I dreamed there were a bunch of swing dancers from all over the country staying in New Orleans for a dance festival. I had just been with a friend to meet some of them where they were staying in the Marigny. I expressed a wish that there was such a thing as a sideways elevator that I could just ride home. Someone asked if they hadn't just built such a thing down Burgundy, so we went to go check it out.
Sure enough, there was a sort of series of trams at about between second and third story height that ran up and down the street. You had to get off now and then, and catch another tram, because they didn't want to remove obstructions like balconies. So you'd exit one tram onto someone's balcony, go to the other side, and catch another tram there.
At one point, around Governor Nichols St., we had to get off on the third level of an empty parking garage. While we were waiting, we noticed a woman and a little girl surrounded by people. They weren't hurting her or holding onto her in any visible way, but you got the distinct feeling they had her immobilized there somehow, waiting for something. You also got the distinct impression that she and the little girl were bad news. Not quite right. Since I was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this was, of course, totally my business, so I went over to see what was up.
The woman was wearing a brilliant magenta sheath dress with long detached sleeves, made from some sort of super stretchy clingy fabric. She had honey blond hair and bright green eyes. The little girl had a super poofy ruffly little dress on, and a lacy bow in her blond ringlets. She looked like she had to be the woman's daughter, but she didn't seem... real, somehow. I decided the woman was probably a witch who had cast a spell to disguise her familiar as a little girl instead of a crow or goblin or whatever it was.
I noticed that the people surrounding them were keeping their distance, and would only touch the woman, when they had to, through the fabric, never directly on her skin. Just about then, she saw us, probably because the "little girl" had noticed us and communicated our presence to her. I was going to tell the people I was with to stay back, but one of the guys jumped forward, convinced she really was an innocent woman in distress. As he ran to her, she pulled off one of the long sleeves, so that when he took her arm to lead her to safety, he touched her skin. He began to struggle, then, but couldn't pull his hand away. The woman threw her arms around him, and he began to smoke and sizzle as her form, and that of the little girl, began to bubble and distort and fade. They all melted into mist, seeping off down through the concrete.
The people who had been guarding her all sort of shrugged, glared at us, and dispersed, each going their own way, along with the other swing dancers. But I noticed some of my fellow high school students creeping around the shadows in one corner of the parking garage, which was, of course, attached to our high school. I followed them down, across the faculty lot and over a grassy bank with a few trees, into the gymnasium.
When I got there, the students were nowhere to be seen, but there were boxes and boxes and boxes filling the gym floor. I went to find my boyfriend and a couple of his friends to help me investigate. We opened a few of the boxes carefully, and found rolls and rolls of duct tape and stacks and stacks of business cards. I noticed, then, that the sides of the rolls and stacks all had series of hieroglyphics written on them. We ducked down behind the stacks of boxes when we heard the doors opened, and stealthily watched Mr. Flutey, the principal, carrying in another stack of boxes, with no help of any kind, even though they must be heavy.
The guys I was with were busy shuffling up the business cards and ruining the sequence of characters, since they decided that would foil whatever plot or spell casting was about to happen using the hieroglyphs. There wasn't much we could do with the tape. I wanted to leave, then, maybe taking a box or two with us for further examination by Giles, but people kept coming in, bringing more boxes. They were all students and faculty, but their eyes were empty and they walked stiffly, like something other than their own wills was controlling them.
Finally the coast seemed clear, and the guys had all picked up boxes to carry away. That's when I noticed that they all had fangs, and had been turned into vampires. They proceeded to completely ignore me, and began to cart out box after box as I hunted around looking for some sort of weapon. The air grew dim and I started to smell smoke. Flames licked around the edge of the gym, so I grabbed a box myself and ran to get out, but by then there was a steady line of people coming in and out, carting the boxes away, and they kept pushing me back into the gymnasium. And then I woke up.
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