I don't like air conditioners

Utterly alone, except for that noise.  

I hated that noise.  From room to room I ran, trying to escape it.  The noise of a box air conditioner.  The box air conditioners -- the ones that are mounted from windows, hanging out from them and secured by the closed window -- were everywhere.  They were in every single room.  Even the bathroom.  I don't like air conditioners, I repeated aloud.  Over and over, running from room to room.  Every time I saw one, its droning hum invading my mind, ruining my thought.  I don't like air conditioners.  

Running to the center of the house, into the kitchen, I found a small place in a corner near the door that was as far away from the air conditioners as I could get.  Beside me was a door.  Where did that door lead, I thought?  I don't remember...  I felt drawn toward it.  Maybe to a place with no air conditioners.  I wanted to know what was behind it.  

Before I reached the door, a pair of arms with gnarled hands came out from underneath the door -- somehow bigger than the small crack underneath -- and grabbed both my legs.  I screamed in surprise and fear, and began yelling as the strong hands began to drag me underneath the door, through the tiny crack.    I heard evil cackling, and the hum of machinery.  Looking around in fear and panic, I saw an impossibly large room, filled with gears and pistons and cogs and other mechanical things.  I was floating in midair just in front of the door, as the room was not only impossibly high and wide, but also deep.    And a witch, somewhat like the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz, flew overhead.  Not aboard a broom, but floated around, in long, grayish robes, her face twisted and purely evil.  I began to fall into the room.  Into a twisted, chaotic collection of gears.  

Screaming and crying, I awoke in my mother's arms, in front of the television, in a rocking chair.  I was somewhere around four years old at the time.    I still remember that dream, vividly, over forty years later.