Dream Journal #16

There was actually a large chunk of dream time before these sequences, but I remember little aside from being distressed and working for someone who claimed to be my grandmother.

24 Sept—25 Sept

I was with an ambiguous female friend, going to eat dinner. At the restaurant, which was a pirate-themed bar and grille currently having a Halloween special, the lights hung over each table dimly, the booths were black, the tables were plain, lacquered wood, and the menus were made to look like treasure maps. I had made acquaintances with the bartender, a rather heavyset but muscular white man with a trimmed, black beard. When I passed by, he had just finished arguing with a pair of people who walked out. Complaining to me about the heathens with the nerve to insult his chosen major, he cleaned off the bar top with a rag.

On another level of the same area, I was sitting with others in some folding chairs outdoors. Just a bit in front of us was a small, bright stream, and on the other shore a choir was walking in in no particular order and sitting in its own chairs, which faced us. I was very surprised to see Weiss and Sara*, who was wearing very thick, red, cat-eye glasses, and I started freaking out about it to the ambiguous female friend sitting next to me.

Some time earlier, there had been church services in this same location, and I presently recalled how I had given pieces of jewellery (including the lower part of my golden prom earrings) when the donation dish had come around. Suddenly I realised that I wasn't going to get those back, and I wondered aloud quite unhappily how exactly they were making any money off fake gold. My friend said, "I know, right?"

We had to leave afterwards by a large, hexagonal elevator. It went to four floors (one of which was the concert area, and other of which was the bar and grille), but no one pressed any buttons because the lift was already going up, and everyone wanted to get to the fourth floor. As the third floor approached, I kept prompting to see if anyone wanted off, because I really wanted an excuse to get off there, but no one did. Finally the fourth floor approached, and we all prepared to exit. But since the button had never been pressed, the doors never opened, and the elevator suddenly went sailing back down. I had to grab a handicap-style arm rail to keep from slamming into the ceiling as the others screamed and we finally crashed to the ground. The impact irreparably damaged the lift, and the walls were in pieces enough to let us escape.

We needed to get to the higher floors, though, and a man at the bottom, wearing a large fur coat, offered to help us out. We went back into the seats and were given jerseys for the local basketball team that were folded neatly into fourths. I unfolded mine to look at it and then folded it back, although it had to go into three parts because its neck was now occupied with a hanger.

At some point, our mission to go up was revived, but we had no way to go aside from the elevator shaft, which was a skeletal wooden structure. The climbing was brutal, and one girl on her last bit of energy clung to a corner some distance up. Knowing she was going to fall to her death if she didn't keep ascending, she pulled out a picture with a hut and a sparkling river beside it. She tried to use her powers to teleport into the river in the picture, but she couldn't.

*Weiss and Sara were two school friends from some time ago. Together we called ourselves "S.O.D.D." (The Social Outcasts of Doom and Destruction), and our mascot was the S.O.P.O.D. (SquishyOraclePenguinof Doooooooom, said in that fashion). I made it to high school with Weiss, but Sara had moved away, so it oddly makes sense that I was more surprised to see her.