Dream Journal #21

This isn't even all of it. Slightly disturbing details ahead (as if anyone who reads my stories needs to be warned of such things).

10 Aug—11 Aug

My mother was working in an office, a small but spacious room well-lit by the sunlight. She was upset with me because I hadn't removed a certain live cat—a rather large one the colour of sand—from the room. So I grabbed and picked the cat up by its oddly large scruff. Leaving with it, I walked past several buildings before entering a management building.

The man behind the counter was occupied with someone else, so I waited a bit before he invited me to speak. With the intention of putting the cat there, I asked him where my mother's work office was, but he told me there really wasn't one. Since she was working at home, I couldn't use her old office.

I then continued to carry the cat by its scruff to my university. I entered the main sort of welcome building, which was huge, spacious, and only intermittently lit by large windows. A hallway went around the edge with large doors on one side and occasional benches and houseplants on the other. I followed it, past several corners and various stairways covered in red-and-gold argyle carpet. A few normal-sized doors were open to narrow halls of teachers' offices; one of these was at the halfway point up a flight of stairs. At the top of these stairs, I finally decided to rid myself of the cat here by pinning him to a small, black plastic bag on the floor via some sort of arrow or dart through its ear.

From there, I went out the door to a beach area. Some distance away, in the water, stood an obstacle-course-like structure. It was a series of small, round, clear platforms suspended over the water. A popular challenge, it had quite a few students try to step all the way across it without falling off. I watched for a while, as it was exciting and intense rooting them on. The farthest someone had gotten: an Asian girl made it to the second-to-last platform before falling into the water. When I decided to try it myself, I got to the first step not connected to the others by a glass wall before falling.

At this point, I decided to go back and check on the cat, but I entered the wrong door. I was now inside a kids' area that was better-lit than the main building. Several children were seated in a cafeteria-like area, and a few saw me enter. I walked to the edge of the room and tried to squeeze past a frosted glass barrier that led to a small shop, but a clear panel of glass blocked the last bit of space between them. I failed to get past the other side of the room for the same reason.

Then I was escorted on a tour of the building. One sturdy-looking boy blocked an exit door that we passed. To the side of one hallway was an arcade area partitioned off by dark curtains on curtain rods. I tried to push a little bit up to peek at the games, but the entire half of the curtains angled up to the dismay of the children.

I finally made it outside to a kids' water park. Frustrated, I wandered around out there for a while before noticing that several of the buildings I could see in the area were those across the street from my university. I concluded that I must have been across the street, although I was baffled that I had managed to do that.

I made it to the side of the road with several other students around my age. We stood tensely, waiting for some cars to stop before we sprinted for the university entrance with its brick name sign and shrubbery. As I made it to the other side, I turned back to see one of the students with some sort of handicap still in the middle of the last lane. Another student scooped him up and rushed him to the grass as if we were all in great danger.

Alone again, I went through the gates and ended up on a crowded, unmarked street with vendor carts and vandalised buildings scattered along its sides. I wasn't able to stroll ahead for long before two of the teenagers there started to chase me. Poor, one of them demanded I give him everything black that I was wearing; the other wanted all of my clothes. Terrified, I kept running until I found a door at the end of the street and successfully shut out what I recognised as the impoverished part of campus.

I was now in a sort of backstage area that went around the entire edge of the university. Keeping quiet, I passed through several of the same nondescript red panel doors before I ran into a performer. He was around a corner towards the inside of the area, so I couldn't see him, but I asked where the Honors House was. He pointed me to the left.

I continued through the same area until I emerged into the main building again. I found the right staircase and went to check on the cat. By the time I got there, it was already being skinned and its parts harvested. It wasn't what I was hoping to find, but I left the workers to their job without any objections.

Later, I was at a table chatting with a group of students. A man with glasses and frizzy blonde hair admitted that he wouldn't have made it here without medical intervention. I saw where this was going immediately.

There was a flashback to the man waiting just outside a phone booth. Inside it was a woman with short hair dyed greens and blues who slammed the doors outward without looking. The man was struck in the forehead hard enough to knock him to the ground. A huge lump was forming on his skin before long. He was only able to be saved with a cat blood transfusion.