I dream that I find a white mouse under my bed, I’m kind of afraid but I have no choice, I scoop it up and put it outside my bedroom.
Then I dream that I’m trying a machine that beeps whenever I’m walking past someone romantically compatible. I try to approach these potential partners but it goes horribly, finally a girl tells me I’m too ugly to date.
I dream that the whole family is at a beach village, one of those Greek sea places with white houses and blue roofs. The sun is shining and it’s clearly summer, still groups of children are coming down stairs and alleys singing a Christmas song, I know it’s Greek because I recognize the world “aletheia”. Another group is singing in… Hebrew? That can’t be right, they don’t celebrate Christmas. Maybe they’re Copts.
As more and more relatives arrive I yearn to go back home and avoid them all, I beg my dad to drive me and he refuses. I walk instead, looking behind my back to see if he changed his mind. I fall asleep on a bench and when I wake up Dad has brought me home on his bicycle.
I want to take a shower but there’s a tray of burned cheese burgers in the bathroom, the smell is foul. My mom sits next to me on my bed and puts some sort of rust colored lotion on my face. Meanwhile, my brother is telling me that Dad is gonna take down our shower panels, that upsets me so much I throw a little, pathetic tantrum.
We sit around the table to eat dinner, both my grandmothers are here. My late grandma G. is slouching back on her chair, she looks like she has no bones and is about to plop on the floor any minute, like she’s made of jelly. I’m explaining to the both of them what 3D glasses are, isn’t it marvelous, I say, how everyone can now see holograms? They don’t really understand the concept. I say, imagine a big red billboard with the name of your favorite supermarket. With my glasses I also can see… I fish around for an actress they would recognize,
I can also see Sofia Loren projected on the billboard, waving at me.
After dinner, my brother attempts to hack into my phone to see if I ever visited a certain city. He’s not gonna find anything, I say confidently. He finds a panoramic photo that looks more like a painting. It’s from my point of view, it looks like I’m sitting in a shabby room. He changes the prospective and we gasp: on my lap there’s a dirty rat with a syringe stuck in its neck. It’s a terrifying close up.
Next I go to the store because it’s my old coworker S.’s birthday and we are planning a surprise party. I buy birthday cards and balloons from him, he doesn’t suspect a thing. I really need to pee though, and I’ll have to hold it because it’s not hygienic to use a public bathroom, Coronavirus and all. I can’t remember my credit card pin, I look it up on my phone, it’s the old Motorola my mom owned in 1997. It’s broken and I can’t seem to fix it and I really need to run home and pee. S. tries to fix it as well, he hands back something that is not my phone, I really don’t care, I grab it and…
I wake up and run to the bathroom.
I dream that my hairdresser is dead. His ghost appears to his successor so he can explain how to cut my hair just right.
I dream that I have a bunch of plants on my desk and I’m watering them and they’re all very happy.
I dream that there’s a tiny mouse −smaller than an ant!− running all over my bed sheets.
I dream that there’s a giant cave deep deep below us underground, where the devil is stuck from the waste down.
I dream that I’m going on a school trip to France, but I’m not really excited because I’m a witch, and I guess when one has magic at her fingertips silly bus trips are not that special.
I get lost in the Paris sewers, it’s dark and wet and there are stray cats and an abandoned gendarme uniform. As I’m climbing a ladder to get out I’m violently attacked and punched to the ground by the Ratatouille guy. He thinks I killed his rat.
I’m with my siblings at a strange woman’s house. She’s maybe a friend of Gran’s, or a relative? I’m reading a shonen manga, a super long series that is never gonna end. We collect flowers from around the apartment for the woman’s dead husband, then we go down a narrow spiral staircase to leave the building. I’m not wearing any socks.
Walking home I come across an old schoolmate, M., who used to be a runner. I haven’t seen her in 15 years but she’s still running with a group of friends. I show her my fitness bracelet and say I’m also exercising, but we both know it’s a lie. We have stopped near a farm, there are cats and mice and a black and white horse behind a fence.
Three high school kids walk past us: they are the classic mean girls, very trendy and with heavy make up. They mock me as they walk by. I yell back that they are ugly, but realize it’s a lame retort: so I grab two of them, obviously the two sidekicks walking one step behind their queen bee, and force them to walk with me for a while instead. I improv a funny story about Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
…and then God said, “What the f**k?!”
They are laughing at my story, and hopefully they will have a better opinion of me now. I let them go.
It’s Autumn, and I have my high school Nokia with me instead of a new smartphone. I try to take pictures and they are surprisingly good quality. Then I realize somebody is following me: it’s a kid, fourteen or so, thin with blond hair and glasses. He’s a stalker in love with me. I take pictures of him following me and yell that I’m gonna call the police. He doesn’t care, follows me all the way back home. I call for my dad to come beat him up.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 