I dreamed I was a gay man in the time of Hemingway. I might have been friends with Hemingway. I had curly blond hair, an amazing tan, and was built like a Greek god. My orientation was an open secret, but I had to deny the rumors or I could be imprisoned. I was trying to solve an embezzlement crime at a bistro/bar/al fresco theater in Key West.
I found out the embezzler was after me to kill me so I wouldn't expose them. I wasn't armed, so I made a run for it, and got into a small plane that was taking off. The plane exploded over the English countryside, and I struggled to slow my fall with the inflatable rubber recliner I was sitting on. I managed to keep the speed of my descent enough that I didn't injure myself on impact. I could tell that I was an impressive spectacle to anyone watching from the ground.
When I hit the ground, the rubber recliner exploded and deflated and turned into a hammerhead shark skin. I was now Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I'd lost all my clothes. I clutched the shark skin around me and walked over to the Rice dorms, where I was staying.
The only problem was, I couldn't remember where my room was. The dorms were all identical, long, red brick buildings. The alleys in between them were named for the streets of the French Quarter, but not in the right order. I knew I was staying in the second or third building from the field, past the little chapel at the foot of Saint Louis Street.
I looked through ground floor windows and saw a room that looked familiar, but when I got inside and opened the door, but there were four college guys already there, and I remembered that I'd once rented that room through Air BnB, but it wasn't where I was staying now. Of course, I was Buffy wearing nothing but a shark skin, so the guys were flatteringly insistent that I stay.
I thanked them, but left all the same. I wandered up the narrow closes that connected the alleys between dorms. I wandered through the buildings, trying to find a familiar passage that might lead to my room. I found out my ex was teaching there, and dodged around corners to avoid meeting him.
Thank goodness, I finally found Giles. He didn't know where my room was, either, but he took me to the suite he was staying in, where I could change out of the shark skin into something more academically appropriate. He led me to a bathroom, and I shut the door behind me. I turned around to find that the bathroom was like a plushly carpeted beehive of steps and landings, up and down, leading to dozens of toilet stalls, sinks, baths, and showers. I wandered down and around into the depths until I finally felt safe, then locked myself into a toilet stall to change. And then I woke up.
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