Dreaming in Digital

I was driving in the countryside, on a steep slope. Stopping on the side of the road, I turned the engine off. When I got back into the car, I didn't turn it on, but disengaged the handbrake and shifted gear into drive. The car rolled down hill from gravity, picking up momentum. I tried to brake, but it did nothing and I panicked.

20210202

In a gallery room, I was with Flan. He was working on paintings and drawings, and was slowly filling the walls. But on this particular day, the gallery manager barged in, angry. He yelled at Flan, who was busy painting on a Bristol board sheet of a forest bathed in sunset. He was angry because this was the gallery's main attraction, and the walls weren't covered in art. The gallery was going to open soon.

I laid down on blanket was spread across the floor by a coffee table and fell asleep. In bird's-eye-view, I saw the days rapidly pass, from day to night and back around. Another girl came in and slept under the coffee table.

When I awoke, it was dark. Something felt wrong, as if it was the end of the world. I got to my feet, grabbing my purse and slung it cross-body. I climbed out the first window I saw. There was a trail of sunset in the purply-grey sky. Many people were running away, somewhere. I met with a [Bosmer] and a couple of humans. We ran into an apartment building and up the stairs to the second floor.

We holed off in a room, no bigger than 10' x 5'. The walls were stark white and carpeted in grey. Against the wall was a queen sized bed. To one wall was a line of 4 doors, each a different style and size. One of the doors had a foot from the bottom missing, so we tried to keep out of sight. We needed to rest and wait for daylight, so everyone cuddled up in the bed. I began locking the doors, and as I got to the last one, the Bosmer told me to wait for his wife. Not too long, his wife rushed through the door and slid into bed beside the Bosmer. The bed had five people on it, so I slept on the floor.

I woke up to wood cracking and saw a hand reach under the door, trying to reach us. I screamed, startled, thinking it was a zombie, and shook everyone awake. The Bosmer hopped out of bed and said, "time to go!" He told us to take only what we needed. I grabbed my purse and picked up my Gen2 iPod from the floor. I picked up a bag or yarn, but paused realizing I had to find a crochet hook. Dropping the bag, I ran out the door with the last few of us survivors, and closed the door behind me.

There was a wooden ship on wooden tracks waiting for us. Half already left on another boat. Once I got in, the operator behind me pushed an oar off the ground, paddling us forward. We tilted downhill and sped up. I felt my body get pushed forward as we rolled downhill. It felt like a rollercoaster, except not as scary.

20201005

I visited the store. Many things changed. My vegan supervisor became a police officer and she collected donations at the entrance. I apologized to her, for not saying goodbye when I had quit the store.


In my second dream, I took some friends around Toronto, spending most of my time with Shortbread and her sister. We took the PATH underground, which was, at this time of day, abandoned. It had a different appearance than usual.

We stopped at a chocolate shop. I wanted to treat my taste buds to something, but I couldn't decide. The sales lady asked what did I feel like having, and I said, "salty, but sweet." She gave me a 1" x 2" rectangle that may've been salted caramel, and after entering the cost, the chip'n'pin machine. Not entirely sure what screen I was on, I entered $100.00 when prompted for an amount. The lady replied, "no, no, no," and it ejected five $100 bills. The last bill was for 100 rupees, which I handed to her, as I didn't know what to do with it.

It was time for my friends to leave, so we surfaced the PATH at Dundas Square. Saying goodbyes, I watched my friends gather in a bus driven by an overweight woman.

There was a dream before, but I don't remember it well enough to record. My sister had signed up for a cultural event. She had also volunteered Cookie and I before we agreed to it. We were annoyed because she was bailing. This happened in my childhood apartment.

I had finished work and GrannySmith, and another girl worked with us. We closed the shop, which was a small bakery, and exited, looking for the fourth employee who worked with us. This girl was Samoan and overweight, but despite her nanny-like clothing, she was absolutely beautiful. I watched her stuff her feet into white high heels many sizes too small - her feet overflowed as if it were a cartoon.

Everything was underground; we never saw sky. We all entered the subway which had huge, metre-long, cream, laminate tiles. Everything was covered in this tile: the floor, the walls, the staircases and banisters. On the subway platform, I chatted with the other girl who had shoulder-length brown hair; GrannySmith had gone elsewhere. We hopped aboard the train that arrived. She lived on the last stop, and I had to meet Cookie who went out with the rest of Pfeffernüsse's groomsmen for some pre-wedding fun. On the second last stop, GrannySmith jumped on our train; she left earlier to do something. She talked about shoe shopping, and I thought about it too.

We made it to the end of the line. There was Cookie, waiting for me at the platform; he was waving goodbye to the group. I left the train with the girl and GrannySmith to join him. I don't remember how we were notified, but we weren't allowed to get back on the train or leave the station. Death appeared before everyone. He was seven feet tall, and his body and face were covered in a blood-coloured cloak. In one hand, he carried a shiny scythe. I watched him allow select people on the train, and the train leave back the way it came. Cookie was allowed on, and I watched him go.

The train came back the next day. There was sky above us and we weren't underground anymore. It was cream, like the subway tile, and hazy. My brunette friend said she forgot something on the train, and Death let her enter. I heard her scream, "ouch!", and a couple of minutes later, came out with an orange plastic bag in hand. Death studied her for a moment, then pointed to the train telling her, "go." She handed her bag to me and hastily obeyed. The train left for the day.

The train came back again the next day, and GrannySmith and I watched people get on, though we weren't allowed ourselves. I questioned why these people were allowed to enter the train. If Death was among us, I assumed the train led back to our everyday lives; I wanted to be on the next train. I opened the orange bag. Aside from an empty, white box, there was a pamphlet with a drawing of a woman breastfeeding. Her nipple was erect and exposed. Did my friend get hurt breastfeeding, and is that why she was allowed to leave? It didn't make sense to me.

This day, the train wasn't in the station. Death had gone for a little walk. There were pine trees surrounding us. The sky was still cream. GrannySmith was still here, and by now, the extrovert in her had died. In an instant, Death leaped over trees, bounding as quickly as he could to the few on the platform. "It's time."

He stood close to me. I bowed my head and closed my eyes as he hummed a rhyme repeatedly. Everyone seemed to know they lyrics except I. I hugged him and he hugged me. His bony hands ruffled the hair at the back of my head, then gently sliced it off with his scythe. My anxiety began to run through me. He sliced another handful of hair. I felt my heart drop, as if the beginning of a heartbreak, and my chest heaved heavy as I started to sob. His hands pulled my remaining hair into a neat bow on the top of my head.

The last line of the rhyme I heard before waking up was, "we are going to die."

There was a war between two universities, and I was on the side of the University of Toronto. We were in high school classroom for sixty students (much like my science classroom back in the day). To win this war, we had to eliminate the opposing school with candy we threw at each other; I chose hard candy as ammo, as they were hard-hitting. If you were hit, you were out.

When this battle ended, a small group if us was left. We moved to a small library with a desk and sofas. On the wall was a large television screen with floorplans to the building we were in, and a copy of it lay on a desk. Our next mission was to solve a mystery and we'd find something. My remaining team mates were two Asians (one boy and girl), two others, and our leader, who was tall, blond and male. He told us to wait and left the room.

As we waited, I studied the floorplans. Something seemed wrong about our room. I soon realized the room we were in was the wrong room, and we had to escape from it before... Before something bad happened to us. Our room was a trap. The door handle was locked, so I balled my fist and punched the mirrored glass, decorating its panels, until it shattered.

We ran outside, towards a parking lot just as our leader was unlocking his getaway car. Under the star-studded sky, our leader turned around, a sly smile on his face. He had a backpack slung over his shoulder. Congratulating us, he revealed his plan, step-by-step. He told us that sometime earlier, we'd eaten a tracking chip. I don't remember how we were distracted enough that we let him get away. The Asian boy pulled a baking tray out of his backpack. He peeled back the foil wrapping to reveal tomatoes of different sizes he'd baked earlier. By handfuls, we shoved them into his mouth, encouraging us to eat them. Tomatoes blocked the tracking signal.

I can't remember most of my dream.
I was sitting inside Cookie's house as he did renovations with his company's crew. It was a three-story house - different from his current house. The walls were creamy yellow, with matching carpets. I sat in the empty rooms where work wasn't being done.
With Cookie done work, he and I sat outside, in front of his house, under the night sky. A van pulled up with our high school friends, and Almond came out from the front seat, telling us to wait for the second van because they had more nickles for us. We were going on a night trip to a nickle arcade.

I had borrowed a massive amount of books and media from the library at university for a class project. When class finished, I checked my belongings for two white clipboards that I brought, finding one mixed into someone's pile of stuff. I wanted it back, so I played dumb and asked around class. Not receiving the results i wanted, I just took my clipboard froom the pile, gathered my things and left the classroom. It was grey outside, like night would soon envelope the city. I tried to rush to the bus terminal, but the two bags in my hands and the backpack of books encumbered me. I desperately threw the two bags in my hand across the street and hurried across. A group of kids gathered the books and were about to leave but I caught them and told them they were mine from the library. They gladly handed them back and I left them in a hurry to the terminal building, claiming my bus was here. They followed me inside and I pretended I needed a locker but I didn't have a lock with me.

I was in a van driven by my cousin's new husband. She sat at the front seat beside him, and behind them were her little sister and my sister; behind them were Yu Narukami and Yosuke Hanamura (from Persona 4), and I sat to Yosuke's right. We drove around the new city my cousin moved to after she married. We were going back to her house when we passed a street with shops on the left. In one store, my parents, my grandparents, and my cousins' parents were leaving a store. We parked on the opposite side of the store and we ducked away from view, trying to hide from them. I was a little tired, so I rested my head on Yosuke's shoulder. We all heard a knock on the right side window, and when my sister opened the door, my grandpa was standing outside with some kind of fruit or sweet vegetable to snack on. It was light green and long. It looked like corn still in its green husk, except it was thin, like a carrot. After he finished, we closed the door and ate this vegetable before driving off.

I was with my family and we headed to our car; my mom got into the driver's seat. I was a little late getting on, so when everyone was already inside with the doors closed, my mom turned the engine on and began to drive. I had already reached the vehicle's door and opened it wide. I yelled for her to stop and she stopped abruptly. When I had climbed in, I commented she almost forgot me, but without turning around and in a voice full of anger, she said, "I meant to."