Dream Log: June 4, 2002

I find myself sat in a dingy cafe at 4AM in the morning, eating a club sandwich (which was very nice, thank you) whilst a dirty, ugly waitress watches me from behind the counter. She keeps watching until I finish. In disgust, I throw down my napkin and exit out the front door, only to find my friend Cam waiting for me outside. We take a quick walk around a building site (not my usual cup of tea) until the sun comes up.

I leave Cam and enter the building next to the cafe, what appeared to be a hotel. After giving my name to the lady standing at the counter, she visibly looks surprised and tells me to sit down on a sofa in the corner. As I take my place, I realise someone is sat next to me. It's Charisma Carpenter and she is pleased to see me. We start talking about this and that, before the lady comes back and ushers me into a very large, circular room.

Standing in the room is a fat, dark-haired man, sporting a goatee, in a white lab coat. In the middle of the room is a huge circular pool, above which a holographic display is being projected (of course, all holographic projections must be green and white or they just loose that whole cutting-edge science geek appearance).

"I have something to tell you, Chris" begins the man, in a large booming voice. "You're infected with an alien parasite which is eating your body away." I remain strangely stoic (I think I would care more about this turn of events in real life). "You must get in the pool at once." I ease myself into the pool, and sit on a Jacuzzi-style ledge on the side. The projector displays what the scientist is about to do. "Don't worry, there are only two courses of treatment, and one always works. Here is number one." The projection starts to spin round and round, and starts displaying planets and such. I remain quizzical as to how this could possibly help. The projection stops spinning again. "Hmm, that didn't work," he says. I think to myself: 'I could have told you that.' "One moment please." The man leaves out the door I came in.

He returns with Charisma who rushes in, hands outstretched towards me "Chris! I just heard!" Her eyes are welling up. I can tell, as a feeling washes over my body, that she is in love with me. The scientist motions for her to enter the pool as well.

"Right, I'll fire it up again." The projection again starts whirling around, planets zooming around distant stars. Faster and faster it spins up, until eventually a large, white pulsating centre appears. "One of you will now need to enter the anomaly. Then Chris will be cured. However, no-one has actually gone in before. I'm not really sure what will happen." The scientist nonchalantly shrugs, as callous scientists do. I remain fixated on the white ball, not scared, but simply thinking 'There is no way you're making me go in that.'

Charisma slowly turns to face me, and gently places a kiss on my cheek. "I will do it," she breathlessly starts, "for you." I turn to look at her. She is obviously scared. Just as I reach out to stop her, she jumps into the white abyss.

I wake up.

For some reason unknown to me, I slept naked last night. This is not the normal state of affairs.

So I had a dream about being naked. I was on a bus, and decided I wanted to be naked, so I took all my clothes off and put them in my backpack. Then I noticed my stop coming, and had almost missed it, so I dashed off the bus.

At this point, I realized I left my backpack of clothes on the bus. So I was outside. Naked. On Eglinton Street, Toronto.

I was feeling a little sheepish about being naked outdoors, but not truly-mortified-embarassed like (but perhaps em-bare-assed?) . I had nowhere to go, so I was bouncing/bounding/jumping down the street (I wanted to keep my legs together, so walking was out, apparently). Then the cops came to arrest me and I was very happy.

Lee, Destiny, me, and someone else were going to do some sort of performance. (Lee is an old friend from high school drama and Destiny is his fiancée; both were Theatre majors at their college.) I had his sound effects tape which also produced other effects, such as heat emanating as if from a portable heater. I was cold and I wanted it to warm my room, but he needed it to practice, so I gave it to him. I think at the beginning our acts were separate. I certainly was not prepared; I needed to change but every place was cold, and I knew he needed the tape to practice so I couldn't use it to warm a room.

I found my leotard, but the tights that I had planned on using, once I turned them right-side-out, had a pattern on them. Lee was sure that we needed to wear the basic ballet pink tights, so I turned another pair around. All of the tights on my floor turned out to be patterned. Lee pointed out what a coincidence it was that two of the pairs were the exact opposite of each other: exactly the same except one was black-on-white and the other was white-on-black. I thought I was supposed to hurry. Finally I found the right tights. I realized that I was warm from all of the running around. I don't remember actually getting dressed; I just suddenly was. Then I needed shoes. I had a box with all of my old ballet shoes and I dumped them on the ground. The newest-looking ones fit. I was glad.

Suddenly I was lined up with others dressed in the basic ballet uniform of black leotards, pink tights, and pink ballet shoes. The people with me were all people I knew from drama in high school. Monica was on one side of me, and Joanna on the other. (I have never been very close to either of them, and though I recently saw Joanna at our old high school's graduation, I haven't seen Monica in a year or more.) All were girls except one, Tyron. I think he was wearing the same outfit - the female outfit. I only saw his head and shoulders; he was across the room from me.

Everyone lay down in a row, and there was so little room that we were touching. We were supposed to be sitting with our legs straight out in front of us, bending over. I could feel Monica and Joanna soft like pillows against me on either side. At this point I woke up enough to realize that I was feeling actual pillows on either side of me in my sleep. We went through the motions, and I could not see the teacher, but in my mind I knew exactly what exercises we were doing (I took six years of ballet as a child and one college class) and although I was still no more skilled than the beginners around me (I have never been good at it) I remembered what a relaxing and wonderful exercise it was and was in my element in remembering the pattern of movement.

We finished and another group came into the room. My group was crammed against the back wall, watching. These appeared to be little kids. They did a little dance together, and then one child in each pair began to lift the other, with the other standing in the hands of the first. It suddenly became apparent that one of the partners was much older than the second, although it had not been that way at first. One girl in the back giggled and hid her face in her partner's hair, too shy to be lifted up. Someone said "Lisa's sister isn't ready." or something like that. I looked closer and it was my cousin Lisa, holding one of our little second-cousins. Then I also saw Paul, her brother, holding another little second-cousin. I was upset because they were my second-cousins too, yet I had not been even invited to participate in this special presentation with them.

There were a lot of older kids crowding into the room now. Someone reported that many of the girls were asking for Tyron's phone number. I burst out laughing; such a thought was absurd - plus, I knew what he was really like. I kept laughing, and the person I was with became confused. He asked me why I would not want to give out my phone number. I could have sworn he had said people wanted Tyron's number. I didn't understand why he had changed his story.

***

Suddenly I was in another place, in a house. I was in the kitchen/living room. Lillis was cooking, Ryan was on the couch. I think I was sitting on the counter. I was mushing up some eggs for no particular reason. Literally put eggs in a bowl and mushed them with my hands, except they were more gelatinous than eggy, and the shells sort of dissolved or something. Lillis was asking Ryan what he wanted her to make for breakfast. I was jealous that I couldn't cook. I asked her if she wanted to use the eggs I had mushed up, but she said that they probably wouldn't work. I felt shot down even though I expected it. My father was there, too. Finally, he went to read or play computer games in the back room (which was the same relation to the room we were in as my father's bedroom is to our kitchen at home), and I moved to the couch with Ryan and snuggled up against him. We were glad that my father had finally left so we could hug.

Then there were more people, I think my youngest brother and some chubby girl who was Lillis' friend. We were talking, and every once in a while Ryan would go to the doorway of the back bedroom and say something to my father about how high my grades were or something else encouraging about the quality of my life.

We were talking about the aliens we had discovered, moties. I was adamant that I did not want their species named after me - "something like Motius Rebeccus" I said. We had supper, which was some aliens. I ate some, then saw one that looked like a miniature turtle (nowhere in the dream did I see aliens that actually looked like the Moties in Larry Niven and Jeffrey Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye", but they were called "Moties"). I picked all of the miniature turtles out and put them aside. Then I had the aliens called to pick them up. I was not sure whether I should be embarrassed about eating some or rejecting some.

We were all getting ready for something. Lillis and her chubby friend went into the next room, and I was going to follow them when they pointed out a strange band of cloth that had been affixed to the door. The Moties had set something up. I was too scared to go in. I went back into the other room. Most of the lights had gone out and the place was dim. I was incredibly frightened of the dimness. Ryan was already dressed; he was wearing black clothes that looked like something Luke Skywalker would have worn, with a black cape or cloak. He comforted me and said he would go with me to change, since my main fear was that no one should go into the Motie-infested room without a partner. Then I began to panic about rescuing Lillis, but she and her chubby friend showed up in the room and said that they had escaped. We went into many dressing rooms, but they were all dim with many light bulbs burned out or fading.

I continued to panic and told them that I was not only afraid of the dark, I was also afraid of the dimness. Another girl, also supposedly one of Lillis' friends but thinner than her other friend, began helping Lillis disassemble a lamp for me. I was not sure they had the best idea, but they took the lamp to the main room and reassembled it and handed me a picture of Jesus. Lillis tried to hang it on the wall, but the only thing she had to hang it on was an imperfection in the plaster, and it wouldn't stay up there, so she handed it to me. I didn't know what I was supposed to do with it. Her thinner friend sat down beside me with a mirror. I said "Thank you" because I thought it was for me, but she started using it herself. Then I realized that if I rubbed the dust off, behind the words the plaque that Lillis had given me was a mirror, too.

Then I woke up.

More weird dreams tonight. I vaguely remember something about rearending someone, in a similar theme from the other night, but the one that really freaked me out goes like this:

I'm wandering around in what I seem to remember as a desert, or at least a very arid environment. I see a baby carriage (which somehow resembled a coffin) with three men, all wearing religious garb, clustered around it. (I clearly remember one of them wearing Catholic Bishop stuff, but can't remember the rest.) The carriage has a full body inside of it, and the bishop is holding a Star Trek-esque instrument the size and shape of a large pen, kind of like one of the handheld medical scanners. He doesn't notice me approach at first, and the three talk, although not loud enough so that I can hear them. He points the instrument at the corpse's face, and the flesh literally twists, almost as if one had applied a image convolution filter to it. Yes. To his face.

At this point they notice me approach, and all turn towards me, silent. I stop, dead in my tracks, and just stare. They stare back for several seconds more, then the bishop starts yelling vaguely. He points the Star Trek facetwister at me, and from about 10 yards away, it gently twists a small point of flesh on my cheek. I don't remember it hurting -- in fact, the only awareness I remember was seeing it from a third-person perspective.

I run. At this point, I wake up.