Little Little Women

A recurring dream: I’m at school, usually high school, and still have to graduate. It’s been years and I’m stuck here, failing my finals every time and having to go back. Often I’m sitting in my old philosophy teacher’s class, but in my dreams he teaches something even more horrid, like math or biology. I’m always unprepared, always didn’t study, always have skipped classes and don’t know how to catch up. Today’s dream is no different, I’m sitting at my desk but I don’t even know where on the textbook we’re at, I’m hoping and praying that the teacher won’t ask me questions. Suddenly a thought occurs to me: I’m starting my new job soon!* How can I go to school if I’m supposed to be at work every morning? Does this mean…? Dare I hope? I run to my mom and ask her if I’m allowed to quit school, at long last.


Another dream: I’m sitting in a little Victorian living room, I am Jo March from Little Women. I’m entertaining guests with my sisters, there’s two gentlemen for now but we’re waiting for a friend of Meg’s to come by, we’re told she’s a very sweet young lady. She arrives just as Beth is sitting at the piano singing an Ave Maria with her beautiful soprano voice. I think to myself it’s pretty cinematic and we’re gonna make a great impression. The guest enters the room and Amy –as played by a young Kirsten Dust– does a little double take and exclaims, “And who are you supposed to be?!” It’s very funny and endearing.

We all go out to the yard where the gentlemen strike a conversation with Netflix’s Lucifer. The two are gushing about something awful, like slave trade. Lucifer punishes us all by shrinking down the whole party to half our size. Baffled, Amy picks up a red leaf from the ground, it’s bigger than her hand now.

(Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash )

Meg and I leave to find a cure, accompanied by our butler, who’s a posh Brit with a white mustache. We are so small the three of us look like children walking down the street. We reach my IRL neighborhood and sneak in the local kindergarten, the rooms inside are covered wall to wall and floor to ceiling with blue porcelain tiles. We leave from the window, and there’s a cackle of hyenas waiting for us outside! We grab our batons and flame throwers and get ready for the fight.


*I am starting a new job on Thursday.

Fantastical Mountains

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.

( Photo by Christian Löhner on Unsplash )

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.

Dangerous Slopes

I can’t remember much today. I think I was part of a group of people, and we were riding BMX bikes in town.

We come across a giant water slide (a bit of a recurring dream of mine) and I wonder if I can jump it with my bike. I do just so, get to the other side, and there’s a girl there attacking someone…? And I throw her to the ground and hold her in a leg lock. She tells me I’m a virgin and therefore I have no power over her, but I ignore it and keep her pinned to the ground.

Of Monsters and Relatives

My first dream of 2020 is a recurring one. I meet my least favorite relatives, Aunt T. and her husband, Uncle F.: they’re bigoted, obnoxious, judgy and loud, they scare me so much I get out of my way to avoid them. In my dreams, though, I always snap like a wounded animal, covering them with vicious insults, spelling out just how much I despise them. I never have the guts to do that IRL.


The second dream is about a Disney-themed water park. Every attraction is rather original, the one I remember best is set in the The Little Mermaid kitchen where Sebastian got almost cooked. The pool is literally just a giant kitchen sink full of dish soap.

As I go through the rides I realize my main objective is to slain a monster, a giant sea monster that lives in a cave. There’s a woman with me, she’s a harsh-faced lady with long black hair. Now I cannot tell who she was supposed to be, I just remember her unpleasant personality, a bit like my mother’s.

(Photo by Ellen Jantsch on Unsplash )

We have obtained a powerful weapon: it’s an animal’s giant nail, yellow, big and round like a satellite dish. It’s clear to me that we have to sneak inside the cave and take the monster by surprise. He’s not gonna see us coming until it’s too late, just like Saurun when the Hobbits reached Mount Doom. I order the woman to not touch the nail we’re carrying, because if she touches it the monster will know we’re here. The woman thinks she knows better (just like my mother) and scratches on the nail. The monster comes for us.