I seemed to be living in a large shared apartment (underground, for some weird reason). I came home wanting a bath and there was a strange woman in my bathroom, very sleek and foreign, who looked at me as if I were a slug and told me to get out, in broken English. To disarm her frightening arrogance I introduced myself and asked her where she was from, but she ignored me and began calmly chucking my clothes into a wastebin. Then she headed next door to the living-room, (me following) and began laughing and joking with another strange woman in a corner. The rest of the household - seven or so people - were seated round the telly, including a little girl with wet hair, who was shivering. I grabbed a towel and started to dry her hair. I didn't seem able to ask the others who the stranger was and what she was doing there. None of them acted as if anything unusual was going on.
When the child's hair was dry she ran off. The stranger was now laughing and joking with two men, who were my two best friends. It hurt so much I couldn't look at their faces, but I couldn't seem to do anything or say anything, because everyone else was still acting normally. So I followed the child, who went up in a lift and emerged in some kind of enormous, dark shopping mall. She took me into a shiny shop full of Japanese-looking, colourful gadgets and toys, and we began playing with large, bright transparent orange bubbles. A woman came in who I obviously knew.
"It's terrible," she said, nodding sagely, "but we mustn't mind these things, must we? Come to the pub."
I was convinced that in the pub she would tell me what was going on, so I followed her. We sat in a dim mall bar, and had just got drinks when a loud, terrible siren started up. Someone said it was a bomb, and we had to get out. Everyone in the mall pelted towards the escalators. At this point the dream branched off and I was heading back to rescue the little girl. Then I was in a corridor with her and my best friends - one of whom I was obviously in love with - who were apologising and saying it was all a mistake. Then I realised that this was a dream, and I was really still trying desperately to get to the escalators. The confused pushing and shoving started to suffocate me, and I woke up.
Weirdly coherent, and disturbing. Nothing on the level of my usual nightmares, but the oddest thing about it was that there was not a single familiar face in the whole thing, and I don't recall having one like that before. Spooky.