I dream that Berlusconi, the Italian politician, has to stay at our place for a few days. He’s a small man with a jovial smile, trying his best to win us all. I’m extremely suspicious of him. He gives us a giant TV, it’s ultra HD but you can only watch two channels on it, the ones he deems “acceptable”. The house is small so he has to share a bed with my mom. I ask her how that’s going, she says he sleeps in the middle of the bed like he owns the place.
Then I dream that I’m home sick but I still get calls from customers forwarded. I talk for an hour to a woman trying to explain how to create a safe account for her daughter. Then I go to the hospital with my friends. We’re in a different city and can’t find the building, end up in a mall instead. I have to do a neurological test. I’m Ellen Page for some reason.
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 over and over again that I’m telling Boss Lady over the phone that I can’t possibly go to work in the morning, I could be contagious, I have an upset stomach, and hear how sore my throat is! (I’m faking it).
(I suck it up and go to work in the morning.)
I dream that I’m sitting in my old classroom next to M. the runner. As usual I don’t have any notebooks or pens with me. I confess to M. that I haven’t been able to follow a math lesson in years, I cannot understand it and I’ve stopped trying.
A new teacher shows up: she has red hair and a red beard, she’s wearing glasses, a white blouse with colorful umbrella prints and a rainbow skirt. On her arm, a rainbow umbrella. I observe every detail so later I can describe her to my penpal.
Her name is Fruddi and she’s our new sci-fi teacher. There’s something unsettling about her.
She writes a poem on the blackboard in her very neat handwriting. I’m sitting front row resting my chin on my hands, looking bored. She demands why I’m not copying the poem down, I say what’s the point? I’ll google it at home. She rants and rave about today’s lazy youth, I tell her, deadpan,
I am smart and I am confident and you won’t judge me.
She looks at me pensively. She knew a boy once, she says, who was so lazy. He was so lazy he never found a job and stayed home with his momma. This makes me angry, I walk straight to her face and hiss,
Or maybe he was severely depressed.
Fruddi looks dumbstruck. Come with me, she says. She leads me to the school graveyard, old tombstones and overgrown greenery. It looks so pretty I wish I had a camera with me.
Fruddi leads me to her family chapel, where a mummy lays on the stone. This is my boy, she says, taking the body in her arms. I’m so scared and she’s distracted, so I run back to the classroom, but the other kids have left.
I track them to the gym. The boys are playing soccer with famous footballer Christian Vieri. The girls are sitting in a low pool, looking adorable in matching swimsuits and caps. I run to them and relay my scary mummy story. They all console me.
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.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 