Scene 1
The opening scene was at some place called the Bath, a huge collection of receiving pools like a water slide. Only I believed somehow that it was a place built specifically for the 92
Olympics. There were all these kids there, hanging out at an abandoned pool, and out of the pool I surface, in a body much foxier than my own,
clad only in a simple bathing suit that Olympic swimmers would wear. This scares the hell out of the
college age kids who see me, since they were having a party and dancing. I walked right up to some guy and started dancing with him against his will. It was like I was a
harbinger for the creatures I would soon be fearing, regular mortals who would at once turn on me, like the
svelte woman emerging from the shower of a vacant room in the movie
The Shining.
Scene 2
There is a major evacuation. Stores and public buildings are looted, people leaving in a hurry. Paper flyers flutter in the halls of dance clubs and grocery stores. There are no cars on the roads. We are all escaping some kind of invasion, not from aliens but from people we know are out to kill us. I am in a black Expedition with a family on the run, when suddenly black smoke starts coming in through the A/C vents. We have to pull over, and I make a wrong turn and end up going the wrong way down an uphill on-ramp. We must have been towing something, because we almost blocked the highway we were on. I popped the hood, but since I have no knowledge of mechanics, I have no idea what is wrong. But I leave the family there and try to find the body shop I work at in real life, thinking maybe I can find another car and drive back in it before whoever is pursuing us finds the family on the side of the road.
The shop is not the one in real life, but this massive warehouse with what seems like miles and miles of parking lot. Even in what is familiar, I do not want anyone to see me. I am sneaking around inside, where instead of cars there is just piles and piles of junk, lamps, picture frames, boxes, like an enormous attic. I can hear my real life boss, Tom, echoing from somewhere outside, talking to an unfamiliar audience. The focus now as time passes has shifted from returning to rescue the family to my own safety. All I can think about is not being found.
I hear a car pull up in the front of the building I am in. It's my real-life co-worker Randy, who is driving a bright red tiny car that I do not recognize, meaning that since he and I do work at a body shop, I have no idea what the make or model is. It is clear that when he steps out of it, he has no idea that Tom is one of them, that he is in any danger. His expression is just as blank and vacuous as it is when he walks into the office from parking his car every morning.
I cannot see him come into contact with Tom, but their conversation seems to echo into the warehouse, where I am trying to be very still and am sweating like mad. Randy doesn't understand where all the people are, or what has happened. The sound wavers in and out and then I hear Tom say, "Where do you think that car you're driving came from?"
Epilogue
I pull from this dream with all the strength I can find sober lucidity, away from the terror and fear of being found by those who are pursuing me, for somehow I know that if I am found, I will be unable to escape death. In my bed, my body fights the dream on a muscular level. It's like my mind had the only muscles that worked to pull me out of the dream, that it did not want to be in this dream anymore and had taken as much as it could. Normally in dreams like this, my subconscious seems to want to hang out in the dream as much as possible, to see what happens. Even in this case, it seemed that I was fighting my subconscious because I didn't want to stick around anymore. I had seen enough. I didn't want to find out what happened to Randy or what was undoubtedly going to happen to me. When I woke, I turned on all the lights in every room of my apartment until the dark feelings that my dream would be a reality and that I wouldn't be able to escape it began to fade. My eyes are crusted with sleepies, so I must have been in very deep REM sleep.
I am eager for the dawn, to go to work and confirm that Randy and Tom and the body shop are all still there. I will try to make myself some toaster waffles and resume a normal morning ritual, maybe even get a shower, even though as I write this, a shower seems like another trap.