I’m about 80% sure I’m pregnant, even though I’m not showing yet. Who’s the father? Maybe my old high school crush? I have a vague recollection of being around him a few months ago, that must have done it.
After a few days I realize I’m TWICE pregnant. It’s not twins though, the second one is newer and extrauterine. I consult with a doctor, he explains I was already pregnant to begin with, so when I got knocked up again there wasn’t enough space and the new fetus settled in the wrong place. (How does my mind even come up with stuff like this?!)
I’m back to work, the store feels familiar and brand new at the same time. My cousin whisper-orders me to google how to polish diamonds, away from the customers because we don’t want them to know how rich we are now, do we?
It takes me a lot of time to type in the words, autocorrect keeps screwing them up. When I finally hit ‘search’, the firs result is,
I wish I knew.
Nobody on the whole damn world knows how to polish diamonds. Is alcohol okay? I wish I knew.
I’m in my living room with my sister, and it seems like we have more pets than previously accounted for. I feel guilty because I’ve always poured all my love into my IRL cat and ignored all these other animals! I’m a monster.
There’s a poodle, its white curly fur all dirty like we never bathed him. There’s another cat, a tabby, and an orange robot monkey. The tabby brings a bowl of food to the monkey, who makes a disgusted face. I say pointedly,
Be kind!
The monkey obeys me and starts eating, but I realize there’s mostly hay and rocks in the bowl and take it away. My mother is sitting on the couch, she asks if she can have it. I say no, it’s dirty and the animals ate in it. She says it doesn’t matter, she can have her floss directly from the box.
I ask her if she’s really eating floss, she says,
Yes, the minty one. Can you bring it? It’s on my nightstand.
I’m at Venice’s train station, trying to get back home. According to the board there is one super fast train that goes straight to my town, it belongs to the church and one ticket it 380 bucks. I cannot afford it. As the train is about to leave the price suddenly drops to 160, and I still can’t afford it.
I wait for a slower, cheaper train, and finally I’m back home and can hug my parents. I have an electric fan going in my room even though it’s only march, and my underwear drawer is empty because my cousin stole them all. I tell her I want to go back to work even amid the outbreak.
Boss Lady calls me, says I can come back as long as I take a shower before going home from the store. I download a shower from the Sims game, the outdoor kind that uses bottled water. It’s so small I can carry it in the palm of my hand, Boss Lady is fascinated by it.
I have all these little snippets of dream in my head and I can’t puzzle them together. In one scene I’m walking to work with my cousin, I tell her all the school are closed and quarantined. She laughs and says it would be cool if our store closed too. IRL my whole city is in lockdown because of Coronavirus and these words are so unsettling, somehow.
I’m back at school. The teacher is a woman, she looks a bit like a jerk; she asks how everyone’s internships are going, I raise my hand and explain that all internships are on hold until April 4th because of Coronavirus*. The teacher says don’t worry, she’ll find an activity we can all do together in the afternoons. I’m appalled because I was really looking forward to some rest and free time.
All the kids take a service elevator to the basement, it’s just four metal bars connecting a platform to a thin roof and it looks very unsafe. I take the stairs instead. I reach my class and we all sit in front of a clown, who starts entertaining us blowing swirls of smoke inside giant soap bubbles.
The blond kid sitting next to me starts punching my arm. He must be the school bully, but he grows to respect me once he realizes my arms are so strong after working at the store. The clown scolds us for talking instead of paying attention, then he says with a scorned tone that there’s someone in the room who doesn’t believe in his magic. I think he’s talking about me, but instead he points at Sabrina Spellman, who’s sitting behind me. The clown invites her to try his tricks, she blows a giant soap bubble and the smoke inside it is shaped like perfect little skulls.
When it’s my turn, I simply say I don’t smoke and up and go back home. I meet an old woman at the gate, she asks me if I’m new in the building, I say I’ve been living here my entire life. Then she asks if I have any kids, and for who knows what reason I choose to lie and say yes. She asks what their names are, I answer with my and my brother’s names. She says they sound familiar.
I step inside the building and the doors are all wrong. I walked into a maze again and by now I know it’s because I must be dreaming. I’m not gonna find my way home unless I wake up, but how am I gonna do that? I have with me a package just delivered to my brother, I start reading out loud the list of items inside the box, and just like that I wake up in my bed (not really, I’m still asleep, but in the dream I’m convinced I woke up). I decide I must have sleep-walked from the school to my room, and that’s a great trick to have up my sleeve.
I ignore the Coronavirus lockdown and walk to the store to see how my cousin and my friend S. are doing. She’s annoyed as usual, he’s very happy to see me: he hugs me, and I notice his hair is longer and dyed blonde.
They invite me to have dinner at my cousin’s place. Unlike IRL, she lives in a small studio in a beehive-like building, with apartment nestled within each other and connected by outdoor stairs. Helen Mirren lives there in the building, I see her going up the stairs.
They sit on the living room couch, I sit on a chair behind them. We eat dinner and watch a new Doctor Who episode on an old TV set, maybe thirty or forty years old. In the episode, Yaz acts so in love with the Doctor that I’m moved to tears.
It’s getting late. S. turns off the TV and gives me a big hug before leaving, apparently he lives upstairs. My cousin orders me to go to bed, but all I want is keep watching the show. I try to lower the volume so I won’t wake her up but the remote has so many buttons and it’s too complicated. The screen explodes and falls into my hands, it’s just a net made of metallic wire.
My cousin is really mad at me now. She calls me selfish, says she wishes she had what I have, a laptop to watch movies in bed instead of just one old crappy TV. I don’t get it, she’s so rich, why doesn’t she buy one?
Aliens have invaded our world. We challenge them to a “water soccer” game and lose, the goal keeper fails at the last moment.
The aliens flood the planet. What’s left of humanity takes refuge on Easter Island, where we train to swim underwater so we can search for our most important pieces of art and architecture.
My penpal C. has come to visit, but she looks very unhappy. I think she misses home, I feel guilty because I’m never the one going to her country, I only did it once. So I give her my phone and tell her to book a flight whenever she wants. She books one for that same evening, but I don’t let her finish and lead her in the shower, where I lift her in my arms and we start having sex.
My mother enters the bathroom to put wet towels on the heater. I yell at her to get out! Right! Now!!! She reads the room, chuckles and leaves. I’m so embarrassed, the door was locked, how did she get in? Did she unhinge it?!
The mood is ruined so C. goes back to booking her flight. She’s now a young black woman and I’m a young man with short dreads and a little beard. She’s mad at me because there are pictures of another woman on the phone. I try to calm her down and explain I simply put a stolen SIM card inside my phone, because my friends and I are trying to scam the owner. So it happens that my friends are the Critical Role cast.
It’s morning, I’m walking to the store when I hear my boss calling my name with a weak, whiny tone. Her voice comes from a house alongside the road: IRL that house simply doesn’t exist, there are only trees in that area, but in the dream I see a small yellow duplex covered in dried vines.
I go inside the door on the right, I see a one room apartment with a large bed. Boss Lady is in the bed, hair all tousled and looking sick and miserable. The floor is covered in used paper tissues. I avert my eyes because it looks all too intimate, and I wonder where her dogs are. Just then a man arrive, a dog sitter no doubt, leading the two dachshunds on a leash. I take them both and they fall asleep on my lap.
They neighbor family arrives, I can see them clearly because there’s no walls inside the duplex. They sit all around the bed and start reminiscing about a lawyer who used to live here in the house. He was found guilty of murder, and everyone agrees it’s such a shame, he was such a distinguished man. I leave the house so I don’t have to admit to these rich people that I believe the lawyer was definitely guilty.
I bump into a car in the parking lot, the driver is one of my most unpleasant neighbors. She yells at me, threatens to sue me. I notice her car is full of plastic bags, they are in the front and back seats. The bags are see-through and they’re clearly full of garbage: now I also get mad and accuse her of never recycling.
I get inside my building, and it’s a maze again. I try to find the right door, but end up in a pediatric clinic. The doctor inside is THE Doctor, Jodie Whittaker herself wearing a white robe. She and the nurses start searching for my home, or possibly for the new season of the show.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 