Dream Journal
Damon, Beth, B and I were driving together north to Fairbanks. We had stopped at a lodge to rest. I find myself wrapped in a towel walking through a common, shared area. An older gentleman calls for my assistance. He is bent over a table trying to identify something. I come over to him, tell him that I do not know what the object is, then leave to the bedroom.
B is already on his back under the thick, plush covers. I come to my side of the bed, kneel on the mattress, and remove my towel - feeling both daring for being naked in a public-like area, and very safe being in our bedroom with b. I scoot under the covers and wrap myself around him. I am instantly worried that the older gentleman had followed me into the bedroom. I ask B if he can tell if someone else is in the room. Because of the thick covers, he can’t see a thing. He gently pushes down the blankets and quilts so that he can better see the other side of the room.
Now we four are in our red car, pulling up to a small fishing dock. We are farther north, and the dock is covered in ice and slushy snow. Regardless, we drive right out onto the narrow dock and get out of the car. Damon tells us to not walk off of the end of the doc - even though it looks like thick ice, it may not be all that safe.
I walk towards the end of the dock and stop a few feet short. Under a portion of ice is a long, dark snake. It pokes its head out of a hole in the ice; I refuse to go any farther because I am scared of the snake. I am also baffled as to why no one else noticed the snake.
Despite his warning, I watch as Damon walks off the end of the dock. I then notice that B had moved the car so that only one of its wheels were on the dock - presumably to give us more room to stand on the dock. My brother Marty is pushing the car back up onto the dock. He has to lift the rear end of it to get it up onto the dock, but he manages to do this. I see that the rear rims are all bent and misshapen. I tell B that those rims were part of the reason the car wasn’t driving straight. He insists that it’s just a flat tire.
He and B stand a few feet from the end of the dock, and the snake backs out from underneath the ice towards Damon. I yell to Damon to be careful, but he insists that the snake is harmless. He says that the snake probably didn’t have any fangs left. As he’s finishing his sentence, the snake reaches over and bites the top of Damon’s right black boot.
Damon then understands that this snake is dangerous. He stomps on its head. It coils up, and Damon jumps up and down on its entire body, but the snake will not die. We walk up the dock back to the buildings. I see a mechanic jacking up our car with a special “two wheel jack”. It does not jack up two wheels at a time, but instead is specifically made for two wheeled vehicles. Since the car will take a while, we decide to go exploring.
We take the road south back the way we had come, passing a female construction worker, and happen across a small house. We enter, and there is a lady baking in the kitchen. She welcomes us in. B finds a bed and lies down because he is very tired. Beth and I stand by the bed talking to him when the ground starts shaking violently and a deep rumble comes from beneath our feet. There is also a glowing red light coming from the direction of the ocean.
Damon runs into the bedroom where the three of us are and exclaims that the volcano is going to erupt. We didn’t even know there was a volcano in the area, but that would explain all the rumbling and the glowing red color in the ocean. B’s bed has been jarred a few feet from the wall, and Beth crawls behind the headboard and sits down and hugs her knees. I go to the kitchen and ask the lady who is baking where the volcano is located. “Across the road,” she says, never pausing in her baking. She tells me that they have been due for another eruption for some time.
Damon and I flee from her house and see the volcano directly across the road. We had assumed the lady meant in that general direction, not that it was sitting on the other side of the road. We see that lava is already flowing over the road toward her house. We run as fast as we can back towards the car and the icy dock. We are traveling as though we were on a sled, but there is no apparatus aiding us in our travel.
Again we pass the female construction worker as her round metal station is being sucked into the earth. She is calm about finishing up her work before leaving, but we grab her anyway. We have to hop from her metal station to a rock on the hillside to a rock on the opposite side of the road in order to avoid all of the lava. At the same time, ice and show is falling from the mountain above. We sled down a steep hill into the area with the dock and our car.
Everything seems calm, and all the vegetation is a healthy green. The female construction worker bends over and picks up something white. She is so happy to have found this object that she cries. I run past her into one of the buildings - for a second I didn’t know which one I wanted. I open the door to an empty house with hardwood floors; all the lights were off. I call for my dogs, Lacey, another one, and Chilly. I keep calling, but hear no sound of dog feet on the hardwood floors.
All of a sudden, Lacey runs to me from one doorway, the other dog comes from the hallway, and Chilly comes up the stairs to meet me in the entry way. I sit down with all three of the dogs lined up licking my face. I was crying, so very happy that they were safe.
I was with Lacey behind our apartment, and we were sitting on a log. Two puppies came from around the side of the building and were sniffing around the ground. I told Lacey that one was a chihuahua and the other was a miniature pinscher. They came closer, and I found out that the one I thought to be a miniature pinscher was in fact a miniature schnauzer, just like Lacey.
The schnauzer puppy wanted to come say hi to Lacey and me. It had a heck of a time getting up onto the log, but Lacey was not happy when it did. She was growling, and I had to hold onto her to keep her from biting the puppy. As long as I held her, she was ok with the puppy sniffing at her. In fact, she let down her guard long enough to almost like the puppy - as long as I held her, that is.
A man came from one of the apartment doors; I knew that he was the puppies’ owner. He asked what breed Lacey was, and I told him. He then asked her name. I mumbled it as I led her back towards our own apartment door. I wasn’t very comfortable talking to him.
Melissa and I were in the shower. We were both facing the showerhead, and I was standing behind her washing her hair. He hair was very long and held a lot of shampoo. After some time of washing, I managed to get all the shampoo out of her hair save for the bit of her hairline on her forehead. I told her that she would have to wash that section herself.
I got out of the shower, and B and I had to run an errand. When we got back to the apartment, we checked on Melissa. The bathroom, however, was empty. She had made a large feather duster type thing out of one-dollar bills. The handle was made out of hundreds of them all rolled up and taped together. The top was a bunch of loose bills affixed to the rolled-bill ‘handle’. I waved this around, marveling at how long it had taken her to make it.
I then turned around and saw a note on the wall beside the shower curtain. All four sides of the note had been taped to the wall. Underneath this note was a fifty-dollar bill - I knew this yet I did not remove the note from the wall. My knees gave way and I sat on the toilet bawling because i had finally realized she had left and wasn’t coming back. She didn’t even say goodbye.
Themes: Melissa
It was my first day working at a hospital. My supervisor gave me a picture identification card and showed me to my office. Inside were two computer desks facing opposite walls. At the computer by the open office door was a teenager with long blonde hair playing solitaire. I sat staring at my monitor not knowing what to do. I felt concerned for the blonde girl, certain that if she were caught playing a game on office time, she would be quickly fired. I tried silently to her attention - I didn’t want anyone in the hallway to notice - but she wouldn’t look up from the screen.
After some time of sitting at what was to be my desk, someone came to give me a tour of the grounds. He showed me the front parking lot and then took me up to the roof. It was evening, and the roof was dark. I couldn’t see any view, but it did not strike me as odd.
Back downstairs we headed back towards our department. We had to pass through a receptionist who checked everyone’s picture identification. There was gate we had to walk through that looked like the ones to get to the subway. I realized that I had left my ID next to my computer when I went on the tour. I explained to the receptionist that I had left my ID, and that this was my first day. I was positive that I wouldn’t be let back in and I would be fired.