Circus Cats and Violent Delegates

I dream that I’m looking into colleges for when I finish high school. At the same time I’m also my current adult self, so I end up choosing a psychology degree, because it’ll help with my retail job, somehow?? I guess customers do be crazy.

At the same time I’m looking into buying a car, I select an old gray Citroën, extremely boring but it somehow only costs 400 bucks. I can’t even drive but that’s not gonna stop me! I lie in the back seat and smile and smile.

I go home and I find a dozen cats, most of them black. My own cat is conspicuously missing. All the cats are wearing circus clothes. I go fill the bathtub (it’s plastic, transparent blue), they all follow me and jump in the water. I start brushing them with soap and they all look very satisfied, like they’ve been trained for this. There is a white cat with a bleeding injury on her shoulder, and a gray tabby with his legs missing. There also a talking toy astronaut.

Afterward I’m walking home from school and decide to visit the local catholic church. I haven’t been inside the building in years and I don’t like religious institutions on principle, but here I go, and the church is packed so I have to sit on the marble steps.

A bearded man stood up and is now giving a speech a few seats from me. Another guy (I recognize him, it’s a local politician) attacks him, a fist fight ensues. I’m enjoying this more than I can say, these religious types and their hypocrisy! The politician notices I’m chuckling ant attacks me too, scratches my face. I say I’m just an innocent schoolgirl! I’m not though, I’m in my 30s, there’s blood pouring down my face and I’m still laughing.

Deep Space Store

I dream that I’m repeating the last year of high school. Again. It takes me a while to remember I have a job now and my mornings are booked.

Then I dream that I arrive at space station and visit a big store there. I stumble over my feet and a little boy laughs at me. He’s with his dad. Later the boy has some difficulties with the escalators, I help him out because I’m so generous, the boy follows me around the store and his dad is very worried.

Fruddi The Sci-Fi Teacher

(I was feeling a bit sick yesterday.)

I dream over and over again that I’m telling Boss Lady over the phone that I can’t possibly go to work in the morning, I could be contagious, I have an upset stomach, and hear how sore my throat is! (I’m faking it).

(I suck it up and go to work in the morning.)


I dream that I’m sitting in my old classroom next to M. the runner. As usual I don’t have any notebooks or pens with me. I confess to M. that I haven’t been able to follow a math lesson in years, I cannot understand it and I’ve stopped trying.

A new teacher shows up: she has red hair and a red beard, she’s wearing glasses, a white blouse with colorful umbrella prints and a rainbow skirt. On her arm, a rainbow umbrella. I observe every detail so later I can describe her to my penpal.

Her name is Fruddi and she’s our new sci-fi teacher. There’s something unsettling about her.

(Photo by Rajshri Bharath KS on Unsplash)

She writes a poem on the blackboard in her very neat handwriting. I’m sitting front row resting my chin on my hands, looking bored. She demands why I’m not copying the poem down, I say what’s the point? I’ll google it at home. She rants and rave about today’s lazy youth, I tell her, deadpan,

I am smart and I am confident and you won’t judge me.

She looks at me pensively. She knew a boy once, she says, who was so lazy. He was so lazy he never found a job and stayed home with his momma. This makes me angry, I walk straight to her face and hiss,

Or maybe he was severely depressed.

Fruddi looks dumbstruck. Come with me, she says. She leads me to the school graveyard, old tombstones and overgrown greenery. It looks so pretty I wish I had a camera with me.

Fruddi leads me to her family chapel, where a mummy lays on the stone. This is my boy, she says, taking the body in her arms. I’m so scared and she’s distracted, so I run back to the classroom, but the other kids have left.

I track them to the gym. The boys are playing soccer with famous footballer Christian Vieri. The girls are sitting in a low pool, looking adorable in matching swimsuits and caps. I run to them and relay my scary mummy story. They all console me.

A Long One For A Change

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.

(Photo by Ricardo Cruz on Unsplash)

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.

“Farewell, farewell,” says S.

I Never Miss Work But I Think About It A Lot And That’s Enough To Make Me Feel Guilty

I dream that I’m late for work. I lie and tell my cousin a tree fell in front of my house, a fire truck had to be called and I couldn’t get away sooner. She tells me to call the police and I don’t know how long I can keep up the lie.

After work I go back home and my old crush is waiting for me there. He wants to buy me ice cream, I tell him my favorite flavor is crème caramel. My cat finds the front door open and tries to run away, he catches her and she purrs in his arms. I find it very endearing, my cat is typically so mean with strangers.

Picture Anxiety

I dream that I overslept and missed work. In the afternoon I go see Boss Lady in her office, pleading for forgiveness. She shows me her address book, where she wrote “FIRED” in big underlined letters. I beg for a second chance, she gives me the book and instruct to copy all her contacts with a fountain pen. My handwriting is absolutely atrocious.

She gives me a second task, I am to go in town and take selfies for a store ad. I step in a clothing store, thinking I should look a little more fashionable, but girly clothes make me uncomfortable. I also consider dying my hair salmon pink, but I feel too ugly even for that.

(Photo by Arisa Chattasa on Unsplash)

I decide I’ll just take the picture, even though it’s cloudy and I’m wearing boring gray clothes. I’ll sit in front of a marble wall and look up, smiling. I ask a man to take the picture, and he’s apparently a “pro” because he wants me to look more dynamic to “sell the product”. He instructs me to jump, shoots on his vintage camera and the flash explodes, sending an electrical current down the street.

A Bit of Nonsense Before the Alarm Rings

I dream that my penpal C is texting me all excited because she thinks I converted to Islam, I don’t know how to tell her I’m a catholic (note: I’m very much an atheist in real life). Her texts are appearing to me on the label of the water bottle I’m drinking. I take a sip and realize it’s wine. I try to throw up, I can’t.

I get outside. It’s cloudy and the trees are blooming, it looks like March instead of June. A young man runs past me wearing red robes and holding a broomstick; he’s going to a nearby park to play a mock Quidditch game. I want to follow him, but it’s Monday and I need to go to work instead.

God How I Despise That Man

I dream that I’m waiting and waiting to be allowed back to work (just like I’m waiting IRL). It’s raining, like it often happens in my dreams, and it’s New Year. Ronald Dump, the oaf president, is on TV, chugging a bottle of Champagne. He’s looking down from his balcony wearing a night robe, fat and disgusting. A tall figure appears behind him, Drumpf is too drunk to notice. He’s gonna push him, he’s gonna push him, the whole word prays, eyes glued to the TV.

My alarm rings, I sigh in frustration. I really wanted to watch that murder going down.

Some Hetero Content For A Change

I’m at school; there is a “problematic” boy and a teacher provokes him into being violent, all so he can expel him. I’m outraged, I know he has a difficult home situation and doesn’t deserve this. I also think I’m in love with him. He’s blonde and not exactly handsome. I tell my teachers that I lost all respect for them.

I walk away with the boy. He has a job at a liquor store just right beside the store I work in, it must have been destiny. I tell him I haven’t worked in months though, because of the lockdown*. I go home and I’m bare footed, I keep walking on dog poop and it’s awful. I come across a group of volunteers cleaning the streets and picking up all the poop and I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

Back at school the teachers are organizing a D&D game that is also a play. I’m on the losers’ side, and when the play starts our costumes are cheap and ugly while our rivals looks magnificent. We are still going to beat them though.


*Alas, true. But also, how am I allowed to go to school in the dream and not to work??

Old Grudges, Old Crushes

My sister comes back home because she broke up with her boyfriend, I am SO not okay with sharing a room with her again. In her bag there’s a lot of my stuff she must have stolen in the past, like my Bluetooth speaker. I yell that I won’t let her stay with me, and drag her bed away.


I go to my boss to explain why I can’t possibly come back to work even when the lockdown is over. While I wait for her I sit and chat with my old coworkers, when I see at a nearby table M., the girl I had a crush on in elementary school (it was actually middle school IRL, but apparently not so in my dream). M. is as beautiful as I remember, with olive skin, amber hair and deep brown eyes. She’s with her friends and hasn’t noticed me, so I decide I’m gonna wear all pink to look as pretty as I can. I wear a Chibiusa wig, but it’s too heavy and I take it off immediately. My own hair comes off with it, and I’m now a balding middle-aged man.