Three Dreams
A brief story about a scary dream.
A short story about a funny dream.
A long story about a symbolic dream:
I'm in a big van heading down the busiest street in my hometown. I'm only going about 15 MPH. In the rearview mirror I see cars speeding towards me like they're going to ram me. I cringe because I expect the impact to come at any time, but it doesn't.
Now, I'm in a garage with the van. I recognize the garage as the garage from the house where I grew up. I'm inside the van thinking I have to fix this or I'm going to kill somebody. It's obvious to me why the van isn't working properly: the accelerator is jammed and the brake isn't fastened to the floor properly. For some reason I only focus on the brake. It won't fasten to the floor as it was designed, so I kind of tether it using some metal extension coming off of the oversized emergency brake.
I sit in the driver's seat and release the E brake. I begin to slowly go down the driveway but I keep speeding up. Once I'm completely down, I think the best thing to do to keep going in circles. Now I'm doing cookies backwards on a suburban street at a very reckless speed.
And then I see a motorcycle police officer parked nearby. He's not directly in my path. He's a couple of feet out of my cookie's orbit. But why isn't he noticing me driving out of control?
I turn the wheel slightly to avoid the innocent officer. I immediately realize I have overcorrected my turning. I hear a horrible crash. The van stops and I jump outside. The officer is laying on the ground unconsious. His helmet has flown off and his black framed glases are broken.
I decide I'll inch closer to him to see if he's still alive. When I'm about two full steps away, he wakes up and he threatens me with his nightstick. He doesn't say anything, he just pokes at the air blindly with the weapon. The last thing I want to do is scare an officer, so I fall to my knees and put my hands in the air. This seems to put him at ease and it looks like his memory is coming back. He gives me a half smile as he turns to gently wave in another squad car.
A tall, attractive looking woman gets out of the squad car. She kind of reminds me of Chrissy from Three's Company. I get the feeling she's smarter than Chrissy though and that she somehow is going to straiten everything out.
Officer Chrissy stands where the driver's side door of the van used to be while it was in the garage. Now, of course, there isn't a van parked there. It's down in the street. Where the van used to be is a pile of bricks neatly stacked almost head high. Officer Chrissy reaches for a brick and takes it into her left hand saying, "This is a very expensive brick isn't it?"
I respond without really paying attention, "Ah no way, those are just bricks." But I look more closely at what she's holding and it's a very large brick, more like a clay tile really, and it has a portrait of a person on it and a name underneath the person. It looks like a memorial brick of some sort. I look back at the pile from which it came and there's a lot of these bricks, all with names and pictures. Then it comes to me: these people -- they're my family's ancestors.
Officer Chrissy carefully returns the brick back to the pile. As she does this, I know what's coming -- I had hoped for it as she was putting it back. The brick wobbles and it begins to slide. This makes another neatly stacked brick teeter. Then that brick slides and slams into a another brick. But the brick pile never comes crashing down as I thought it would. Brick by brick (I'd say about a dozen bricks) crash into one another like dominoes. And we watch all this take place over a time span of five seconds. When the last brick is done falling, officer Chrissy says, "Do I hear a puppy barking?"
It's Daphne, our family's dog. She was a white Maltese that hated me. In my dream, her bark sounds small and playful and Officer Chrissy wants to see her. I figure if I show her Daphne, she'll soften up and let me go without a ticket. So, I step inside the house to pick up the little dog. Just as I lift her into my arms I note that she's covered with feces. Not dog feces, but soft, fresh human feces. I quickly put her back down, close the door behind me, and tell the pretty officer that she's too dirty to visit.
"How about if I show you what happened? Want to take a ride in the van?" I ask.
We get in the van and I'm embarrased because there's dirty clothes everywhere. On Chrissy's seat is the shirt I intend to wear to my nursing interview today after I wake up from this very dream.
"It's laundry day," I explain.
"You seem like a responsible adult," she reassures me.
Then, it happens again. The van starts to back up slowly and begins to accelerate faster and faster. I can't push down the brake. The van drives toward a green house at the end of the street where my old friend Mathew Elliot Holmes used to live. Suddenly, the van stops without destroying anything. A young man pops up from the side of the van. (I think I recognize him as a gay man who used to live two doors down from Fernando and I in Portland, Oregon. His partner has HIV.) I say, "Sorry for almost killing you Chris."
His face looks mad and he disgruntledly replies, "That's okay. I read your bumber stickers already." I turn to Chrissy and tell her one of the stickers says something like "How's my driving? Call ______."
Chrissy and I start driving back to my childhood house in the Van. We are traveling at a very reasonable speed. I tell her I've never had a moving violation, only a couple of accidents and a parking ticket. "Will you give me only a warning this time?" I plead.
She says I have made some very grave mistakes and that it's not for her or the fallen officer to decide. She'll have to write a report and the courts will make a decision.
I am dissapointed and scared. This wasn't the answer I expected. Then I feel something fluffy in my arms. There's a familiar, comforting smell. It's our old white dog, Daphne. She's just a puppy and she's cute and brilliantly clean.
Officer Chrissy starts filming me holding Daphne with a Super 8 camera she has found inside the van.
"Did you clean her up?" I ask.
"No," she says as she's filming, "You did."
A brief story about a scary dream.
A short story about a funny dream.
A long story about a symbolic dream:
I'm in a big van heading down the busiest street in my hometown. I'm only going about 15 MPH. In the rearview mirror I see cars speeding towards me like they're going to ram me. I cringe because I expect the impact to come at any time, but it doesn't.
Now, I'm in a garage with the van. I recognize the garage as the garage from the house where I grew up. I'm inside the van thinking I have to fix this or I'm going to kill somebody. It's obvious to me why the van isn't working properly: the accelerator is jammed and the brake isn't fastened to the floor properly. For some reason I only focus on the brake. It won't fasten to the floor as it was designed, so I kind of tether it using some metal extension coming off of the oversized emergency brake.
I sit in the driver's seat and release the E brake. I begin to slowly go down the driveway but I keep speeding up. Once I'm completely down, I think the best thing to do to keep going in circles. Now I'm doing cookies backwards on a suburban street at a very reckless speed.
And then I see a motorcycle police officer parked nearby. He's not directly in my path. He's a couple of feet out of my cookie's orbit. But why isn't he noticing me driving out of control?
I turn the wheel slightly to avoid the innocent officer. I immediately realize I have overcorrected my turning. I hear a horrible crash. The van stops and I jump outside. The officer is laying on the ground unconsious. His helmet has flown off and his black framed glases are broken.
I decide I'll inch closer to him to see if he's still alive. When I'm about two full steps away, he wakes up and he threatens me with his nightstick. He doesn't say anything, he just pokes at the air blindly with the weapon. The last thing I want to do is scare an officer, so I fall to my knees and put my hands in the air. This seems to put him at ease and it looks like his memory is coming back. He gives me a half smile as he turns to gently wave in another squad car.
A tall, attractive looking woman gets out of the squad car. She kind of reminds me of Chrissy from Three's Company. I get the feeling she's smarter than Chrissy though and that she somehow is going to straiten everything out.
Officer Chrissy stands where the driver's side door of the van used to be while it was in the garage. Now, of course, there isn't a van parked there. It's down in the street. Where the van used to be is a pile of bricks neatly stacked almost head high. Officer Chrissy reaches for a brick and takes it into her left hand saying, "This is a very expensive brick isn't it?"
I respond without really paying attention, "Ah no way, those are just bricks." But I look more closely at what she's holding and it's a very large brick, more like a clay tile really, and it has a portrait of a person on it and a name underneath the person. It looks like a memorial brick of some sort. I look back at the pile from which it came and there's a lot of these bricks, all with names and pictures. Then it comes to me: these people -- they're my family's ancestors.
Officer Chrissy carefully returns the brick back to the pile. As she does this, I know what's coming -- I had hoped for it as she was putting it back. The brick wobbles and it begins to slide. This makes another neatly stacked brick teeter. Then that brick slides and slams into a another brick. But the brick pile never comes crashing down as I thought it would. Brick by brick (I'd say about a dozen bricks) crash into one another like dominoes. And we watch all this take place over a time span of five seconds. When the last brick is done falling, officer Chrissy says, "Do I hear a puppy barking?"
It's Daphne, our family's dog. She was a white Maltese that hated me. In my dream, her bark sounds small and playful and Officer Chrissy wants to see her. I figure if I show her Daphne, she'll soften up and let me go without a ticket. So, I step inside the house to pick up the little dog. Just as I lift her into my arms I note that she's covered with feces. Not dog feces, but soft, fresh human feces. I quickly put her back down, close the door behind me, and tell the pretty officer that she's too dirty to visit.
"How about if I show you what happened? Want to take a ride in the van?" I ask.
We get in the van and I'm embarrased because there's dirty clothes everywhere. On Chrissy's seat is the shirt I intend to wear to my nursing interview today after I wake up from this very dream.
"It's laundry day," I explain.
"You seem like a responsible adult," she reassures me.
Then, it happens again. The van starts to back up slowly and begins to accelerate faster and faster. I can't push down the brake. The van drives toward a green house at the end of the street where my old friend Mathew Elliot Holmes used to live. Suddenly, the van stops without destroying anything. A young man pops up from the side of the van. (I think I recognize him as a gay man who used to live two doors down from Fernando and I in Portland, Oregon. His partner has HIV.) I say, "Sorry for almost killing you Chris."
His face looks mad and he disgruntledly replies, "That's okay. I read your bumber stickers already." I turn to Chrissy and tell her one of the stickers says something like "How's my driving? Call ______."
Chrissy and I start driving back to my childhood house in the Van. We are traveling at a very reasonable speed. I tell her I've never had a moving violation, only a couple of accidents and a parking ticket. "Will you give me only a warning this time?" I plead.
She says I have made some very grave mistakes and that it's not for her or the fallen officer to decide. She'll have to write a report and the courts will make a decision.
I am dissapointed and scared. This wasn't the answer I expected. Then I feel something fluffy in my arms. There's a familiar, comforting smell. It's our old white dog, Daphne. She's just a puppy and she's cute and brilliantly clean.
Officer Chrissy starts filming me holding Daphne with a Super 8 camera she has found inside the van.
"Did you clean her up?" I ask.
"No," she says as she's filming, "You did."
posted by c. @ 11:50 AM
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