I dream that I’m riding a rusty red tricycle across train tracks. Two girls in a car are yelling at me, say I didn’t look before crossing, but I did, I looked left and right.
Then I dream that a local greengrocer is closing forever, the owners are putting on a ‘woe is me’ show saying it’s the government’s fault. I happen to know they are scammers so I tear them apart.
Then I dream that I look at the calendar and it’s June. How can it be? I was just here looking forward our next cold spell? How did I miss so much time? Flowers are blooming outside my window. I despair. My mother says I was just sitting at my desk staring at nothing for months.
I dream that my old schoolmate G. buys a boat shaped liked a Star Wars spaceship, he pays it 2488 bucks. It’s so powerful it causes a tsunami.
The end of the world ensues. Now I’m one of three little girls who are also Destiny’s Child (I’m Beyoncé, of course). We hide in a store basement but the ceiling cracks and Tokyo Tower falls on us. The last thing I see is an ugly, bony blonde woman with a pointy face.
I have the power to time travel, so I go back to the tsunami and this time us three little girls hide in an abandoned subway station. As people start dying I see the blonde woman again. I need to remember her, she’s important. She smiles a mean smile and points at her watch. Time to wake up, she mouths.
I dream that I jump back to the 1900s. There is a pretty girl very surprised to see me standing there in her house, wearing pants.
That night we go together to the town festival. The trees are blooming even though it’s fall, I feel a bit spooked. I realize my wallet is missing and someone must have stolen it from my pocket. I have no choice but jump back to the start of the evening.
The girl and I go to a local seamstress, I ask if my grandmother left any of her clothes to mend. I hope I can get my hands on a bag to carry my wallet in. The seamstress says that, oh yes, she left plenty of clothes without ever coming back to collect them, she was just about to throw away the whole lot.
I say, my grandma is almost 90, you can’t expect her to remember things. Then I ask if she has a spare bag, she gives me a Bart Simpson backpack.
I dream that there’s a phone game I’m really looking forward to play, it’s deceptively simple and cutesy but I’ve been told the plot has a rather dark turn.
Thing is, I can’t possibly concentrate on the game because my life seems to be going fast forward: I blink and a few hours have passed, try as I might I can’t remember what happened in those hours. These flash forward episodes keep happening as I try to go home, when I finally get there years have passed, my dad is old now and has long white hair.
And then time fixes itself, I guess, because next thing I know I’m on my bed playing the game.
The plot is about a young girl with pink hair travelling with her master, a medieval knight. The two are attacked in a village by the game’s bad guy (really well written, engaging backstory for him). I see that he has much more experience points than my characters and a sense of dread washes over me: I watch helpless as the master is brutally murdered and the little girl is dragged to prison.
It’s me languishing in that cell now, after years and years my old friend and neighbor S. rescues me and we go home together. There’s a long carnival parade outside my building, the music is deafening.
I’m once again in my room and my phone is ringing. It’s my cousin. “You can come back to the store for three hours tomorrow,” she says, “but then that’s it, you’re fired.”
“What?! Why?!” I ask, flabbergasted.
They are moving the store to London. And I can’t afford to go with them, I wouldn’t be able to pay rent. The next day I stand on the long bridge that crosses the Atlantic and cry as I look at my cousin, Boss Lady and my coworker S. walking past the gate that goes into London. I beg them not to leave me.
I dream that I have a pet squirrel in a paper bag. I shake the bag because I forgot there’s also a glass bottle inside. The squirrel gets hit in the head, I rush it to the vet but there’s nothing I can do to save it.
Then I dream about a couple on a mystical quest. The wife keeps dying in strange accidents and the husband keeps bringing her back to life whenever he has enough magic. She stays alive for a few hours and then dies again. She doesn’t realize what’s happening until she notices her husband’s hair is turning gray: seven years have passed for him, only seven hours for her.
I dream that I go to the computer store to buy a desktop (something I’m planning to do IRL). I explain to the young woman in the store uniform that I’ll be able to buy a new computer with my next paycheck, and could she save one for me?
Fast forward to Christmas, and now my new desktop is sitting in my bedroom and I’m real confused: how did we get here? It was June just a moment ago, why can’t I remember these past months?
Somebody kidnapped me. I was taken away in a big truck with other young people. We were taken to a large room and chained to beds for months and months, until the Stockholm syndrome kicked in. We were then more than happy to help our captors, a group of international criminals and spies.
Now I’m back to the free world and a trained assassins. I shouldn’t remember the brainwash I went through, but I do, I do.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 