This Is the Way the World Ends ~ 8/11/2018

I dreamed I was a high level executive in an important business meeting that had run late into the night. My colleagues and I were gathered around a glass table in the hotel suite of the competitor CEO who had called the meeting. I had just set down the heavy glass tumbler that held the iced water I was drinking when some sort of strange cataclysm happened.

There was no thunderous noise, no flash of light, but suddenly every glass surface filmed over with a strange white scum. Every tumbler, even the ones on a tray by the minibar that we hadn’t used, suddenly held a pulsing little blob of translucent white gel, like a jellyfish condensed to the size of a large marble.

The CEO ran a finger over the filmed glass of the table, trying to find out what the stuff was. He rubbed his fingers together, then raised them toward his face to smell them. Slowly he slumped back into his chair, and his face went slack and still. His eyes glazed, and he spoke the right words to continue the meeting as though nothing had happened, but his voice had gone as flat and expressionless as his face.

We couldn’t see out the windows because they were filmed over, but we began to here skidding, crashing cars and panicked screams floating up from the streets, and the little jelly lumps pulsed and wiggled in our glasses. From a corner of the windows, a band of what looked like rusted metal began to spread over the walls of the room, leaving a coarse, brown residue over every surface, not just the glass. At that point, I bolted out of the room.

I ran and ran, out of the city, until I was up into high meadows where no glass windows or metal beams caught the soft light of the rising sun. There was just soft, green grass, rippling in the breeze, and I slumped down on a hilltop to rest. My heart rate and breathing slowed, the sun rose higher above the hills, and the only sound was the gentle swoosh of the long grasses in the wind.

Theeeeen it occurred to me that it was odd that there was no birdsong, no butterflies or grasshoppers, that I was literally the only creature stirring as far as I could see. And as I looked back the way I had come, the green horizon began to dull, going dead and dark and brown like the edges of a fallen leaf. The blue sky was filming over with a white scum that wasn’t mist or cloud, and a strange, faint rattle could be heard from the base of my hill. It got louder and louder, but at first I couldn’t make out what it was in the haze.

Then I saw them. Thousands of dried up skeletons were running up the hill toward me. I leapt to my feet and began to run again, but there was no way I was going to escape. Then I woke up.

Least Relaxing Vacation Ever ~ 8/8/2018

I dreamed I was on a long holiday in the UK with my mother and sister. We'd traveled in the south of England, and up into Scotland, and we were traveling down through northern England on our way to Wales. We were in Nottingham, and we were supposed to go to Sheffield, then the Village of Dean, then Stoke-on-Trent, but somehow we were still in Nottingham, and I couldn't seem to get them to understand that we needed to leave.

The town itself was all red brick and dark slate, with golden tan bricks laid into the walls in decorative patterns. We were staying in a half timber cottage southwest of town. We were supposed to go into town to see the cathedral, then take a train west from the Common Street station, which was not too far from the cathedral. But when I told them, they said we'd just go see the cathedral tomorrow.

I tried to explain that we couldn't stay any longer. We were in an Air BnB, and the next guests had been waiting outside for us to leave all morning. I was all packed to go, but they hadn't packed, and couldn't seem to hear me when I said anything about leaving.

I finally left the cottage to go for a walk to calm down and figure things out. I confirmed over and over again that it was August 8, and that this was the day we caught the train to Wales. We had already been supposed to do Sheffield and Dean Stoke, but somehow we'd stayed in Nottingham too long and had completely missed our days to do that, so we'd have to go straight to Wales.

I was trying to make sure we'd make all of the rest of our stops when a group of cyclists came down the road and I needed to step up onto the verge. Then a battered white car came by close behind them. Then, as I gazed back toward the cottage, a huge black mushroom cloud of dirt and ash billowed up into the sky out of the field beyond it, followed only an instant later by a deafening BOOM. Another and another sprang up, and the entire world seemed to shake and thunder with the blasts. The cottage wasn't hit, but the high whine of aircraft droned overhead and the bombs were getting closer and closer to me, and I began to run south, trying to get out of the way and not get blown up. Then I woke up.