon steel rebar, they produce a hallow twang with every footfall. The sound lonesomely echoes within the cavernous structure. The concrete of the stairs is flecked with miniscule tan and gray pebbles. This adornment is absent in the flat corridors which branch off from them. Tree house style walkways and halls run along empty walls and plain faced doors. These doors bear no numbers nor any other sign to betray what secret places hide behind their blank gaze. A sickening shade of pasty gray, they do little to stand out against the similarly white hued walls. It gives the impression that everything is bathed in ash.
Even the occasional humanoid figure clipping distractedly along a walkway seems to be this color. They tend to be dressed in the attire of medical professionals, in the sexless pajama like garb donned by dental technicians, nurses, and surgeons. Looking down as they exit a steel door elevator or disappearing down a dark hallway, they move without grace or life, marching purposefully and bitterly in predetermined directions. Their authoritatively passive aggressive auras hang over them as tangibly as a bad smell.
The halls veer off of the exposed walkways feeding into enclosed networks given to a multitude of labyrinthine turns. These halls are long and their ends are never clear, the view ahead is consistently bathed in darkness. Shadow reaches out from every crevice and corner. Without windows or noticeable light fixtures, what sterile illumination there is, emanates meekly from an undetermined source. Around some turns, a dead end awaits in the shape of an empty gray culvert. There are no potted plants, no skylights or windows, no paintings, and no directories. It seems as if the charmless hallways and skeletal stairways may go on endlessly in every direction, an inescapable and well contained world.
Here and there an opening may be encountered, a pseudo door made of sheets of opaque colorless plastic hanging from overhead. They shimmy a little, disturbed by a draft from behind. With their unsettling appearance comes expectations of a quarantine center, or a room undergoing structural repair. This uninviting prospect gives them a sinister presence. The air blowing out from behind them is cold and stale. A faint synthetic odor prevails over the entire labyrinthine tableau. It smells something like rubber or paint, but is insidiously subtle. Like fluoride in drinking water, it links arms with what precious breathable oxygen is available, and by being discrete it slips in with every inhalation, undeterred.
Along with that inescapable scent an eerie quiet inhabits the stairways, and corridors. Elevator doors slide open with a hushed whisper. The rare echoing thump, twang of footsteps stabs at the soul. Beneath it all is a barely perceptible hum, tempered perhaps with an even less perceptible ring, like the noise generated by fluorescent lights. It vibrates from every tangible pore of concrete and steel, droning inexplicably and so subtly it can pass itself off as a trick of a tainted mind. Like a corkscrew, the stairs spiral nauseatingly upward. Into the deepening gray, they rise and descend to open upon further floors of claustrophobic halls, tree house walkways, and row upon row of impersonal gray doors. Many of these doors are locked, or may be opened to reveal a clean slab of impenetrable wall. These decoys are numerous. Like the empty chambers in a pistol engaged in a harrowing game of Russian roulette, every closed door is ominous, because the very air and every dark corner of this place says that something sinister must lie in wait, somewhere within the quiet halls, the endless walls and the silent elevators.