Once, I forgot my limbs.

I left them downstairs because I was in such a rush to get up to the second floor. I didn't even realize my legs were missing until I was halfway up the stairs. "No matter," I thought, "I won't need them for a while anyway." Only when I tried to reach for a paintbrush did I realize that my left arm had done just that, and the right away. Again, I shrugged it off (with only my shoulders) and went about my business.

My business is rather unconventional. There's no elevator in my office building, because I work from home. Thus, forgetting my limbs downstairs would be, as you probably assume, a hassle. And, well, sure, it's a bit of an obstacle, but I can deal with it. I'm still here now, aren't I?

I asked my boss about installing an elevator once. No, he declined without a moment's consideration. Well, how about an escalator? Absolutely not. You see (he told it to me somewhat like this, but I fear that a few words are off), stair-climbing is a virtue. It isn't supposed to be easy to get to the second floor, and it should be even harder to reach the third. Fourth, forget it. Stairs leading to a fifth floor weren't even physically plausible. If we started installing elevators for every building with stairs, there wouldn't even be a point to having a second floor.

The boss had a point. I didn't want to argue with his logic, and I was just curious about all of that elevator nonsense anyway. Who really wants to take an elevator? Even worse than forgetting your limbs downstairs, you can just accidentally leave them in the little moving room. How are you supposed to press the button to get the doors to open again?

Pardon me; I've veered quite a bit off track. This would be acceptable if I had forgotten my limbs today, but I didn't. No sir, they're right here. If they weren't, my body would just be flailing around, really, not staying straight at all. So I apologize for my unecessary wiggling.

I think I was talking about my business. I'm in the dream business. My job is in the design department. Again, we're a little unconventional in this trade. What I do exactly is I decide what dreams look like. Someone in the plot department writes me up a little story and I paint a few little pictures to go along with it. I send the whole package along to the next department, weaving, and I'm pretty sure what they do there is they turn the plot department's story and my pictures into a movie of sorts.

It's a pretty fun job, painting dreams. There aren't a whole lot of rules, except that I have to paint things that are related to the plot department's write-up. Otherwise there's a huge mess and a lot of forms to fill out and someone gets laid off. Fortunately, I have not yet experienced one of these things because I paint what I'm told to. Of course, that means anything within that small limit.

It's a good job. I like putting lots of pale colors into my works. A lot of the time I have to call up the boss and have him send another tube of white paint over, because I use mine so much. He'll get angry in a controlled sort of way sometimes, but I just remind him that if they could make these darned canvases white in the first place I wouldn't need so much paint. When I bring that up he grumbles for a second or two and then tells me the paint is on the way.

So hey, what happened when I forgot my limbs? That's right - just left 'em downstairs. That's why I didn't bother to go collect them - I don't go downstairs much. Most of the time, the second floor is my home, so I sit there and I work. I'll paint until I think the smell has gotten into my head a little too well, and then I clock out. Sometimes I can work for days before I have to clock out. My personal record was two and a half weeks, I do believe.

The only thing that I do downstairs is sleep. The boss says that all associates have to sleep downstairs if they work from home. I know perfectly well why, but it's not really something we can say to just anyone as representatives of a professional organization and all...

Oh, heck. Lean your ear this way and let me say it very softly.

Associates aren't allowed to dream. As long as we stay downstairs when we sleep, we won't be able to dream. Something like our mind can't get up the stairs properly unless we take it up physically. If we're grounded, so are our dreams.

It's kind of a silly thing to keep secret, isn't it? There are plently of people who don't work for this company that don't dream, aren't there? That has to be it. We wouldn't be able to fabricate the dreams of everyone in the world, you know.

Well damn! I took a wrong turn away from the limbs again. Time to get back on that, now that I've properly explained my job and what happens downstairs and all of that good stuff. Well, the way that they are able to track us being downstairs when we're sleeping is quite simple. As long as there's some sample of our body heat in the bed an hour after we clock out, that means we're asleep.

So, being the clever sort of woman that I am, I reasoned that I could try to sleep on the second floor, so long as those arms and legs stayed down and warm in bed. I worked to my full potential, since I like my job a good deal, and after three days of painting I felt like I could go for a bit of sleep.

I reached for my little white phone and dialed the boss's number. "'M clocking out for some rest." I told him through a yawn.

"Go ahead. Just go back to the second floor when you're ready to work again, as always." The boss is really a nice man.

"As always." I repeated, smiling because he couldn't see me doing so.

"Mmmhmm. Good rest."

The phone fell neatly back into its cradle. I sought a warm little corner directly across from a window, which was a very light color due to the sun shining through. It made me think a little bit of my own paintings. Clutching my legs to my chest, I put my chin in the valley made by my two knees, closed my eyes, and evened my breathing.

And I sat there. With my eyes closed and my breath steady as a newborn, I perched in that corner for what was probably a day.

I don't believe I fell asleep during that time. I'm still not quite sure. I was afraid to open my eyes because I didn't want to believe that I was just sitting there for all that time.

But by then, I knew that I was awake, and when an hour passed in the movie on the back of my eyelids, I cracked the left open just enough to see the light. Yes, there was light. And yes, the clock was sitting exactly 24 hours from where it had began.

And yes, the legs that I had clutched to my chest were really there.

I suppose that I did fall asleep somewhere along the way. Maybe I dreamed, too. I really couldn't tell you. I spend too much time painting.