The book of mars

Abandoned In the Tropics

I am on a stage with all of my friends and people I know. We are putting on some performance. I do whatever I can to not be seen by the stage, but everyone is looking at me anyways. I walk around big tanks of water. Eventually everyone is running off stage and I am the last to join them.

The stage exit led to a very small tropical island with everyone already on it.

The boat comes that will take us to shore. I don’t see it at first, and by the time I get to the little beach, everyone is on it except me and two guys named “Want” and “Need”. Everyone is laughing at us. They didn’t want us to come back.

I’m angry but not that I’m stuck; I’m angry that I they left me, that they didn’t like me to this extent and were willing to perhaps kill me. The entire journey from here on is me trying to get back to them.

A few hours later a boat comes by. He’s tugging along three or four jet skis. We holler at him and he says we can’t have them. We ask more and he finally gives us a red one, but it has no gas.



We all get on it and the waves are moving in the direction of the nearest island. We land on it and get off. On this island, there’s a small wooden deck and then a store. Behind a counter are several racks with beautiful handmade island clothing. No one seems to be around so I take whatever I like.

The owners come out and explain we can have whatever we want, they never get customers anyways. I’m relieved that they didn’t punish me for stealing.

Scene change. Want, Need and I are employed by someone as gold diggers. We are in cave sitting barely on top of the water. The ground beneath us is watery sand. To get the gold, all we do is find little gold pieces already shaped into coins and pick them up.

Aang, Katara and Toph from Avatar: Last Airbender come into the cave. They want to rescue us, because our employer doesn’t plan on coming back with his boat to get us this time. They have us search for a different kind of coin, one with a little black design on it. These are worth money somewhere else, where we will all be going. Momo, a winged lemur from the show, is here, too and in the corner he is making a little trail of gold coins.



“Is that what you think helping is?” Katara says.

We get a handful of normal coins and just three of the black design coins before we have to go. The ship we are getting on is mostly a big metal grate area with wooden walking areas on the side of it. To get on, we are kind of projected into the air. Toph starts yelling about a 10 piece gold coin in the grate but there is a sliding metal door to the boat that will make it unavailable if we don’t get it now.

When we land, they all run toward the 10 piece coin. I saw a little bit of it when I was in the air. They don’t get it in time. I see that the grate has pieces of things and coins all over it. Katara tells us to hurry and get all the coins we can out of the grate. Unfortunately, when I landed onto the boat, I landed on the wooden area on the sides.

The captain of the boat and their employer says he doesn’t take regular gold coins anymore: only the black design coins. All of my work collecting coins today was wasted, and I have only three coins to give him. He is unimpressed.


Scene change. I am on dry land in a kind of mini-mall area. Someone warns us not to spend the black design coins because they are worth more when certain people buy things with them. I have three still, so I must not have given them up to that captain. I walk into a store. In the mudroom area between outside and inside, Wolf (a girl I know in waking life) is laying on the ground. Her girlfriend Rae is with me. She gives a black design coin to her and we enter the store.

I look at everything and notice that if we bought anything, it would be extremely cheap with these coins compared to using the gold coins. We don’t buy anything.

Scene change. I am projected from some place in the store into a long hallway. At the end there is a room kind of. It has an eerie feel, like the show Invader Zim. It just feels off. Heather is here and making a toy car go on a track that’s running on the floor to the wall to the ceiling to the wall back to the floor. She says the wallpaper recharges the car so it can go forever.


Will Smith's House

I’m walking and I meet Will Smith’s daughter Emily Browning (obviously not related in waking life). She brings me to her house which is surprisingly right up the street from mine.

Inside, I sit down with her, her brother Liam Aiken (related in my dream because of their brother-sister roles in A Series of Unfortunate Events movie) and her little sister Willow Smith (actually his real daughter). His house is really disgusting and even my dream-self was surprised by this. All of the rooms are huge but filled with junk. The kitchen where we’re sitting in is really tiny and there are dirty dishes stacked everywhere.

We are all playing some kind of card game. I’m across from Will. He looks really old and totally stoned. I feel bad that he let his life go when he clearly had much more at one point.

We finish the game and he goes into his bedroom. The kids and I all go into the living room. To get there, we went through two rooms which both had giant fake white Christmas trees. In the living room I sit on their ratty couch. The place is gross in here, too. Emily sits next to me and we cuddle kind of. If I move closer to her, I can feel the thumps of Will having sex with his wife downstairs, so I can’t cuddle her any closer.

“So, rockstar?” Willow says to me, trying to judge who I am or what I am doing with these “famous” people. She implies that I’m probably trying to be someone famous but I’m not. Emily explains that I’m not a rockstar or anyone famous, and that I don’t particularly want to be either.

I get up and look around the house and find a more fancy suitable kitchen. A few of my friends stumble out, including my brother Holden and our friend Jamie. Jamie has always been kind of a hippy, but he’s really overdoing it in my dream. He has very long hair all braided and put on top of his head. He’s wearing some kind of hat that has blond hair extensions as well. We all go out of the house together.

Holden wants to go to Redbox to get a movie and I say I think they are open past 12. It’s 2 a.m. We start walking.

On the way home we run into three really fat and buff 12 year olds. I want to beat them up, so I egg them on. The leader who has some kind of miniature padlock in her septum comes up to me and starts trying to kick me. Holden comes over and uses his elbow to hit some spot on their heads and they all just pass out automatically.

“You have to learn the Child Beatdown in those situations,” he says, and explains the move to me.


Fragment

I am in some room. I have a cup full of hot chocolate powder and I begin pouring different flavored water into it from tiny tea pots in a circle around me. I spill some and Beth comes over and helps me.

While she's doing that, Katie, an old friend of mine who recently got divorced and is now having sex with everyone, comes up to me and Holden. She says she wants to fuck him, and he jokes about it but I tell him she's serious. He says okay finally, and they plan to do it at 5 p.m. I ask if she does ladies too, and she says sure, and I just wink.

Boyscouts vs. the Fire Nation

Holden my brother, Tyler and I are hanging around downtown. We’re on this outside deck looking over the parking lot in the center of all the shops. I look over at a part of the brick buildings to my right that’s made of wood all the way from bottom to top. It’s made of strips of wood intersecting like X’s, like a foundation of a porch on some houses. Between the X’s I can see an old decaying sign.

At the same moment, Tyler seems to spot it: “Look, remember Weatherfields?!”

“Fuck yeah, I loved that place,” I say. It was an old restaurant that everyone went to as children (such a place doesn’t actually exist). Holden says he never went there, but I assure him he did.

In front of us, a few people get out of a little car. It’s a family it seems.

“Let’s go, there’s Kirstie Alley,” Holden says and starts walking out of the deck, into the parking lot and away from the family. It wasn’t only a fat joke, but the mom of the family also looked like Kirstie Alley, the actress. She was huge and was wearing a pink dress down to her ankles. Her flubby arms swung and instead of walking, she seemed to just tip in the direction she wished to go and flowed with inertia.

Holden, Tyler and I went to Goodwill, which was across the parking lot. Inside, I ran into the toys section which my dream-self never really does (Goodwill doesn’t have a toys section, and the whole place was more of a real store like a small WalMart). Tyler followed me and we began talking about wanting it to be summer out so we can play with water guns.

A couple started quarreling in the aisle so we left and went up front. There, we looked inside one of those claw machines. There was a really interesting looking umbrella. At first, I didn’t even know it was an umbrella. It had spikes in bands all around it, intricately engraved motifs from the handle to the top of it, where they followed the paths of metal in the shading part.

“Jack, you can have that blue one,” Tyler says. She points to a similar umbrella although colored light blue, making it kind of ugly. Where did Jack even come from? He has an ugly little face of anger when she makes this jab, and then he disappears.

Tyler and I touch a lot of soft stuffed animals in a big metal bin. I am particularly attracted to a white elephant and can’t stop touching it. Eventually, Holden asks us to leave because he’s bored of Goodwill, so we do.

The scene becomes us walking around Winslow, our neighboring town. Holden is a boyscouts parade soon, and Tyler and I are just following him around. Tyler’s smoking but doesn’t want her cigarettes anymore for whatever reason and asks if I’d like them. I think for a second and say sure. One is unlit and one is lit. I put the unlit one in my pocket and look at the lit one: where the flame should be, there is a hologram of a tiny flag that dissolves if you wave it back and forth. I take a drag and nothing really happens, no smoke, nothing.

We are walking up this big hill and I see my friend Autumn. She’s wearing a boyscout uniform just like the guys. It’s funny for me because she’s pretty big and walking up this big hill and doing dude-things with scouts, which is not of character for her. Not on the dream-plane, though!

“Autumn, why are you even a boyscout anymore?” I ask. She shrugs her shoulders and we talk about something (but I rarely remember dialogue in my dreams at all).

We get to the top of the hill. Tyler, Holden, and my old friend Cholage are at the top and want to slide down.

“What the fuck, you’ll probably die!” I say and make notice of the four-way intersection at the bottom (all of this is accurate in waking life). They all shrug their shoulders and start sliding down anyway. They just jump and their feet slide on the pavement, moving it as if it was very slippery and malleable mud. I don’t want to look like a coward so I start sliding too.

I’m half-way down and everyone else is at the bottom so I decide to call it quits. I can’t stop easily so I ram myself into a building on the side of the hill and then slide over and join Holden, Tyler and Cholage. They are on this floating house with a floating front yard, all of it on top of a small inlet. I’m really afraid of it sinking because I don’t want to get wet. Holden laughs at me because of how afraid I am, and I laugh too.

I look over and Tyler and Cholage are nearly naked making out with eachother. Holden is laughing and they both have smiles on their faces. I have an intuitive thought that they are doing this to make me jealous (though I’m not really attracted to either of them). I don’t want to seem jealous. But! I fall while the floating yard bobs in the water and my face lands right near their nude bodies. Whoops.

Holden and I start walking with the boyscouts as their parade starts. There’s a ton of boyscouts on the sidelines, but no actual onlookers. I think of how embarrassing this is, but no one minds. While Holden walks in the parade, I ask him about Avatar.
“We should watch Avatar sometime, I love that show. I’m re-watching all the episodes,” I say. He kind of nods, uninterested. “Have you seen the movie?”

“No. It’s not Miyamoto’s best.” (Why did my mind choose Miyamoto as the director??)

“Yeah I haven’t seen it either, I think they cast Aang wrong. He looks so serious,” I say. Holden agrees and we talk about it for awhile. I make a face, impersonating the actor.

Suddenly, the Fire Nation is attacking the parade! (I love how the mind works ) Everyone is running all over the place. Most of the boyscouts are Air Benders, like me. I get separated and am by myself, almost surrounded by opponents. Luckily, most of them are engaged with other battles and don’t notice me. One, in front of me, however, sends a giant flame dragon head at me. Its jaw is chomping as it comes closer. I close my eyes and focus my energy on the most powerful air attack I could do right now. I cross my arms, and when I uncross them, I send a wave of forceful air in its direction. The dragon head splits into smaller flaming heads that dissolve as someone pulls a big blanket of salt water over everyone. It’s sticky.



Around me, big booming voices are telling their followers to say a certain word that will bring them to safety. I see one of the voices re-embodied. It’s a God, a leafy Earth God that is putting all his devotees into a vortex as they say the correct word.
My friend Gabe says it, and I look at him strangely. He was always an atheist! I say the word, too, hoping for salvation, and I black out.

I wake up in a recovery area. Everyone is sitting on leafy clouds. My surroundings are dim. Holden is here, but Tyler isn’t. Heather’s friend Brittany is in front of me. For some reason, she pulls me really close to her and is making very affectionate moves! I apologize when our faces stick together because of how salty I am. She doesn’t mind, and starts kissing me. I wake up.


Illegal Drive

In the middle of the night, Tyler texted me and asked if I had any money for weed. I said no and went back to sleep.
In my dream, I am in the school, but under it, in this really cool art workshop that no one knows about. I get a text from Tyler and she asks if I have any money for McDonalds. I decide that I will take my car and get her some, even though I don’t have my license.

My car is underground where I am at the school, so I just go get it and drive off. I drive fine until I get to McDonalds, where I forget to stop at the window. I’m embarrassed so I just decide to drive home. I find that I’m going 80 down a hill and can’t stop. Eventually I hit the breaks. I turn into this little section of the parking lot in downtown. I try to keep going on this “road” but I find the only ways to go are up some…stairs? Shit, I am driving in a pedestrian park. I back out and go home.

False Awakening: I wake up and don’t know if it was all a dream or not. I tell my mom, hesitantly, that my car may or may not be here, and I may or may not have driven it last night. She laughs and says it was just a dream. Okay good!


Climbing The Tower

There is a big tower. A bunch of kids are climbing it, it’s some game. It turns into a tunnel halfway up and then disappears, turning over and extending some other way. I try to climb it but, like a lot of the kids, I fall. It’s a difficult game-like structure. I see how some of the more “advanced” kids are climbing it and mimic them.

I “get” how to climb it now, so I’m doing it all really easily. I pass most of the kids who I learned from. The newest part that I see is a green rope at the top of the tower that you hold on to as you fall off the side of it, into a swampy area. The tower was clearly just the beginning of a really cool journey.

I don’t grab onto the rope, I just kind of let my fingers glide over it as I jump into the swamp. A lot of kids “die” (and re-enter at the entrance to the whole tower) here. I walk around the tower in the swamp and come to weird area with a bunch of circular steps with newspaper over them. I hop along them, passing this area, and find myself in another swamp land.

There’s another tower which a few kids are trying to climb. I use my climbing skills and pass them as well. The top of the tower is a cool club house! There’s a few other “winners” inside, and we talk about the tower and just hang out.

Something happens, and the scene changes. I want to go to the club house again. I pass all the kids trying, and at the step area, I see why people have a lot of trouble here: the steps are made of pure ice. Because I hopped passed them, I didn’t come in contact with them enough to notice.

In the club house, there’s only a girl inside. Where’d all the cool winners go? She wants me to help her lure a Dryad from the swamp. First she suggest I set my Dryad Bow (?) into the water, but I assume she’ll take it. Instead, she puts her shiny Chaos Gloves (from Guild Wars) into the water, but nothing comes. I feel bad.




Fragment

I’m at school in a classroom I’ve never seen. I sit out back with my friend Celina. I haven’t been to class in awhile I assume, because everyone is working on some project and have pages of notes, and I have none. I don’t really care.

Chase calls me over from the other side of the room. He explains what we’re doing: making our own cereal boxes. I’m excited. It incorporates English somehow by having us add propaganda to the box. The project seems really fun. I want to make my box funny, so on the bottom I put the Surgeon General’s Warning.