I dream that I have to go meet my Gran early in the morning −and I actually did!−
It’s a disaster. I’m trying to get dressed and two hours have passed without me noticing. I run out and then realize I forgot my mask. I eventually wake up in a huff, and if I knew that I would get a do-over in real life.
I dream that I’m running late for school, I get quickly dressed in an oversize pink t-shirt and jeans. My mom is waiting for me in the car, she’s driving. Wait, I say, I think I got my period. I rush back inside and to the bathroom. My jeans are a mess. As I’m stripping down my cat jumps on the toilet and starts peeing, a focused, almost painful expression on her face. It’s too late to get to school by now. My parents ask me why I didn’t go, I change the subject and tell them everything about the cat instead.
Now I’m in bed with Corona. I feel fine, I don’t have any symptoms, but my test came back positive and and now I have an app that counts down the days until I die. I’m terrified, I don’t want to die, but all I can do is lie in bed and wait. Six days pass, nothing happens. Maybe there was a mistake? Hopeful, I venture out of bed. My legs feel weak, out of practice. I peek into the living room, ask my family if I could maybe go back to the hospital and be tested again? They tell me to go back to bed and wait to die in silence.
I dream that I need to go to a doctor appointment (I did, this morning) but have to go to school first. There’s the town market on the way, I’m wearing flip flops and lose one, I have to go back looking for it in the crowd.
At this point it’s too late to make it to school, I get distracted on the way by a box full of stickers and washi tape outside a store. I sit on the ground rummaging through it. Various kids join me and also Dark’s Katharina Nielsen, who’s very interested in the cardboard box itself. I go inside to pay for my stickers, it’s a comic book store and the owner is rather nice, I tell him I’ll send over my brother to get some comics. I buy so much stuff, including a pizza. He says everything will cost me 5 bucks. I insist on paying at least 15.
Now I’m late for the doctor too. The only logic solution is to go back in time and start the morning again. I meet Eve and Villanelle from Killig Eve on the way. My doctor was fired (was it my fault??), the blonde substitute says I have cancer.
I dream that the store I work at is now a hospital. Today new recruits, junior doctors and nurses, are arriving, I meet one of them and offer to show her around. She’s a young woman with her son, I show the boy the giant slides on the roof of the hospital, doesn’t he want to play? He says he’d rather stick with his mom.
The hospital is once again a giant maze. After running in circles for a bit I decide to use a secret ladder. It’s a trick I always use in my dreams, I explain to the woman and the boy, maybe it’ll work now even though this totally isn’t a dream, absolutely not, we’re all wide awake.
Finally we reach a classroom, we’re super late so I end up sitting in a student’s desk instead of the teacher’s desk with the other senior employees. My cousin wants to know why I haven’t sent my notes to the other students yet. I rush home and start googling them because of course I misplaced mine. They all seem to be about philosophy and religion. My coworker S. calls me frantically because I’m still not back to the store and he needs help. Meanwhile all the other students are trying to solve a murder.
I dream that it’s raining and I’m late for school, again. As I rush out I see a delivery guy throwing a package against my door. I ask, what the hell?! He says
Miss, it’s raining and I’m tired.
Instead of going to school I find myself at the mall. It’s okay, I think, no one will ever know. Maybe I could even go to the black mall that only seems to exist in my dreams. I’d catch a bus ride if only I could remember the name.
Eden, maybe?
A man is following me, some kind of pervert. I call security on him. Great, now I’ll have to testify at his trial and my parent will know I skipped school.
What if they fail me this year? My sister is back home again and now we’ll have to compete for jobs as well. I decide I should look into hologram technology, if they’re realistic enough my sister will go back to her place and still feel like she’s having dinner with us every night.
I dream that I’m having a fight with my sister because, as usual, I don’t want to share a room. I grab her sheets and throw them out.
Then I dream that I’m late for work. Then, that I’m singing to some cowboys. Then I’m in a Dragon Ball episode. Then, it’s November and there are no Christmas ads on TV because of Corona. It’s rather sad.
I dream about going to see a doctor. I go inside his office and there before me, wearing a white coat, is my coworker, S. I’m really surprised, how can he possibly have time to practice? He’s at the store every day! Says he,
I use my lunch break.
He’s somewhat dismissive of my symptoms and it gets me somewhat mad.
I go home and find out a neighbor wants to sue my family for very petty reasons. I invite her over so she can see we’re not so bad after all. She’s in her forties and too uptight to be beautiful, but I still think she’s hot.
The next morning I need to get to school and I’m late, but I’m also suspecting I’m dreaming, that must mean I’m actually early, right? I walk in town with no rush and I waste some time riding a roller coaster at a local festival. Yes, it must be a dream because I’m not even scared.
I walk for a bit in the snow, and it’s really time to wake up and go to school for real, I think. I slap my face, hoping it will do the trick. Then I throw myself down a cliff. Nothing. I yell for my dad, hoping he can help me. I hear a loud whistle in the gray, snowy sky. That sounds more real than the rest of my current reality, so I follow it.
I wake up as a little white and brown dog. I go explore the city again.
I dream that I keep being late for school, I’m late in the morning, I’m late in the afternoon. I even waste time cleaning the mailbox outside my house, it’s raining so it really doesn’t make any sense.
Then I dream that I’m hiding a kitten and a little girl in my room. The child is about six or seven. I tell her to not make a sound because there’s a monster in the hallway.
The monster is my father. He finds the kitten and throws it against a wall during one of his tantrums. I eventually have to tell him about the girl too, and to my great surprise he doesn’t get angry. We end up fostering dozens of children to reap the government’s benefits.
We go check the spare apartment where we are storing the children. They all turned into stickers, and a few suffocated inside their plastic wraps. I wonder if it’s morally wrong to still use the stickers, they look real pretty even though they are dead.
I dream that I overslept and missed work. In the afternoon I go see Boss Lady in her office, pleading for forgiveness. She shows me her address book, where she wrote “FIRED” in big underlined letters. I beg for a second chance, she gives me the book and instruct to copy all her contacts with a fountain pen. My handwriting is absolutely atrocious.
She gives me a second task, I am to go in town and take selfies for a store ad. I step in a clothing store, thinking I should look a little more fashionable, but girly clothes make me uncomfortable. I also consider dying my hair salmon pink, but I feel too ugly even for that.
I decide I’ll just take the picture, even though it’s cloudy and I’m wearing boring gray clothes. I’ll sit in front of a marble wall and look up, smiling. I ask a man to take the picture, and he’s apparently a “pro” because he wants me to look more dynamic to “sell the product”. He instructs me to jump, shoots on his vintage camera and the flash explodes, sending an electrical current down the street.
Didn’t have time to write down my dream this morning, being Easter and all, but I seem to recall.., something about going to school but realizing I forgot the notebook with my homework at home? And I have to go back for it. It was a military green notebook and it was meant for my philosophy teacher.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 