This was not an easy piece to critique. But, I suspect you already know that. I have to assume that a piece like this doesn't come about by accident; therefore, there was intelligent design at work, and intention.

That's fine. When writing seems to operate according to an alien set of rules, the most important question is, regardless of what those rules might be, does it do so consistently. Is there internal cohesion in the writing? In other words, do you follow your own rules? I'd have to say yes, absolutely. I may have no idea what you are doing, but you do it throughout without wavering from your course. And, content aside, the prose is mature, polished and assured. Ok... maybe it sounds like it would be more at home coming from Edgar Allen Poe than the 21st century. But, aside from a couple of places where I might point out that good writing is not just about finding complex verbal constructions for simple ideas, you hold to your course and the prose style definitely contributes to the atmosphere of the entire piece. It could even be said to create it.

So, back to the aforementioned difficulty in assessing this piece. It makes little sense to point out that traditional categories like plot, character development, continuity of narrative and theme seem to have been overlooked here. In fact, I'd say the only thing that you've left on the page, in terms of a standard category to be evaluated, is conflict. Your main character is beset by conflicts at every turn. I remember reading an interview with John Ashbury; he stated that he was interested in reversing the role of subject and content. Instead of subject driving the words chosen, let it work the other way, where the words allow subject to rise out of them, like a bicycle riding downhill, where gravity turns the pedals for you.

Is that something of what you are trying here? A story that has had all the usual elements stripped from it? Maybe. There's no way of knowing, and any attempt to explain what is going on would seem to involve as much of a creative effort as went into the writing in the first place. I don't want to be doing your work for you. For one, it's your story, not mine. And two, as I disagree with virtually every stylistic choice you've made, I don't really want to have to work all the harder to explain what I've read. If you aren't interested enough in providing your reader with a map to dig beneath the surface, that's fine with me. I'll accept it at face value.

Perhaps it is a complex, post-modern screed where the intellectual underpinnings are crucial to an understanding of the text, but I suspect that what we really have here is an elaborate dream sequence. I hate dream sequences; they're nothing more than an elaborate cheat. Anything is allowed, and no requirement exists to connect them to anything else, not other elements in the dream or elements outside it in the real world. Mostly the seem like scales and arpeggios a pianist might work through to keep their fingers nimble. Technically proficient, but can you play Beethoven? Or can you Boogie Woogie?

Nonetheless, I suspect you could find a place for this in the market. Despite ringing no chimes within me, it's undeniably well-done, and I've always maintained that questions of style are none of my business, not when the writer demonstrates that they've earned the right to work in any style they choose. You have done this. I think you should submit it.