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Impossible Dream
– Gabe Thexton -
It’s my parents house in Westminster, from the outside at least, inside however it’s massive. The decorations don’t matter, I only focus on one thing. I’m moving out, or someone is, maybe I’m staying and they’re moving. My cousins are helping, I know it’s them but I don’t see them. “OK, they’re all out.” I say. We head towards a car, the field across the street has large trees and the slope is close and steeper than it should be. The entire world is sepia. I’m in another house, still familiar but I don’t know which one it is. Steve Marks is moving out. I’m going to be late for work. It is snowing, I’m on a bus. I’m one hour late for work. We’re still moving things, I’m in a car. I’m two hours late for work.
Time is swift, but the world is thick and I strain to move through it. I’m three hours late for work. I’ve tried to call work, at least I think I have. I check my phone, I can’t tell. I’m sure I called, but I’m still worried. My cousins’ bus-car stops at Wal-Mart and I get out. I walk toward work. Places are definitely places I know, but they are different, stretched, faded and on occasion, strikingly vivid. There is a huge electronics sale at the front of Wal-Mart. The security guy is wearing a blue vest, I know him, though I’ve never seen him in my entire life. He points in the general direction of work. “She’s crying, it’s pretty bad. I know you know her, maybe you can do something?” He says no name, and though there’s no reason I should have any clue who he’s talking about, I know it’s Jill.
She’s at work, my work for some reason, and I feel great concern for her. I’m late, I’m in a hurry, and the distance is less than a block, but it’s still taking forever to get anywhere. It’s almost as though I’m going uphill and the air is thick like water, and I have to force my way through it. My legs drag as though I were walking in the ocean. I get closer to work. I forget about Jill. All I care about is getting to work, finding my co-worker Jesse.
Something is different about the store. The front wall is open, open like a non-folding garage door. There’s a First Bank there and it’s extremely busy. All of my teller friends from TCF Bank are there working. I smile at some of them. I’m still trying to get in the door. Walls are moved. It is my grocery store and a hundred others all at once. The things that are important to me are clear and large. Everything else is small, out of the way, and shrinks as though it were being viewed through a sharply curved lens.
I work my way towards the back. There’s a full restaurant kitchen, chefs in chef hats everywhere. Through the columns and two-by-fours’, pots and pans, I catch glimpses of Jesse. He’s looking at me, his eyes follow me around the kitchen. He knows I’ve missed half of my shift, I still don’t know if everything is going to be OK. I want so badly to know, yet my heart gongs in fear of the encounter. I go toward the back, behind walls that weren’t there before. The construction seems unfinished, plywood and two-by-fours are on the walls, they are the walls. I go too far. I turn around and take another path back. I missed the kitchen, it was a wrong turn.
There’s a ramp, it leads down to the serving area for a banquet hall. It’s so steep that I have to hold the edge and slide on my butt to get down. Nothing remotely like it exists in real life, but I’ve seen it before, in other dreams, and I know that it belongs here. It belongs in this grocery-store-hotel that I work at. I follow another path. I find myself in the bowels of the massive hotel. The room is cavernous. Stairs are at one corner, they come down over double doors and I can see the beige paint on everything. They are the back stairs to an emergency exit, the room is being used for storage, no-one ever comes here.
There are two beds crammed in the near corner, by an emergency exit. I am lying on the one closest to the wall. This place doesn’t exist, but the details are crystal clear to me, I see everything. Someone is on the bed next to me, a man that I know. I don’t know who he is, but I know that I know him. A girl enters through the emergency doors, though they never opened. She goes to the man on the bed, he’s naked now. “I’ve got a head start.” he says. They begin to have sex and I turn away. I roll over. I am in bed with Claire Forlani.
I wake up instantly.
I lie there for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling, doing nothing else.
My alarm goes off, I get up and go to work.
I transcribe this dream on the bus.
It’s snowing outside.
I am not late for work.
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This story is the second of seven, and part of a week long duel. One story a day, with a 100 word story on Sunday, at a cost of one pre-1975 dime per derelict story, payable to the opponent. My opponent is Cuyler. This is “The Daily Dime.”
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