Into the Whirlpool

Gravity Ball
I'm outside in a classy city setting that strongly reminds me of Gravity Rush's Hekseville. It's late afternoon. My parents are here celebrating their birthdays/anniversary? I try to jump into the air but am disappointed that I can't gravity shift like Kat. I have a small purple ball (looks like a gem from GR) that, if I leave it alone on a surface, will start bouncing all by itself. I throw this in front of me, thinking that *somebody* (who?) will see me with this and change their mind about me not liking fun things. (Odd sentiment that I don't really remember.) The ball bounces away from me and disappears over a ridge - it's the bed, it's actually disappeared under the bed. I'm mostly awake at this point. I nimbly (lol) leap out of bed, again thinking how impressed the mysterious third party must be, and feel around under the bed for the ball. No dice. I figure that since the ball attaches itself to surfaces I'd probably be able to feel it bouncing if it attached to a sheet or something, but I don't feel anything.

Job Application/Vampires and Guns
Outside Newbury Comics, talking to a girl. Originally I was with A. but apparently went off by myself. I go inside the store and start a conversation with the manager; she's pretty friendly and we hit it off. Eventually she says, "You worked at Absolute, right? Ever thought about working here?" (I have a false memory of Absolute being some sort of music-related business.) I say yes, I've always wanted to work at a place like this. She gives me three numbers to call, and after I write them all down she says that if I'm calling to apply for the job, I should only call the third number. I turn to leave and say, "Thank you very much, I'll be in touch!" and she just responds with a disinterested "Yeah," which is a little surprising.

Outside in the parking lot, 2 groups of people are playing some kind of vampire card game against each other. One card I remember is "Solane," a short, pixie-like vampire dressed in a naughty nurse kind of outfit. She is sitting waist deep in a sea of blood and drinking it with a straw. The card strikes me as extremely scandalous, even though the artwork itself (subject matter aside) is tastefully drawn. Anyway, I want to leave but can't while the game is going on, so either I get a card of my own that has a gun or I get an actual gun and point it at the leader, a girl with long blond hair. Her underling (a very big guy but otherwise nondescript) points his own gun at me, yet I feel like I have the advantage.

Fragment
Climbing a snowy mountain i just recently came down from, together with a traveling party that reminds me of Lord of the Rings. I get the sense we're going the wrong way by going up the mountain, yet it's something we have to do for some reason.

I'm in my apartment with Josh. He says he's planning on getting me something with sapphire in it for my birthday (like a sapphire picture frame?) and he wants to know whether my room is an appropriate color first. We go into my room and look at the walls; they are sky blue, and in places they are shot through with rugged veins of white and darker blue - like the room has been carved out of a strange rock face. Well, the room will obviously match something made of sapphire, but I'm wondering why Josh doesn't know that my birthstone is actually amethyst.

---

I'm in a hospital bathroom that would probably be fairly spacious in normal circumstances; however, there are four people in here, and we are fighting--myself and one other person against two men who I identify as gang members of some sort. We are throwing each other against the walls, which are plated with mirrors, and these mirrors begin to shatter under the continued impacts. They don't shatter like normal glass, though; instead they break into many tiny pieces, but stay on the wall for a time before gently falling away as though they were paper. I'm not experiencing any pain despite the violence, but I do know that there's no way I'm going to be able to make it out of the hospital without running into the police.

Then everyone else in the room is gone, and I leave the bathroom to head for the elevator. When I reach it, I notice the "up" button is flashing rapidly, as if to signal that the elevator is partially broken and I can't go up. That's OK, I want to go down… but when I enter the elevator door, there is actually a staircase there instead, richly carpeted in what might be velvet. I make my way down the stairs; I don't have to go far since I'm only on the second floor. I emerge in the hospital lobby. Outside it is late afternoon and overcast. I begin to walk quickly toward the exit. Before I get there, though, I notice a couch (with a late-middle-aged woman sitting on it) and a table, upon which is a chocolate cake. The cake is there for visitors to eat, and I think about taking a piece for myself, but decide against it.

Now I'm outside the hospital and walking down the street. As I go, I pass Mom walking in the other direction. She's wearing some kind of dark denim blouse and a flared skirt--not something I normally see her wearing. As we pass, she gives me a look of recognition but doesn't say anything. [skip] It's nighttime and it has rained recently, since the road is wet. I'm still walking along the street, trying to get to my car. I pass a large clump of parked cars (is there a church service or funeral being held nearby?) before coming across my own car--and a man crouching by the driver's side window. He's writing me a ticket. "You were parked on the wrong side of the road for too long," he says in a half-apologetic way, then walks away. I'm dimly aware that the other cars on the street have also received tickets, and I'm not really mad; it's my fault for parking incorrectly, after all.

I'm in the car with Mom and possibly Josh. As I back out of my spot, I look over at the opposite side of the wet road and see leaves lying there. They are a mix of brilliant red and yellow and look almost petal-like rather than like normal leaves. Whatever they are, they're gorgeous. I have a bigger problem, though… I'm backing up the car but can't seem to actually *stop* it. In fact, I'm slowly speeding up. "Watch out for traffic if you're going to do that," Mom says. Thankfully no cars are coming. As I roll down the road, I begin to understand that I'm not going to get the car to stop normally, so I pull off into a parking lot, begin to downshift the car gradually into first gear, then throw the parking brake. The car stops, but I can feel it sort of quivering--the second I take the parking brake off it's going to start moving again. I don't think Mom was worried about the situation at first, but as I slowed the car down it seemed to dawn on her that we were actually in danger. Now she speaks to me in a quiet, fearful voice. She says it's OK if I want to keep driving, but if I do I have to promise to get myself help because I have "issues." The car is sitting just off the road at the corner of a four-way intersection; as I watch the road I see three or four police cars pass. I'm not sure where I actually want to go.

(fragment: college lottery)
My father chooses which of his children will go to college (me or one of my two dream siblings) by making us choose an envelope. One contains a college acceptance letter; the others contain rejection letters/bundles of sticks?

Billy
There is a recurring character named Billy. This person is either an old woman who dies alone in an old mansion (a family friend--friend of my dream mother, who's dead?) and who I regret never getting to know when she was younger and of sound mind; or a young mentally disabled boy (my cousin) that I've never met and have no desire to meet. I'm in my old house in Lancaster (on Main St.) and Billy (boy version) is coming over w/aunt G. I have the idea that he is going to see one of the upstairs bedrooms because he hasn't been privileged to see an upstairs bedroom in the past, and there's the idea that doing so will confer some sort of magical benefit. I'm in the upstairs bathroom, which is just down the hall from my room, washing my hands. I yell to aunt G to just take him into my room for a second--my room is messy, but it doesn't matter; the point is that she'll see there's no actual magic involved. She yells back something about how no, it's not that, it's that the Department of Education passed a new rule mandating that kids like Billy be allowed _______ (something I don't remember). As I wash my hands I accidentally get a sheaf of paper wet--it's a travel itinerary from Delta Airlines with my name on it.

[skip] Downstairs (still in the Lancaster house) I'm trying to call the airline to ask why my grandfather's flight has been delayed. Actually, I already know why it was delayed: the flight was canceled and not auto-rescheduled by airline. However, the cancellation had generated an abnormal error message and the airline had apparently tried to call me three times, using three separate phone numbers, to tell me what the problem was--so I just want to hear their side of the story out of idle curiosity. I soon regret the call, though. The conversation starts out OK but devolves quickly as the airline agent seems to be unable to understand what I'm saying. Eventually I hear soundbites of Billy over the phone--he is very, very loud (I have to hold the phone away from my ear) and sounds like he has a serious speech problem. A prompt comes up on my phone asking whether his voice was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard (yes/no). I answer no. This pisses off the agent, but I don't care.