I dream that I’m with my whole family watching a Christmas movie that is inexplicably my mom’s favorite soap opera, set in the summer. My neighbor is there, he points on the screen at a super weird extra wearing a hairy costume, kinda like Bigfoot, and walking on a leash an equally hairy dog.
It’s such a striking look I have to go to my room, take a screencap and print it out. The result is not a sheet of paper but a lifelike little action figure. Looking at it closely I realize it’s not a Sasquatch after all but a Chewbacca costume. I go show my neighbor this new development: he’s also a dog now, he’s in the bathroom drinking from the tap and it stares at the toy, sweet and brainless.
I take it to my siblings instead, my brother strips out the Chewie fur and a Harley Quinn figure is revealed. That also seems weird, so he removes the head and there’s a smaller He-Man head underneath. He breaks the toy in half and there’s a rocky, crumbly material inside. Grandma wants to use it as a pumice stone, but I stop here: it could be toxic.
I dream that it’s my brother’s birthday and I bought him hand cream and mints. My sister hasn’t bought him anything so I win.
We decide to go downtown to look for a present, we walk out the gate and realize we forgot our masks. My sister runs back in and fetches two yellow fabric ones. It’s raining and as we walk through the park we notice that the people sitting at the picnic tables don’t have umbrellas and are getting soaked. I explain to my sister that those are German tourists, they don’t bother with umbrellas because where they come from it rains all the time anyways, it’s a bit like Londoners.
We arrive at a clothes stores, my sister shows me how to hang our bags from special magnets sticking from the cash register. It’s such an insider trick, I think, you can really tell she worked in a store before. My old Nokia is in my bag, one of the salesboys is looking at it with interest. It’s still a really good phone, he says. He starts chatting and telling us the story of his life, it’s very boring and we have to remind him to go help the long line of customers that has formed. One of the customers is a woman called Napoleon. She’s missing an eye.
I dream that my brother borrows me his comics (am sure hang up on those, huh). I’m reading my sister’s secret diary and when she finds out she’s incredibly mad, but I don’t care what she thinks, I hate her. A man pretends to be pregnant but it was only chalk hidden under his shirt. I go out with friends and order a burrito, which is actually a tomato.
I dream that I’m watching a Dark episode, but also living it, jumping up and down the timeline. I go back home and study the mailboxes and the gate to figure out what year is this.
I’m really hungry when I get home, I want to eat breakfast. My mother says to go to the apartment upstairs, where my brother, who’s also Magnus from Dark, is hoarding and selling cereal and other breakfast items. My father comes along and tries to sneak out a bag of chocolate cookies.
I dream that a tiger cub wanders into my living room. It’s night and I’m the only one still up. He’s afraid at first, but soon he’s in my lap purring. He’s even getting along with my cat.
The next day we try to find out where the cub came from. We call the vet clinic and they say he ran away after one of the doctors, a guy named Maycon, committed suicide. Incredibly, we are allowed to keep the cub until they find a proper home for him.
We bring both pets, cat and tiger, on a trip with us. We visit a futuristic facility where they are creating VR videogames.
I’m told to sit at a machine in the middle of a giant room, there’s a gaming chair elevated from the ground and surrounded by screens. Below there’s a desk with multiple computers, the woman sitting behind the desk is the director of the project. My family is looking up with interest. The tiger cub and my cat are wandering around the room.
My body is scanned so my avatar will look realistic. I find myself sitting inside a futuristic car, a race is about to start but I can’t drive! “What do I do?” I yell, panicking. “Floor the pedal!” I hear my dad yelling back. The program changes to a horse race and I don’t fare any better.
The director is disgusted at my incompetence. When it’s my brother’s turn she asks him what kind of games he likes. I wish she had asked me as well. As my brother plays (as Ranma ½ , and dismayed about turning into a girl) the director looks me over and says, “some people just lack intelligence”.
I grab her by the lab coat and hiss,
Not everyone is the same. I may not be good at videogames, but I have emotional intelligence.
When it’s time to go home we board a super fast train, it’s bright red and looks so modern. Again, my cat and the tiger cub are wandering up and down the train corridors.
We don’t have tickets, the other passengers are carrying their tickets on their wrists, like some sort of smart watch. The conductor comes over to scan the watches, my dad tells her we need to buy ours. She says, you can do that, or you can try your luck at our slot machine.
All the passengers without a ticket get in line, one by one they pull the lever of the slot machine, but nobody wins. When it’s my turn I pull the lever and the machine blinks and whistles! I’m excited for a moment thinking I won a ticket. The conductor is impressed too, because apparently nobody had won anything in years.
The machine spits out a receipt. I read it, it’s a coupon for a pizza place from the town we’ve just left. It says I’ve won a lemongrass pizza. I don’t even know what that is, I’ll just have to give the coupon to someone else because it’s useless to me.
Several nested dreams. I ask my brother if he still has some old comics, the first time he says no, the second he says yes.
Then the same recurring dream. It’s raining and I’m late for school. I don’t have my books with me. I have an enormous zit on my face. I’ve skipped too many classes and my finals are looming nearer and nearer. I don’t want to take my finals, who cares about my high school diploma. I’m an adult with a job, for Christ’s sake.
I dream that I’ve witnessed a woman being murdered, then emptied and stuffed with rice.
Then I dream about being in a car with my brother, we’re watching a movie. One of the characters is a young mother wearing a sweater so old it’s full of holes.
I dream that I’m playing some sort of treasure hunt. I track down some tiny white spheres, when put in water they turn into action figures. I have to assemble them in the right order, and when I do they turn into… corn dogs. I show my brother the first one I get, he’s utterly delighted.
I dream that I’m in town and come across Brad Pitt, with his hair graying and a sweet dumb smile. He’s filming in a basement (I’m assuming a DC movie, because I spot Harley Quinn and a Batman costume discarded in a corner). The filming is super secret, but I can’t wait to tell my brother all about it.
There is an attack, the basement is filled with tear gas and the actors have to flee. Brad and I go to a bookstore where I introduce him to Harry Potter, he almost buys the whole series but I point out it’s the British version. I’ll get him the ebooks instead, even though I’m much poorer than him.
Brad asks me to marry him; he’s really dumb, almost childish, and in his brain this must make perfect sense. I tell him I’m not interested. My brother is there too now and angry because Brad he’s much older than me and how dare he.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 