Good and Not So Good Encounters

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

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.

Some Good Advice

Posted on February 29, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I have a vague memory of meeting Captain Janeway. She tells me that, when playing Pokémon, most people just rely on brute force instead of strategy. I am definitely guilty of that, but I don’t say it out loud.

Pigs and Veggie Bowls

Posted on February 27, 2020February 28, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m at a hair salon inside the mall; my hair is big and bushy, Hermione Granger style, and I desperately need a haircut. The place’s owner is a scrawny guy with an evil smirk, he shaves off a patch of hair in the back of my head, so it looks like I’m going bald, and then kicks me out. I’m desperate because I’ll have to shave everything off now.

I wake up in the morning to find my sister sitting on the living room floor, I’m enraged because she’s supposed to be at her own house, I tell her that she’s not gonna sleep in my room. She locks herself in the bathroom and I start banging on the door because I’m late for school. I don’t know if I went to school at all these past days, I can’t remember. Then I realize that’s because I went to work instead.

I arrive in my classroom and I’m greeting by the usual philosophy teacher, he announces we are going on a school trip. A moment later I’m sitting at lunch in a hotel dining room, so I wonder how I got there if I was at home with my sister in the morning. We are given free food samples, they come in small packages and one of them is pink and says “tuna for cats”.

We are brought bowls of veggie soup, I’m about to dig in mine when another girl opens one of her little packages and pours some truly nasty stuff in my bowl, so now I can’t eat anymore. As I wait for the others to finish I happen to fart; it’s just a little toot, but there’s no hiding it so I say “Sorry” out loud. One of the teachers says,

There are some people that never apologize, and that’s bad. But there are also people who apologize when it’s too late and the room already stinks.

We are shown a video taken from a security cam in the city of Venice, where we were apparently visiting that morning. I see myself on the screen as the chubby teen I used to be in high school, I’m reading a book and some bad guys steal it. I chase them down some tunnels, I cringe watching myself because I run so awkwardly.

Now we are led outside, where we see a beautiful pink sunset against the mountains. I take some pictures of the sky and of some local kids that are doing somersaults. A group of pigs are crossing a little fence, they are also pink and shiny and beautiful. They are led by a girl and her grandfather, who is a white haired detective Columbo. I take pictures of the pigs too and my teacher says I shouldn’t because it’s rude. Columbo says it’s all right, as long as I send him prints.

Sweet Tooth

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

My mother tells me I cannot go to work because it’s snowing outside. I start to get dressed anyway, I know a little snow won’t be a good enough excuse. I call my cousin to ask how it’s looking, and suddenly I’m in her car and she’s driving me to the store. I’m mad because I still had to brush my teeth and wash my hair.

We stop to get breakfast at the bar near the store: now it’s a dark and golden, decadent pastry shop. I sneak in the bathroom to finish washing myself, it’s so small I get claustrophobic. My cousin has bought a slice of cake, I also go to take a good look at the pastries. They are magnificent, they have rococo name tags that make the place feel like Versailles.

I approach the ice cream counter and ask if they’ve got anything caramel. A man shows me green ice cream with a layer of thick caramel on top, he says it’s prehistoric mango and starts scooping it on top of a cone, then adds strawberry. I tell him,

You’re not gonna make me eat fruit when it’s snowing outside!

He looks embarrassed and puts the cone away. I go back to the pastries and ask again if there’s anything with caramel. The girl behind the counter shows me a truly enormous pastry, it’s shaped a bit like a lamp and covered in purple icing. I decide what the hell, I deserve a little pick-me-up, if it’s too expensive I can always pay with my credit card. My cousin tells me my pastry is embarrassing to look at and I will have to eat it in the back of the store, away from out customers.

We go to the cashier, who is Emma Pillsbury from Glee. She sees my big paper bag and wants to see the lamp pastry inside. When I show it to her she cries because it’s so beautiful. The pastry costs 4.15, so I don’t have to use my credit card after all.

(I did buy myself some caramel ice cream this afternoon. It was too salty)

Mazes and Prisons

Posted on February 1, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m part of a group of female warriors, we need to navigate an underground maze rigged with deadly puzzles.

We sneak inside and I go ahead to scout. There are long corridors with technological contraptions all over the walls – wires, tubes, buttons. A giant rock encrusted with green and blue gems rolls towards me, I swerve to the side and yell for my companions to watch out. I notice there are now more people in the maze, two older women running wildly to avoid the giant rock. I move faster, I can’t allow them to arrive to the treasure before me.

We reach a chamber at the center of the maze, inside there are two metal pods surrounded by futuristic machinery, they probably contain people important enough to justify all this protection. As I caress the cold surface of a pod, our enemy arrives: he’s a Nazi officer with his soldiers. I need to find an excuse, fast! I tell him I’m working for the “Professor”, and I point to one of the older women, who is wearing a lab coat.

She is brought forward. I can now see that her face is covered with a wooden mask: it’s expressionless, like a dead-eyed Pinocchio. Interrogated, she doesn’t speak a single word. The Nazi furiously rips off her mask, but the face underneath is identical, made of wood, the eyes vacant and lifeless, the mouth a black gaping hole. The man screams, and we run away in the confusion.

It was all a flashback, as told by one of my warrior companions. She looks like an older Kirby Howell-Baptiste, she’s in the Orange is The New Black prison telling the story to the other inmates. Yoga Jones calls them outside to look for food, and so the inmates happily get out of prison and into a forest, where they look for edible plants through the sunny patches, laughing and squealing at each other. It looks quite nice.

Vaguely Star Wars

Posted on January 26, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I don’t remember much, but I’m on some green planet fighting Darth Vader. I cut his limbs with my lightsaber, and somehow this splits him into two separate people: the all-evil Vader and our own Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin, now free from evil, walks into a cave and removes his black mask. There is a man there, an old and stern cyborg with mechanical red eyes that move independently. He warns Anakin that he’s gonna die without his mask, but it’s too late. Anakin wears a pair of sunglasses over his burned and blistered face and goes out to see the world.

Telly Addict

Posted on January 20, 2020January 20, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m in the TARDIS and possibly the Doctor. A portal opens and the new Master and Missy strut in. They are Doctor Who villains and technically the same person, but in this dream they are married and have a little girl with brown curls. Some time passes, another portal opens and now it’s Missy alone with her newborn, who is a boy instead of a girl! Since I’m the Doctor and clever, I realize this version of Missy comes from the past and I must have swapped her real child, the boy, to protect him from the Master. Missy makes a face (Michelle Gomez makes very entertaining faces even in my dreams!) and says she will pretend to love her fake daughter, “if she really must”. I know she’s lying and she’s really lonely, because I’m the Doctor and I’m clever! This is what happens when I watch a Doctor Who episode before going to sleep.

I’m half awake and I dream that I’m at work scanning documents. Scanning, scanning, scanning, scanning.

Little Bigot

Posted on January 12, 2020January 19, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

Aunt T., the one I hate, has a granddaughter. My sister knocks on the door to ask if I would like to meet this child, I say no, absolutely not, I can’t make exceptions. The little girl is already here though, peeking from behind the door, a blonde angel of ten. She’s so adorable I can’t help but letting her in, I tickle her and blow soap bubbles to make her laugh. The child asks to see my ID card and I think, strange, but why not? I send my sister to retrieve my wallet, and as soon as the she sees my ID the kid attacks me! She says she can’t allow mutants and modified humans to exist. Great, I think, she’s a racist like her aunt.

My sister and I are now on the run from the little girl. We escape through various international cities, I remember one has pyramids even though we are in the US. All around us mutants are being abducted and killed. You can’t tell them apart from regular humans unless you have X-Ray vision to check if their bones are made of metal. A man approaches us, promises he’ll lead us to safety. We’re wary at first, but an X-ray scan reveals he’s actually Frozone. Relieved, we follow him.

Some Travels

Posted on January 11, 2020January 19, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

My Gran needs to buy cream but we need to walk quite a long way to find some. I try to leave my heavy bags behind on the grass, but I can’t bring myself to it. Instead, we hire a boy to carry the bags for us, he’s struggling with them but doesn’t complain. We arrive at a big villa full of cheerful, mostly middle-aged people, they are all creatives gathering there to commune and write. The boy reveals he’s also writing a novel and sits down at a table to work with us.

Then I dream that I have to wake up (true, it was seven in the morning!) but there’s also a Doctor Who special on TV I really can’t miss. The new Master turns into Missy for a moment, it’s really blink-and-miss, I want to rewind but can’t because it’s on stupid TV and not Netflix. The Doctor travels back to a time slightly after the Mary Poppins movie. Dick Van Dyke is there as an older version of Bert, I wonder how much they paid him for the cameo. Jane and Michael are older too, they’re walking down the street. Michael looks like a preteen now, but has a full beard, red and curly. How did they even achieve that, CGI? The special ends and I get frustrated because it either was twelve minutes long or I only caught the end of it.

Little Little Women

Posted on January 5, 2020January 19, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

A recurring dream: I’m at school, usually high school, and still have to graduate. It’s been years and I’m stuck here, failing my finals every time and having to go back. Often I’m sitting in my old philosophy teacher’s class, but in my dreams he teaches something even more horrid, like math or biology. I’m always unprepared, always didn’t study, always have skipped classes and don’t know how to catch up. Today’s dream is no different, I’m sitting at my desk but I don’t even know where on the textbook we’re at, I’m hoping and praying that the teacher won’t ask me questions. Suddenly a thought occurs to me: I’m starting my new job soon!* How can I go to school if I’m supposed to be at work every morning? Does this mean…? Dare I hope? I run to my mom and ask her if I’m allowed to quit school, at long last.

Another dream: I’m sitting in a little Victorian living room, I am Jo March from Little Women. I’m entertaining guests with my sisters, there’s two gentlemen for now but we’re waiting for a friend of Meg’s to come by, we’re told she’s a very sweet young lady. She arrives just as Beth is sitting at the piano singing an Ave Maria with her beautiful soprano voice. I think to myself it’s pretty cinematic and we’re gonna make a great impression. The guest enters the room and Amy –as played by a young Kirsten Dust– does a little double take and exclaims, “And who are you supposed to be?!” It’s very funny and endearing.

We all go out to the yard where the gentlemen strike a conversation with Netflix’s Lucifer. The two are gushing about something awful, like slave trade. Lucifer punishes us all by shrinking down the whole party to half our size. Baffled, Amy picks up a red leaf from the ground, it’s bigger than her hand now.

Meg and I leave to find a cure, accompanied by our butler, who’s a posh Brit with a white mustache. We are so small the three of us look like children walking down the street. We reach my IRL neighborhood and sneak in the local kindergarten, the rooms inside are covered wall to wall and floor to ceiling with blue porcelain tiles. We leave from the window, and there’s a cackle of hyenas waiting for us outside! We grab our batons and flame throwers and get ready for the fight.

*I am starting a new job on Thursday.

DECADE DREAM JOURNAL