Mall or Madhouse… or Both ~ 8/12/2021

I dreamed I was visiting my mom, and our littles were there. My middle niece was talking up a storm, and my nephew, who was now two, his curly gold hair had straightened and gone brunette. And he had a beard and mustache.

My oldest niece was sick, and needed more medicine, so I was going to go into town to get some. Mom kept listing other things she needed, like printer paper. I kept trying to find something to write a list on, and all I could find was a fortune cookie fortune. I took a picture of the medicine bottle with my phone, and wrote everything else really tiny.

While Mom was thinking about what else we might need, I started to worry about a sort of sore bump I had on my chest. It was visible above my neckline, and since it was kind of dark and round, I was worried that someone might think I was exposing my breast and I’d get in trouble. As I examined it, and it was hard to focus on at that distance and angle, I thought I saw something moving. I found a magnifying glass. 

I watched in horror as little white mite-looking things poked out and then ducked back in. I peered at a different angle and found it was like a tiny cave in my flesh, and a tiny, translucent white worm was half visible, curled up in the back. The inside was obviously infected, and I thought maybe if I tried to squeeze it like a pimple I could get all the bugs out, but it ran really deep in my chest and the all sort of just hunkered down. But then my mom finished her list and hurried me out, so I tugged my shirt up to hide it and got on the road.

I went to Ingram Park Mall, but it was pretty different from how I remembered it. For one thing, there was a big, painted concrete monument at the entrance. It featured the state of Texas painted like the Lone Star flag and a gray and silver armadillo. At first it read “State of Guadalupe, established 2006”, which made no sense. When I looked again, it had changed to “State of Texas” with no date, and “Guadalupe Co.” with a big arrow and a mileage indicating direction and distance to that county.

I found parking up on a tiny top floor of a parking garage. It was round, like a castle turret, very dark, with only an exit sign lamp, and it only had enough parking for five or six cars. I found out why it was empty when I went through the double glass doors beneath the exit sign and found myself in a deserted, empty anchor store. I went out into the mall corridors, and that whole wing was empty, though I could see shoppers up ahead.

On the other side of the mall was an office store, so I went there to get paper. I knew I was going to have to stop at an HEB, too, but I wanted to try to get as much as possible at the mall. I walked around the shops trying to find any of the other items. Up on the second floor, down one wing, I found a luxury perfume store that had a sign saying they also sold the medicine I needed, so I went in and got that.

After that, I saw a big shop visible through plate glass windows on all sides. It looked like I could get more of my items there, but I couldn’t find an entrance. There weren’t any escalators nearby, but there was a big blue plastic slide, three chutes side by side, straight down to the first level, so I slid on down.

There wasn’t an entrance on the first level either. On my way up to the third level I found the food court on a sort of mezzanine between floors two and three. Since I had missed lunch, I stopped to get some enchiladas. There were vendors all along the walkways with plates of Mexican food laid out all around. It was pretty amazing. 

After lunch, I made my way up to the third and top level, where there was, again, no entrance. Apparently the only way in was outside, and I’d have to go all the way around the mall exterior to get there. I hurried to a nearby slide to get down to the ground level. This slide was yellow and orange striped, had a tunnel cover over it, and instead of staying straight and together, the three chutes separated and looped around on their way down. 

I sat dow and started to slide, but when I reached the tunnel cover a few feet down the first drop, I didn’t fit. I had to squirm my way back up and off the slide. I decided I was just done. Since I’d come in on the third floor, I decided to just go back to my car and either drive around to the outside entrance or head to the grocery store. 

It was getting late, and the wing where I’d parked was eerie and ominous win its emptiness. When I got to my car, I found I had left my purse behind somewhere. Probably the food court. Or maybe the slide.

I went back to the food court first, and asked around, but no one had seen or turned in a purse. There were even more plates, on all the tables and all along the floor, and I had to be careful not to step in refried beans or tamales in chili con carne. As I neared the slide, there were plates of Indian food, fragrant with curry and cumin and cardamom. I had to wait in line to get to the person running the slide so I could ask about my purse. Dozens of bystanders were hanging around, and they recognized me as the woman who didn’t fit.

My purse wasn’t there either. They directed me to the lost and found. On my way there I passed a pet shop with dozens of puppies in the window, available for adoption. I stopped to eye them wistfully. A woman came out to encourage me to come get a puppy, but I had to explain that I was just visiting from Seattle. I couldn’t bring a puppy back on the plane, and my apartment didn’t allow pets anyway. She was shocked and refused to believe such a rule could exist anywhere. I took a deep breath to try to explain, and then I woke up.

Dreams of Insomnia ~ 6/1/2021

 I dreamed I was on a trip in Europe with a small group from my university band. I was having a hard time sleeping, and would spend every night awake, then get on a bus and travel all day. We were taking a break in one place, and I decided to try sleeping in a warm bubble bath. I accidentally spilled a bunch of rice in the water, but it didn't seem like a big deal.

I woke up in the middle of the night, so at least I had slept, but the water was cool, so I started to drain it, then turned the hot water on. There was something squishy in my mouth, and I figured it was some of the rice, so I just swallowed it. Then, as I felt the warmth of the hot water spreading from the faucet end, I noticed a flicker of movement in the water, just where the warm met the tepid. I couldn't see anything, really, just a sort of ripple. There was a jar by the tub, and I scooped water around the movement the next time I saw it.

I looked closely at the jar, and I saw more than a dozen little... things. They were sort of shaped like sideways droplets. They were perfectly clear, so I could only see them when they moved. But they would swim jerkily, like tadpoles, and then I'd see them, circling around in the jar. I searched the bathwater, and I decided I'd got all of them. I really hoped that wasn't what I had swallowed, and that if it was, I wasn't going to have a chest alien bursting out in twenty-four hours.

I set the jar down, and I decided they must have come from the rice, so I started scooping the grains out. I put some into the jar, and the clear things rushed up and began to climb on top of them, so I stopped putting anything in the jar, because it was still only half full, and I did NOT want them climbing out of it.

Instead I started scooping the rice grains out onto the bath mat. There, a bunch of tiny pandas, each about the size of a nickel, hurried out and began eating the grains of rice. I got most of it out, and the water was warm enough now. I set the drain and faucet to flow at about the same rate, so the water would stay warm for the rest of the night.

As I was trying to go back to sleep, I wondered if this was a very good idea, to sleep in a bathtub every night, and would I drown? I decided if I breathed in the water, I'd wake up sputtering, so it was okay. I was just getting comfortable and drifting off to sleep when the trip coordinator knocked on my door and said it was time to get up. And then I woke up.

A Royal Wedding ~ 5/5/2021

 I dreamed I was a guest at the wedding of King Edward to Princess Eleanor in Canterbury Cathedral. In my dream, the cathedral was in a wooded valley amid its medieval village. A stony hill a lot like Enchanted Rock loomed to the east, overlooking the valley. As I rode the train into the village, I looked up to the crest of the hill and saw the gleaming pale walls and towers of the castle, washed by a bright midday sun. The valley was lush with bright green buds on all the trees and daffodils and iris blooming in the tall grass on the river banks.

The cathedral had been recently decorated and freshly painted inside, and its walls were covered with rich tapestries in crimson and gold and deep azure blue. Golden stone columns were richly carved, and seemed to grow like enormous trees up into the canopy of fan-vaulted ceilings. The choir and nave and chapels were at ground level, but the altar was reached by grand, arching stairways to either side, climbing to the upper, altar level, with a towering tabernacle behind, tall seats for the bishops, and dark little doors leading into the vast labyrinth of the monastery, and down to subterranean basements and winding passages.

I had some sort of coordinating job, to do with lights or flowers or something, so I was walking all around the altar level, making sure everything was in place when the king and his bride arrived for their rehearsal. This would involve a procession of a huge train of nobles and clergy, and everyone was joyful and joking around, and I tucked myself up in an out of the way corner to watch and see if I needed to do anything.

The king was young, very tall and rawboned and gawky. His crown and golden mantle couldn't hide his lanky figure, boney wrists, and long jaw. His hair was stiff, straight, and straw-colored, his skin very pale and dusted with freckles, and his eyes very large and hazel green. He was one of those people who should be ugly, but was also magnetically charismatic and full of energy and high spirits. I'd heard he had broken his leg being thrown from his horse not so long before, but he didn't have any kind of limp, and was joking with his court and running up the aisle faster than any of them could go. The queen-to-be was small and golden-haired, dressed and veiled in deep blue. She seemed very quiet and self-possessed, but her gray eyes were kind. She was a very clever and strong woman, everyone knew. The kingdom all agreed it would be a good match.

The corner I was sheltered in had a tall window, and as I stood there, looking on and listening in, I was chilled as a shadow cut off the sunlight that had been streaming through. I turned and looked through a small, clear pane edging the more brilliant glass pattern, and all I could see was a deep, obscure darkness, a steely gray that was almost black, like hematite. As my eyes adjusted, I could see scales and a stretch of leathery wing. I craned my head sideways to peer upward through the little clear pane, and I could see a jagged ridge of spines flowing up a long sinuous neck.

I turned back into the cathedral and It had been so dim already that no one had noticed the blotted out sunshine. There was a loud crack from overhead, and everyone froze, stunned. The king cried, "What is it?" as he rushed to shield the queen. I yelled down that there was a dragon, and we needed to RUN. We all ran.

The people nearest the arching staircases fled down them. I followed the bishop and the royal party as they passed through a nearby door hidden by a carved turret of the tabernacle. That was the nearest door to me. We fled down a narrow stair as stone from the ceilings began to crash down onto the altar, glass shattered, and priceless artworks fell to fragments in billows of dust.

The king and court had secret tunnels, far below ground, that led to the castle, and they hurried to these. But I wasn't allowed to follow them. The monks directed me through tunnels that seemed to be carved out of a dull gray wax, glistening with a clammy dampness. It made me think of adipocire crusting over the insides of a waterlogged corpse. I passed by cave-like rooms where relics and gem-encrusted, leather-bound hymnals and other treasures rested behind glass in locked cabinets. There were tourists there gawking at it all, and I yelled to them to stay down here in the cellars, because there was a dragon.

It was my job, I decided, to find anyone who needed to be warned, so I kept hurrying along corridors. Suddenly, I popped out of an archway into the nave of the cathedral. The fan-vaulting high over the altar, at the east end of the nave, was now gaping open to a darkening sky. Perched on the jagged, broken spires was the dragon. It's reptilian head writhed back and forth as its piercing yellow eyes examined all of the interior, looking anyone hiding... or running... like me.

The dragon saw me. I knew I needed to dash into another corridor with a downward stair. The dragon was too enormous to fit down any of the passageways, and once I got deep enough below the surface, I'd be beyond its reach. It's head reared back, and I knew that either the fire or a deadly strike were coming. And then I woke up.

Worst Apartment Building Ever ~ 2/9/2021

I dreamed I lived in a multi-use high rise on St. Charles Ave. It was a nice, snug apartment, and it was reasonably quiet, even with Mardi Gras weekend going on down below. Just before bed, I decided I needed something at the convenience store in the lobby, so I put on my robe and headed down.

I went down the flight of steps from my door to a landing in the drab stairwell of white walls and metal steps and rails painted gray, leading up and down in all directions to other gray metal doors like mine. I went through one of the doors lower down to get to the wood paneled hall to the elevator. 

The elevator started down at a normal speed, but fell faster and faster until I was in free fall, hovering above the floor, terrified that it had broken and I was about to die. But gradually it slowed and my feet met the floor, and the elevator stopped at a parking garage level. I hurried out, even though it wasn’t the lobby. I decided I’d find another way.

I went through some glass doors into a marble-floored department store with potted plants and racks of expensive clothing tastefully arranged. The walls had mosaic patterns, and a brilliantly polished wooden grand staircase led up to a second level.

Off to the right was a sleek, ultramodern coffee shop, and amid its trendy tables another elevator was tucked against a wall. It was a wide, deep, hexagonal space behind floor to ceiling windows. On the floor, in front of its sliding doors, were round metal disks, ridged all around in a radial pattern. To summon the elevator you stood on a disk and the doors would open. But you had to wait there for a certain number of people to enter.

I stood on a plate, then hurried through the quickly closing doors. I looked around for the number panel to select the 40th floor, but I couldn’t find it and had to step back as more people entered.

Suddenly the elevator had launched itself upward so fast that somehow again we were all flying through the air, feet from the floor, bouncing off of each other. I grabbed onto the arm of someone next to me and squeezed my eyes shut in terror until it slowed down, my feet met the floor, and the doors opened at floor S50, according to a tiny display beside the doors.

That wasn’t my floor, so I looked again for the controls. I realized then that there was some sort of laser scan in use, and it was identifying the elevator occupants and determining from that where people were going. It was dropping people off at their floors in the order they’d entered.

I got hustled off too early, though, after flying around miserably a few more times. I was walking through a rooftop mini golf course when I realized the sky was lightening, and morning was coming. I’d been wandering for hours and was suddenly struck by the worry that maybe I hadn’t locked my door and it had been unsecured for all that time. But I felt my keys in the left pocket of my robe, so I decided I had locked up okay.

I made my way back inside the building and found myself in a really warm, richly furnished lobby outside a trans-friendly day spa. I went up to the receptionist and asked if there was an elevator or stairwell I could use. She pointed me to four sets of brown wooden doors, centered on the four walls of the large lobby. I estimated which one was on the wall closest to my apartment, and got in. 

The elevator went up at a normal pace, thank goodness, and stopped a couple floors up to let in a man in a black pinstripe suit, a matching black pinstripe cloth fedora, and gleaming black and white saddle shoes. Once I got past the drama of his ensemble I realized I recognized his face. My jaw dropped open just as the elevator stopped to let him out into a burgundy and gold steampunk themed casino. 

The dinging slots and flashing lights made it seem completely unreal, and as the elevator stayed in place, I asked the hostess nearby, “WAS THAT DANNY TREJO???” She laughed and said it sure was. She asked me what floor I was headed to. I told her floor 40, and she reached into the elevator and fiddled with a tiny slot machine contraption I hadn’t seen before on a small wooden table to the left of the doors. Its readout flashed “40” as the doors closed and I was on my way.

When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, I was in a familiar hall that looked like an auditorium. Everything was painted, carpeted, or upholstered in purple. There were no seats, and no stage at the lowest tier, but stairs and landings leading to hallways out of the hall at each of the different levels, in all directions. One of the hallways up above me was marked with silver lettering and an arrow as leading to the “Floor 40 Terrace Apartments” which is where I lived.

I followed the hallway to some glass doors and stepped out into bright daylight and onto a moving walkway. It wasn’t a simple belt that propelled me in one direction. It was a series of swoopy-shaped clear plastic paths between spinning plastic circles that you could step off of in different directions to take different paths, but there was no moving in a straight line, or anything like it. 

The swoops and circles were ridged like fingerprints, sort of like the metal disks in front of the department store elevator. It was good they were, because the whole path was taking me through a rooftop water park, and a foamy layer of soap bubbles coated everything. I was making my way across the roof to the corner of a terrace where I knew I’d find a door into the gray and white stairwell, my home, and hopefully I could get some sleep finally, and then I woke up.