I'm visiting my mother's house. They're all getting ready and dressed up in retro gear for something, some kind of "flashback to the 60's" event tonight. My mom's
ex-boyfriend Kevin comes to pick us all up and take us to it. It's raining torrents outside. Even though he has a normal-sized car with plenty of space, my mother's sitting in his lap as he drives, and my sister (wearing something red) is in her lap. Kevin is suitably squashed, and tries to maneuver us down off the short hill in the rain, but we end up sliding down half-backwards through the grass onto the road.
We're at the 60's place. A big, open, well-lit house. Tons of people are there. They're playing games as we all walk in--basketball by the sound of it. Some of us are assigned to two teams with animal names I can't remember now and, divided into four groups, taken to sit in a big room with lots of doors on either end. (I hear a
score--some Turtle team is beating someone else by about eight hundred to seventy.)
The two groups of us that had been assigned to the teams walk out through the farthest door on the left-hand side. I'm on a remaining group. Some guy talks to us about whether we're still playing or not. (There aren't many in our group--me, some kid, and a few scattered adults. The other teams are huge.) An employee comes and has a talk with him, and so we end up getting to following after them anyway. My friend Daniel was in another group but had to turn back and get something. I worry about whether he'll find the way we went--there's really a lot of doors in this hall.
I end up marching after everyone else. The employees of the place are all dressed in white outfits; even though we took the same exit as everyone else, our route seems to be going through the kitchen instead. Hmm. I meet a kid from another group and start walking with him. He shows me his yearbook.
I wish that so many people had signed my yearbook. I turn through page after page after page of the really long type of letters people tend to write. "Dear Engl" this and "Hey Engl" that. I guess that's his name. A couple of pages are covered entirely with Bible texts from different people. Wow. I look in the yearbook-proper. I see pictures of ancient artifacts and descriptions of them. Wow.
Engl and I get pretty much separated from the group, and I suggest turning back to see if we can find Daniel. The path has been pretty straightforward, so we go back. When we arrive at what should be the big blue room with the doors, however, it doesn't seem to be the same room. Instead, there's a kind of grungy brown room with a large bunkbed in it. Daniel is lying on the bottom bunk looking scared, and with good reason, as the top bunk is occupied by a sleeping giant with a really big axe. I motion to Daniel to come out, and he shakes his head no. There's a motion, and the axe drops down and slices right next to him. Oh. The axe rebounds back and--no, actually, it looks more like some kind of automatic mechanism. It goes up and down a bit... Daniel manages to grab it while it's down once and slides out (oddly) under it. Stupid. He makes it through okay though.
So we're running away. There's this huge room, full of clothes on circular racks, like in a department store. It's full of people, who are also all running around (away from something?). The place begins to feel weird and Alice in Wonderlandy, everyone's frantic haste creating a circus atmosphere. We run up to a wall and expect a opening in it. The lady behind us with the white hair runs off in another direction; I dash between two
close-together clothes racks and try not to be seen. Wait, that's too obvious. I pull some clothes around me, covering myself and blotting out the dim light.
Now--I see a light inside my dark cover. It looks like a lamp-post. Is this another wonderland after all? I walk toward it--no, it looks like a pink candle. (All this while the noise of people running around in the room has been going on. Someone shouts "It's the princess!") It no longer appears to be a candle--it is a fuse. Suddenly I hear the sound of a cannon going off. A lady screams.
I'm laid out on the floor. Images: tons and tons of E2 softlinks scrolling by. I feel, for a second, a heavy localized pressure on my chest; by feel, I conclude a big cat is walking over me. I wait for its other feet to pass over, but nothing happens.
And I wake up, frightened.