I dream that I’m walking downtown holding hands with a girl, she’s tall and her hair is dark. I’m trying to flirt. She says if we ever dated she’d be worried about my mental health. Still she peppers my face and shoulders with little kisses, end eventually gives me a long kiss on the lips.
Then I dream it’s town festival night, I notice in the crowd a group of men wearing Nazi uniforms. Assholes! I yell in their general direction and keep walking confidently, thinking they won’t be able to locate me in the crowd. They find me though, they start following me and taunting me. One squeezes my arm and says I have no muscle. One throws me to the ground. The police arrives and they all run away because they’re cowards.
I dream that I’m going to visit my Gran, and that’s already making me uncomfortable because we should be isolating from the pandemic. I run into an old schoolmate’s mom, she’s not wearing a mask, a can only stand in horror as she grabs me and kisses both my cheeks in greeting. How could you! I yell. She doesn’t seem to understand what she did wrong.
At Gran’s place, I’m watching a TV show, or maybe playing a video game, or possibly living in it? It’s about a little girl who can speak with ghosts, she’s always haunted by the spectral figures of her dead parents. She’s currently sitting in her classroom, her teacher is John Mulaney. Then she goes home skating, she runs into a murderer running away from the police. Why didn’t you call us? The police demand. She doesn’t know how to explain that, due to her psychic powers, cell phones don’t work around her.
She arrives at Gran’s place, where we find dozens and dozens of single shoes and slippers. I try to find a logical explanation for it, but we all know ghosts are dumping them. The little girl avoids mirrors because she can always see reflected in them someone who just died and is being sent to hell. It’s like a white, crumbly room that goes into the unknown. We decide to explore hell as well, we take an elevator and arrive at the white room. We step inside.
I dream about a young man, a butler maybe, who has just murdered the old lord he works for. He leaves the manor with no rush, it’s a Saturday and he knows the gardener won’t be back to discover the body until Monday. He goes home and carefully plans his escape along with his girlfriend. On Monday morning, they drive away in the fog. A young detective arrives too late and find their house empty. He wears thick glasses and his face is calm, emotionless.
Years pass. The murdered and his girl are now married, they’re currently on a tour bus. Around them, people are singing church songs and clapping to the music. A car flanks the bus, it’s the detective, now with a balding head and a mustache. Police swarm the bus, they arrest the murderer, drag him away. As the other passengers protest, the detective looks up at them from the car window, and very calmly states,
Don’t worry about it. He shot a man in the head.
Nobody seems to notice the wife, nobody arrests her. She goes on to live her life and raise her kids, scot-free.
I dream that my mother and I are taking part in a horror tour. It’s night when our bus arrives at a haunted old mansion, we get inside along with all the other guests, cheering and laughing.
The mansion is haunted alright, but I soon figure out the ghosts and other scary presences (mostly dead girls, pale, bleeding) cannot be touched and can’t harm us in any way. I feel relieved, amused, even. There’s something else about the house though, something odd: it seems to be able to read our minds. I can think about anything I want, anything at all, and the house makes it happen.
I want to buy a souvenir. I see a dish set hanging from the wall, beautiful golden and white plates. As soon as I think it the set flies into my arms and the money leaves my bank account, just like magic. I ask for the check and it’s projected directly into my brain. I say out loud I’d rather have a paper copy and a young maid brings it to me. She says,
Thank you, these numbers will help me win the lottery, back in 2005.
I go back to the bus and realize my mother is nowhere to be found. As I’m starting to worry she finally runs out from the main door, looking frantic, screaming, her face contorted with fear. A waiter is following her, his white shirt covered in yellow puke. I have a moment of terrifying realization: this cannot be my mother. She would never act like this. This is a ghost trying to escape, and my real mother is still trapped inside.
Everybody begs me to stop, but I’m already running back. The doors close behind me, the tour bus leaves, and with a shiver I realize I’m the one being trapped here. Just like the house wanted.
I wake up and fall back to sleep. Now I’m at home, waiting for the police to arrive. A man with round glasses has showed me the future, I know I’m wanted, I know the police will seize all my favorite pens (I hide them, just in case), and I know that my mother will be arrested as well.
I see a police car and a van arriving and parking outside. As I open the door I tell my parents to stay calm: surely it’s all a mistake, if we explain ourselves we can avoid any trouble. I open the door and dozens upon dozens of officers pour in. Most of them go directly to my bedroom (my poor pens!) but their chief stays to interrogate me. She’s a blonde woman, tall, extremely beautiful but there’s something cold in her eyes, something not human. I realize in a moment she’s one of the ghosts from the hunted house, and she wants to steal my body and give it to one of her ghosts friends.
Years later I get out of prison. The beautiful blonde chief is waiting for me and we kiss passionately. Am I still me? Am I a ghost? I cannot tell. Flash forward a few more years, I’m on boat on a stormy ocean. The boat sinks and I wash ashore on a beautiful island. I lost my memory.
(Having recorded my dreams for a few months now, I find myself thinking about the recurring scenarios I find myself in night in, night out; they are so mundane, so boring, so familiar by now.)
I’m out in town, it’s raining once again (even though it very rarely rains in real life), and again I forgot to wear my mask (I NEVER forget to wear my mask IRL). A cop stops me and I say I’m running back home to fetch it. He takes one from his chest pocket, it looks like a menstrual pad with strings.
I go back home and my sister is there and I don’t want her there and we argue. The same dream again and again and again.
I’m at gran’s house, my siblings and my neighbor S. are with me. I’m playing the Sims and really getting into the game, but alas I need to turn off the computer and go home. We all climb into the car, I have some trouble closing the door.
We stop at an old beautiful building, something like a renaissance villa. There’s a comic book exhibit inside, we all take some time to visit it and at the end I ask my sister,
Does every artist really have to illustrate King James Bible at some point?
She says yes.
We arrive in town, outside the park there is a policewoman asking for everyone’s permission slips. She’s angry at us for being all out together, and she’s right, I think, that’s quite odd during a lockdown, what were we thinking? She finally allows us to go home, and as I start walking I notice that both my siblings and neighbor S. are turning into children, like we used to be when we played all together in this very park. My brother grins at me and jumps up and down. His hair is blond just like back then, and everything is beautiful.
I walk to the store, but once inside I see it’s a mix between it and my old job at the vet clinic. There is a young man at the counter, I buy something and he gives me change from the old cash register I’ve used so many times. I’m a bit annoyed seeing that he doesn’t use gloves to handle the money.
I try to be nice to him anyway, I ask where my old buddy the cat is and he says I can go in the back to look for her. I see a ramp of stairs with a long-haired tabby sitting on it, I call her name (I can’t remember it but it started with an “S”) and she jumps in my arms. Then I see my old boss, the vet’s wife, coming out from a door and I don’t want to be caught in here again when I should be quarantined, so I leave in a hurry.
I’m walking back home and it’s a beautiful spring day, the sky is a perfect blue. I realize with horror there are too many people in town, why is nobody respecting the lockdown?! I come across a whole wedding gathering, people are crowding around the groom and wife and clapping and taking pictures. I have to walk between them and I hold my breath, hoping and praying I won’t be infected.
The Mayor walks past me with the police, I wish they’re gonna arrest everybody. I go home and decide to self-quarantine in my room for the next two weeks, because I really want my dad to be safe.
I walk inside a newsstand and browse through the magazines. I want to pick something interesting (Wired, maybe?) and buy every issue starting today. January 2020 is a good date to start building a collection, right?
While I’m still browsing, an immigrant walks into the store, he pays in cash and stands in front of the register waiting for his change. The owner smiles a wicked smile and plays with the five bucks in his hand. He says he doesn’t think he’s gonna give the man his money today.
Now, IRL I’ve promised myself to be more assertive and speak up, so speak up I do. I take a deep breath and say out loud,
Give this man his change or I’ll call the police.
I start rummaging through my bag for my cell phone. The store owner whips out a tiny gun, smaller than his fist, and points it directly at me. He orders to put down the phone. I grab his hand and after a struggle I take the gun away from him. He produces another one identical to the first and I run to hide behind a door. A shootout ensues, and I finally wound him and call the police.
I’m on a quest with a party of adventurers, we’re trekking the mountains of a fantasy land. I come across a samurai who challenges me to a duel; we can’t fight up here though, we need to go back home, somehow. Eventually I borrow a big, heavy falchion from a companion and transfer my consciousness inside a town robot, big and awkward and clunky like something out of Machinarium.
The city is cold, but I feel terribly hot because my body is still up on the mountains. A cop shows up and tries to arrest me, I fight him without talking because, even though I look like a robot, he’d still recognize my voice.
Back to the mission, one of our party’s secret agents, a woman in the body of a little girl in pigtails, sneaks inside a mountain house. Her plan is to hide for a few hours, but she’s discovered by the place’s owner, who happens to be Meryl Streep. Meryl sees the little girl wearing a floral pinafore, hiding under her bed, and assumes she’s an orphan escaping from the war. She decides to adopt her. News of her generosity spread and more and more children show up at her house.
Now our prospective zooms out, from the green peaks to the blue planet we’re on to the blackness of space to a second red planet orbiting around us. I’m sitting behind my computer screen and fixing sliders on my sim world, because I’ve been playing a game all along.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 