Labyrinth from hell

Another recurring dream has me with a loved one, fleeing a terrible situation, and unable to get out. It is not always the same person, but it is always the same situation, the same pattern, and the same outcome. Though I have been able to use some lucid dreaming ability (I am not very skilled at that, try as I might) to overcome some dreams like this one by altering the scenery around me to allow success in the effort involved, I have yet to achieve any level of lucidity during this scenario. Instead, my mind takes it at face value, I am trapped in the scenery presented, and the story plays itself out as it will.
We are in a building that is on fire. At first, the only evidence of it is smoke along the ceiling, coming into the room through the building's ventilation system. We know from that sign that enough of the building is burning that we cannot extinguish it. Escape is imperative.
We are in a room. It's kind of like an office, with office furniture, but it feels like this is also a place where we live. I do not like leaving everything behind. I know that things I value are going to burn. It cannot be helped. We value our lives more than we value anything in that room, even though it pains us to know our possessions will be destroyed. We don't know yet how bad the fire is, and we can't take the chance that a moment's delay could cost us our ability to get out. My companion's face mirrors my sense of heartbreak..

We go out into a long, narrow hallway. There are doors along the walls. Most of them are unmarked. We know some are locked, and some just lead to other rooms. They are not the way out. There is less smoke in the hallway, where there are fewer vents. We run past the other rooms, down to the end of the hallway. I stop my companion from opening the door. First, we have to see if it is hot. If it is, we will know that route is unsafe, and we'll have to flee to the door at the other end of the hall. We only chose this one because it was closer.

I place my hand on the surface in front of me. It's smooth, and it's cooler than my skin. I touch the handle. It feels the same. We can go this way.

Opening the door, I lead us into a stairwell. We go down a flight, turn, and go down another. There are no more stairs. The door at the bottom is cool. Opening that, I lead us into another long hallway full of doors. All of the doors in this hallway are alike.

At this point, it feels like we are in an unfamiliar building, one that we've never navigated before. We don't know which door leads to the outside, or if any of them do. We go down the hallway, testing and opening each door. None of them open to the outside, or even to a room with windows to the outside.

It is hot in here. I am starting to fear that we are closer to the fire than before. My companion suggests that the heat is moving through the ventilation system, not coming from nearby. We can see smoke blowing in through the few vents along the wall.

At the other end of the hallway, we open the door, expecting to find an exit, stairwell, or lobby, but instead, it leads into another hallway running perpendicular to the one we are in. Now, we really don't know which way to go. I think that if we go back, the door at the other end of the hallway we left might lead to the way out. We turn, and there is a lot of smoke behind us. It is so much that we can't see more than halfway down the hall. We can't go back that way. Even if the fire is not there, we wouldn't be able to breathe.

We enter the perpendicular hallway, unsure which way to turn. Both ways look the same; long and narrow, with a few doors on either side and one at the end. My companion starts walking to the right, and I follow. We try side doors, but they are all locked. One has windows into the room, but all we can see is smoke. At the end of the hall, we feel the door, and it opens on its own into another hallway, perpendicular to this one. Exchanging a look, we run to the other end. The door at that end is locked, so we go back to the hallway.

Fearing that a right turn will lead us back to the fire, since we would be headed back in the direction we had come from, we head left. Again, the side doors are locked, but the hallway has doors at both ends. We are both terrified that we will not be able to find our way out of this building. There is smoke just along the ceiling of this hallway. The door at the end is ajar. Smoke is blowing out at the top. It doesn't lead directly outside.

We look, and see another stairway. This one only goes down from here. We realize that we don't know what floor we are on, and the stairway could lead to the basement. We look behind us, and notice that the other end of this hallway is so far we can't tell what is there. Something about that direction is scary. When I think about going back that way, I get a cold, compressed feeling in the pit of my gut, and I'm sure there is something bad there. My companion agrees, and we head down the stairs.

I feel responsible for my companion's safety. If I don't make the right decisions, and we die in the fire, this person's death will be my fault. I am sure of that, and it weighs heavily on my mind. I have to find a way for us to get out.

We go down the stairs. Opening the door, we find that another hallway stretches out in front of us. My heart sinks. The only way to go is forward, but that will be backtracking, taking us in the direction we came from, even though we are now on a different floor. We feel all of the doors along the hall, for fear that we are getting closer to the fire. Most of the doors are locked, but one in the middle opens to another hallway, again perpendicular to the one we are in. It is on the right, so it would backtrack us again, taking us right under the smoke-filled hallway we had come from before. We turn to continue in the direction we were going, but we can see actually see fire that way. There isn't a lot, just enough for the flickering light to reflect off of the walls.

We go through the door we've opened, running to the first door we find. It is locked. Now, I am starting to panic. I make my companion stand back, intending to kick the door, hard. I raise my knee up to my chest, and thrust my foot into the middle of the door with as much force as I can muster, hitting with my shoe flat against the wood. I feel the shock of the impact resonate up my leg and into my back, but the door cracks. I kick it again, and it breaks. It's not enough for us to get in. A third kick knocks out a section of wood, and we can at least see through that. Looking, we see that it just leads to a room. We don't even see any windows to the outside. We continue on to the next door. It's also locked, and now we're afraid enough that we just keep moving until we find an unlocked door.

We continue the pattern of finding hallways and stairwells, some going up, some going down. We can't seem to find anything that leads out, and each time we think about going back and looking for an alternate route, there is smoke, or there are flames. The smoke around us is increasing in thickness and volume, and we find ourselves hunching over to avoid breathing too much of it in. We pull our shirts over our mouths and noses to act as filters. We are now almost fully panicked, totally unaware of which direction we are going, and unable to retrace our steps. Every hallway or stairwell we encounter appears the same as the one before.

As we continue to move, the building gets hotter. It doesn't feel like we're moving closer to the fire. It feels like the fire is simply growing, consuming the building and becoming too big to escape.

Soon, we can see the walls smoldering around us. Blackening spots are forming in the paint as we run by.

Terror grips us, and we begin opening doors without checking for heat, running forward regardless of the futility with which we are repeatedly presented on the other side of each unlocked door we find.

Flames lick their way along parts of the walls and ceiling. If the door in front of us only leads to another hallway or stairwell, we are sure we aren't going to make it out of here alive. We are holding hands, and are alternately pulling each other toward the next door at the end of yet another impossibly long hallway. The air is so hot it makes our skin feel chapped.

I usually wake at some point between when the walls begin to smolder, and when the heat from the flames begins to feel painful. On waking, my first feeling is a sense of having abandoned my companion to the fire. I have escaped the dream, and in doing so, the danger, but I could not bring the other person with me. I am slammed with a sense of guilt, and a desperate need to return to the dream and rescue my loved one. I am overwhelmed by the conviction that this person is in immediate peril, terrified, alone, and feeling abandoned and doomed. It feels like it's my fault, because I woke up before finding us an escape route, and since I am awake, I am no longer there to help. I feel as though if I don't go back, that version of that person will burn to death. I am afraid for that person, desperate to help, guilty over the abandonment and how it must make him or her feel, and ashamed of what he or she must think of me for leaving. I am left having to convince myself that because it was just a dream, the experience was all in my head, and no one really is hurt. It sometimes takes hours, and the ability to contact the person and be assured of his or her safety in the real world, before I am able to overcome the feelings of foreboding, helplessness, urgency, regret, and shame.