Dreary Neverland

Posted on April 26, 2020April 26, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

(I forgot to post my notes yesterday but here’s April 25th entry)

I’m watching Steven Universe, now it’s a Disney Peter Pan sequel, it has beautiful songs. Peter has a new origin story, he was a Greek child who drowned thousands of years ago, and the Powers that Be want to drown every lost boy on the island to make them go home.

The oldest boy, who’s a world-hardened rebel, locks himself up in a shed. Emma Pillsbury is also there, she tries to talk him out if it, but he grabs a rusty saw and cuts off his fingers, one by one. Then his whole hand, then the other. I have to look away. Ms. Pillsbury grabs Fairy Grandmother’s wand and magics the two of them out.

The boy without hands learns that he’s been on Neverland for centuries and his family is gone by now. He is transported back to London, to a dreary little funeral in a dark day. Only a little girl notices him standing between the tombstones. He can see all the ghosts and cuddles with them.

I’m on the balcony and I notice my cat inside another building. I call her and she jumps out of a window, bounces on the ground like a rubber ball and with a supernatural jump lands in my arms.

I run to my mother to tell her, she’s not impressed. We go out, I walk in the middle of the road because I’m afraid of dogs barking from behind their gates. We reach a street market that only sells food because everything else is forbidden during lockdown, I see an old lady that from behind looks exactly like my late Grandma G.: I touch her shoulder, she turns around and she has a big nose and pointy yellow teeth.

Thieves

Posted on March 19, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

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.

*I did that IRL too, guilty as charged.

** Again, true.

Four Snippets

Posted on March 3, 2020March 12, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

There’s been a murder inside a big, white cathedral, two people, quite gruesome by the look of it. I’m with a couple of friends, one of them is my old classmate L. We are not allowed to go inside, but we leave a sad note with a fountain pen and our best wavy handwriting.

It’s a foggy, dark day. I meet both my grandmothers: they are sitting together on a bench outside a house. Grandma G. gives me a ring, it’s silver and heavy, I snatch it out of her hand right away with no shame. I tell them both to be careful and stay safe from the Coronavirus outbreak.

I’m at home, but home is a small RV. I’m waiting for my penpal C. to visit as she promised, because I want to propose to her. She arrives at night, wearing a white spring dress and pushing a shopping cart. She slips in my tiny bed.

It’s Easter, I’m celebrating with my siblings but I’m also missing work. I feel a bit guilty about it, and just then my boss shows up and looks at me and I can tell she’s silently judging me. I have my period and bad cramps, but I tell her I’m gonna wash my face, put my jeans on and go to work.

A Village and a Crime

Posted on February 15, 2020March 28, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m visiting an old English village, the kind with pretty stone cottages. Unfortunately there has been a big fire and the buildings are all black and charred. I’m a BBC journalist and I’m walking around to assess the damage; I see the older villagers gathered under a tent, gossiping about the fire – judging by their clothes I’d say we are in the early 80s, they all look out of a Murder:She Wrote episode.

I walk to the local high school, where the teens are wearing corduroy bell bottoms and colorful vests, and ask to speak from the school intercom. Everyone gasps in delight when I start speaking: I’m a trained journalist, there is no mic feedback and my Ps simply don’t pop, they whisper pleasantly from my mouth.

I announce to the school that the BBC is gonna make a TV series about the village fire, and the revenue money is gonna pay for the reconstruction.

…after all, you have an award winning actress living here!

That’s right, Meryl Streep lives in this village.

Then I dream that my dad has agreed to work with a young man and woman to stop an underage prostitution ring. He’s talking with someone on the phone, another young woman*, he has my elementary school notebook open in front of him and he’s reading from it.

I’m very disappointed in him, I think he should talk to the police instead of believing these two people. And indeed they start acting crazy, the guy takes a saw and cuts his dog almost in half. There is no blood but I still cry in despair. The girl, who is his sister, patches the dog together with a long white gauze, and the poor animal seems as good as new.

*This is a person who IRL was arrested in my town a few days ago for selling out her underage sisters, so there’s an awful rage still fresh in my mind.

Blood, Fire and Disappointment

Posted on February 2, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

Note: the man I’m gonna write about today is a rather famous person who I admire very much. I’d hate for him to accidentally find this dream where some terrible stuff happens to his actual family, I was even tempted to not record it at all. In the end I decided to leave his name out, just in case.

I’m watching a live stream. In it a man is driving a car and at the same time recording a vlog with his wife and children. A terrible accident happens, an explosion. We see the younger child, no more than a toddler, buried by rock and debris, his face burnt and bloody. The older brother is also badly burned. The father looks into the phone camera he’s recording with, his face covered in soot and deadly scared, and tells the audience he’s gonna run for help.

The day goes by slowly, I keep thinking about the accident, wondering what happened, checking Twitter for updates. Finally the man tweets something. A Christian prayer, and then a picture of his younger son with a heartbreaking epitaph. I’m not surprised, the child was badly hurt. But where is the brother?

The live stream starts again, we are showed the other child. His black t-shirt and jeans are burned, it’s night and he’s walking alone into a drive-in restaurant. Inside, standing under neon lights on the shiny floor tiles, there’s no other than Emperor Palpatine. He tries to turn the child to the dark side, but gets stabbed in return: the boy killed him!

People on the Internet rejoice at seeing the boy alive and well, but I’m growing suspicious. The car accident, the fight with Palpatine, it all looked kind of… staged, produced even. Was it all a lie? An excuse for this boy get away with murder? Did the father even got as far as sacrificing his own younger child to get the older one to succeed? I feel shaken.

Another quick dream, because I slept in this Sunday morning.

I notice at the supermarket colorful cardboard boxes on a shelf. I look closer and see pictured on the boxes a set of vintage 90s mugs, just like the ones I used to have breakfast in as a kid! I buy three, one with Chip ‘n Dale, one with Mickey and Donald, and one with Tony the Tiger.

I run home all excited, I want to show them to my sister. She’s sitting on the toilet but doesn’t seem to mind. We open a box and we are immediately overwhelmed by the smell of artificial chocolate, it’s really bad. There are no functional mugs inside, just three plastic replicas with Styrofoam cereal in it. They are cute and colorful, but quite useless.

A Stroll Turned Violent

Posted on January 28, 2020February 7, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m walking in the countryside with my dad, through stone roads and
picturesque cottages. We can hear a bird trilling from a cage in someone’s yard, Dad remarks out loud about how annoying that is. The owner of the bird hears this and comes outside, angry at us: I wait for Dad to walk away, then take her hands in mine (they are small and stubby) and whisper an apology.

“I’m a good person, I’ve never beat anyone in my life!” the woman tells me, pouting.

“I wish I could say the same about my dad,” I reply, and walk away.

We leave the road and pass a wooden gate into a muddy path, and along the way I take cute pictures of pigeons. At the end of the path, in the middle of a clearing in the trees, there’s a small wooden house. A tiny old man greets us at the door, he looks vaguely familiar and Dad introduces him as a distant relative. He invites us inside.

The man’s wife shakes my hand: she is younger and portly, gives me an impression of energy and determination. I discover she is the leader of a political resistance and is trying to unionize a group of factory workers.

I’m now in the factory, I see the workers have received a secret message from their rebel leader. They gather in a room looking for something, they peep from a hole in the wall. Outside the room, their supervisor is growing suspicious: he’s a gaunt young man, he starts asking me too many questions. I’m standing next to a child, my little brother, and we both lie to him, tell him the secrete message was just someone calling a wrong number.

The workers emerge from the room, kidnap their supervisor and rape him with a rusty iron pole. I watch the whole thing, and while I believe the supervisor was enjoying himself, I still feel incredibly scared and guilty. I run back to the small wooden house and when my dad finds me, I lie and say I was there all day and never left.

I feel so guilty that, back home, I frantically try to erase my GPS history, I’m convinced I’m gonna be arrested. It’s hot outside, summer, my cousin G. wants to get me out of the house and have fun. She gives me an olive shirt and suggests I keep the buttons open with a small magnet, to show off my chest. Don’t I want to meet cute boys?! I say I don’t want to meet any boys and refuse to leave the house.

It’s New Year’s Eve. We all gather around the dinner table, a little bit dumbfounded. How can it be 2021 already, where did time go? I don’t have a journal for the new year, I don’t have any stickers, I don’t have a calendar. Then it downs on me: it’s still June, and we’ve been tricked. Is it the police? I check the online forums for traces I might have left behind. Then I wake up and I am very relieved to realize I’m not about to be arrested after all.

Vaguely Star Wars

Posted on January 26, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I don’t remember much, but I’m on some green planet fighting Darth Vader. I cut his limbs with my lightsaber, and somehow this splits him into two separate people: the all-evil Vader and our own Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin, now free from evil, walks into a cave and removes his black mask. There is a man there, an old and stern cyborg with mechanical red eyes that move independently. He warns Anakin that he’s gonna die without his mask, but it’s too late. Anakin wears a pair of sunglasses over his burned and blistered face and goes out to see the world.

Murderers on a Boat

Posted on January 19, 2020January 19, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

My cousin and I are on the run because we killed someone in Venice, and I can still feel the blood spraying from his throat. We desperately need to rest and get rid of evidence, so we choose a random, empty-looking house, we shower and change and are about to leave when a woman appears on the door. She’s around sixty, has short hair and glasses, looks like Phyllis Smith. We’re petrified for a moment, thinking we got caught, but luckily the woman is short sighted and mistakes us for her own nieces! She sees we showered and that we are carrying black garbage bags (to get rid of evidence!) and, bless her soul, just assumes we must have had our periods. She tells us to not worry because “it’s perfectly normal” and that we can use her house whenever we need. “See,” says my cousin as we leave. “Peace of cake.”

My siblings are now tagging along because they’re also murderers. We have found the perfect hiding spot: we’re sailing along the good guys’ ship, so massive they’ll never notice the small boat hiding literally under their noses. Or at least, we think we’re safe, but a government agent storms into the boat and easily defeats all of us! We think we are doomed, but to our surprise he offers us to become state-sanctioned assassins. We quickly take the offer.

Bloody Magazines

Posted on January 13, 2020January 19, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

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.

Little Bigot

Posted on January 12, 2020January 19, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

Aunt T., the one I hate, has a granddaughter. My sister knocks on the door to ask if I would like to meet this child, I say no, absolutely not, I can’t make exceptions. The little girl is already here though, peeking from behind the door, a blonde angel of ten. She’s so adorable I can’t help but letting her in, I tickle her and blow soap bubbles to make her laugh. The child asks to see my ID card and I think, strange, but why not? I send my sister to retrieve my wallet, and as soon as the she sees my ID the kid attacks me! She says she can’t allow mutants and modified humans to exist. Great, I think, she’s a racist like her aunt.

My sister and I are now on the run from the little girl. We escape through various international cities, I remember one has pyramids even though we are in the US. All around us mutants are being abducted and killed. You can’t tell them apart from regular humans unless you have X-Ray vision to check if their bones are made of metal. A man approaches us, promises he’ll lead us to safety. We’re wary at first, but an X-ray scan reveals he’s actually Frozone. Relieved, we follow him.

DECADE DREAM JOURNAL