I dream that it’s the last week of school and I’m doing an internship in a really big building, almost a skyscraper. I don’t really like the job, it’s a bit too corporate and heartless, but my cousin is there of course and she’s not letting me go home until I clean my room; my own bed is indeed on the ground floor.
That night I play a videogame set in the same building, I find a secret room full of pizzas but my HP bar is full and I don’t have much use for them. The morning after I’m determined to find the same room in the real building, but I find a long line of sick people waiting outside the main doors. I’m not wearing a mask so I cover my face with both hands and beg to be let inside because I’m an employee. The ground floor has turned into a hospital and I can’t find my room anymore.
I dream that it’s the last day of school (but it’s May! I think privately); some sort of guerrilla is once again happening outside the building. I go home and I’m welcomed by a basket of rescue kittens: oh, right, I should bring them to the vet at some point. I sit down to play Sims, my current family has a child with green skin and a “hate teenagers” personality trait. Indeed, she kills a teen, and I have to move the whole family next to a beach amusement park.
I dream that I’m walking to school when I realize I’m not wearing a mask, I put a scarf over my face and run to the city market. I buy ten surgical masks from a stall and I’m so mad about wasting my money like that.
Then I dream that my sister bursts in my room upset because she no longer can become a teacher: she asked a friend to mail some forms and he sent the wrong ones. To make her feel better I tell her the same exact thing happened to me; it somehow makes her even angrier.
Then I dream that I’m playing a videogame with my siblings while simultaneously living it. We’re on a pirate island, swimming in the beautiful tropical water to look for treasures at the bottom. We’re about to enter a yellow building when my mom appears at our door carrying a plate of pancakes.
I dream that I’m playing the Sims. My elderly couple ( bald woman, braided hair mustached man) is about to die, and I want to move their son to another city. He adopts a little girl without mt permission, they’re having a picnic, being chased by bees. It’s out of my hands, they’ll have to stay.
I dream about a mom with two small children, brother and sister. The little girl has a kitten, she doesn’t want to leave it behind but her mom puts it inside a box, tells the daughter “it will be fine”.
It is of course not fine and the kitten suffocates and dies. He turns into the angry ghost of a child, he kills the two little siblings and they turn into ghosts too.
I dream that it’s my birthday and one of my aunts buys me a new car and a Nintendo switch. My brother is jealous and steals the switch.
I dream that it’s Christmas and I’m typically upset about not receiving any presents. I storm in my room and brood a bit, yell a bit at my neighbors for blasting far-right propaganda from their windows. I know I need to go shower, yet I waste hours playing Pokémon on an old Game Boy Advance. I feel so bad for procrastinating. My brain is like mush.
I finally get up and step in the shower box, I struggle not to just sit down and brood some more. No, I need to concentrate on the task ahead. My grandma is there too (now the shower is the size of a large room with black marble walls), she’s standing on a stool and trying to take a picture from a slit window, she says she wishes her phone had a better camera. Well, I have a better camera!
The ocean is on the other side of the window, blue and shiny and I start taking pictures. Now the shower is an open space on the beach and the walls are bamboo. I feel guilty about leaving the water running, but the sun is setting and I need these pics for my Instagram. Beach goers try to shower and I shoo them away. Two men are painting the wall of a building with Michelangelo’s frescoes, I take picture after beautiful picture. The beach employees are trying to stop me. The water is still running.
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.
I dream that I’m playing the Sims. I rotate through different families, there’s a couple trying to solve a murder and there’s one that is moving back to their parents’ haunted house.
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’m playing on a PlayStation 2, the smaller kind, just like the one I used to have twenty years ago. I’m playing The Sims and have downloaded a bunch of NSFW mods, like, truly filthy.*
The morning after I see my siblings chuckling and I realize they know. Somehow, they know about my shameful virtual pastimes. But how could they? They must have been stealing my PlayStation while I was outside!
I’m so angry I grab my sister by the throat and slam her to the floor, I want her to confess she used my videogames. She chuckles again, says the PlayStation was hers to begin with. I yell that I bought all the expansions!! I wasted so much money!!** The game is my God-given right!!!
Gran is here, all dressed up because one of my uncles died and they are all going to his funeral (jeez, I hope I actually extended his life instead!). I take the chance to hide the PlayStation parts around the house, hoping that my siblings won’t find it.
I go into my room and my sister is in her bed, pretending to sleep but fully dressed. I’m very suspicious. My bed is upside down, for some reason.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 