In Dreams Don’t Always End, memory and meaning blur in the spaces between dreams and waking life. The interlude below, “Gate Not Found,” offers a glimpse into one of those liminal moments—a surreal encounter at a place that feels both imagined and deeply familiar. It’s here, in a dreamlike airport with no ground beneath it, that the narrator begins to make sense of the guilt, choices, and quiet redemptions that ripple through the story.

Interlude 2 – “Gate Not Found”

There was an airport, but not like any I’d ever seen.

The air was cooler than it should’ve been, crisp and clean like cave air filtered through stone. The check-in gantry stretched across a void—no floor beneath, just a suspended metal bridge illuminated by dangling industrial lights that swayed gently, as if breathing.

At the far end, the boarding gate blinked red. FLIGHT CANCELLED.

Passengers shuffled into a new queue, and I joined them, side by side with a woman I didn’t know but felt comfortable around. She didn’t speak, but her presence anchored me—soft, calm, patient.

The line crept forward. One step. Then another.

And when I reached the front, I saw her.

Miss Smith.

My old form teacher.

She hadn’t aged. Same softly angular face, same weary-but-hopeful eyes. She wore a sky-blue stewardess uniform straight out of the 1970s, complete with a pillbox hat tilted too far back, as if trying not to fall off a head already full of memories. A plastic name tag—slightly scratched—read:
SMITH / BOARDING SERVICES.

On the desk in front of her: an old red Bakelite telephone, the rotary dial glowing faintly in the cave light.

She looked up and paused, recognition flashing across her face like a shadow crossing a spotlight.

“You were a difficult one,” she said softly, with a half-smile.

“I know,” I replied.

She picked up the phone. Spoke to someone I couldn’t hear. Her voice was clipped but warm. She hung up and said:

“There’s space for one more.”

I glanced at the woman behind me. She looked at me with that same calm acceptance.

I didn’t feel heroic or noble. Just certain.

“Let her go,” I said. “I’ll wait.”

Miss Smith nodded once and stamped something invisible on a paper I never saw. The woman smiled—grateful but not surprised—and crossed the gantry toward a door that opened like the mouth of light itself.

As soon as she disappeared, the lights above the bridge dimmed. A low rumble echoed through the stone.

Behind me, the line had vanished. I was alone on the platform.

Miss Smith leaned forward and said, “That was the first unselfish choice you ever made in here.”

“In where?”

“In the echo,” she said. “You think this is a dream? No. This is the waiting room you built around the part of yourself you never forgave.”

And then the lights flickered. The phone rang once—sharp, final.

I woke up.

But I didn’t feel hollow, or regretful.

I felt… lighter.

Like a page had been turned, and this time, I hadn’t scribbled over it.