I was climbing a monument, an ancient sacrificial altar made of painted crumbling stone and smooth concrete. The paint was red and black and chipped away under my sweaty palms. I had to reach the top. As I climbed near the top, sweaty and panting, I discovered two huge, oversized bullhorns, situated like giant handlebars, jutting out from the stone where the climb became impossibly vertical and seamless.
Water leaked from the stones at this altitude and made the walls of the monument even more difficult to navigate. I found some footing and hoisted myself up onto one of the bullhorns. I discovered that someone else had been climbing alongside me and saw what I must also look like: dripping with sweat, exhausted, pulling ourselves up against this ridiculous angle, with a 300-foot drop beneath us into a dark green, tangled jungle. Straddling the bullhorn, it became clear that it was not a stable perch, as it began to lurch away from the wall: the horn was not actually embedded in the stone, but hinged to it, so it could swing away. I scrambled on the wet stone and had to lean away from the monument to get the leverage I needed to reach the very top, using all of my arm strength.
Breathless, I finally heaved myself over the edge and up onto the sunny, flat top of the altar. I lay down on the edge to rest. In a moment I saw that the top was not actually level, but sloped, and that I was gradually slipping off. If I moved at all, I only made myself slip faster. There was nothing I could do to hang on, as the stone was all one smooth piece, nothing to grab onto except those bullhorns a bit below me. I glanced aside and saw the other person who was also climbing. In the last moment of the dream, I had a feeling of gratification that I had reached the top first, even though there was no way to win this apparent race to the finish. The victory became a sacrifice. As I slipped and could only watch, the other climber struggled against the moist stone, desperate to reach the top.