maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a cafe. The place was big and new-feeling, with white-tile floors and white tables. The ceiling was high and had kind of watery, fluorescent lights, like in a club warehouse. There was a big window wall off to the side, showing the blue light of early evening.

A young woman sat a couple of tables away from me. She may have been working on something. An older woman walked up to the table and talked to the younger woman about something. It may have been to ask the woman if she would move something of hers off the table.

Later, the young woman was gone, and the older woman had a bunch of friends with her. I may have had a better view of the woman now. She may have been kind of short, a little overweight, with pale red hair and pale skin. She may have been wearing a pale-beige beret and dark glasses.

The woman's friends, and possibly the woman herself, all spoke with some kind of accent, maybe Spanish or Portugese. I stood near the people. The people were all complaining about something about the young woman, something about her having left or moved something of hers.

I explained to the people that the young woman had simply moved her artist's portfolio off the table and over to an unused corner of the cafe. To prove this, I ran over to the corner of the cafe that was slightly cluttered with some unused furniture and household items. The portfolio was on top of a record player with a smoky-clear plastic lid. The portfolio itself was really big and made of a greenish-brown leather.

I don't think I picked up the portfolio. I was now back at the table with the older woman. Her old friends were now kind of stepped back from the table, maybe involved in some kind of casual conversation amongst themselves in their own language. The older woman sat at the table while I stood.

The older woman told me she knew that the young woman had put her artist's portfolio over there. The younger woman had asked her to do so. The older woman then said something like, "And thank goodness I didn't have to ask her friend to move her artworks over there as well!"

I knew that the young woman had a female friend who was a sculptor. So I knew the friend's works would be really big and hefty. I imagined a sculpture like the Venus de Milo, life-size, standing atop the woman's portfolio as it rested on the record player. I told the older woman, "No kidding! Imagine what would have happened to the record player's lid! It would have been crushed!"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had a huge beard. It just went along my jawline, so that the rest of my face was bare, except that I may also have had a mustache. The beard was maybe three inches long, made up of bushy, wiry hairs. It was pale, reddish brown. But it also seemed to be coated with some white, frosty stuff, like powdered sugar. The white stuff may actually have been the whiteness of the hairs. I may have thought about trimming my beard. I was surprised I had actually let it get this long.

Dream #2

I was talking with an older man. I needed to move out of my apartment, possibly because of violenced in the neighborhood as well as in the buidling itself. The man was telling me about some sort of hotel that also served as apartments for a lot of people.

I saw outside the apartments on a sunny day. The apartment buildings were smallish, maybe three or four stories tall, and made of red brick. Somewhere was the name of the hotel, something like French Hotels. The place looked okay, but it also seemed a little dumpy.

The older man and I were now inside one of the apartments. I wondered if this place would have bed bugs. As the man continued to talk to me about something, I considered checking under the mattress for bed bugs.

I was now by myself in some other apartment. It was a pretty big apartment, and it felt pretty lonely. I began to think about my current apartment and all the noise I had to deal with there. I thought to one place I'd lived in only recently, but for a few years, where I'd had no troubles with my neighbors, no noise. But, then, I remembered, that place had been a separate house, not an apartment.

I thought over what I'd just thought. It didn't make sense. I had been living in the apartment I was living in right now for a number of years. How could I have recently been living in a house for a number of years as well?

Dream #3

There was an outdoor camp. There were a lot of tents closely packed together outside. Bordering the left side of the tents was a big, concrete wall. Some soldiers stood on the wall or at some kind of watchtower that reached just over the wall.

A soldier was telling a woman, possibly an older, Asian woman, to be very careful in the camp. He may have told her not to leave her tent often and to keep an eye on her children. The soldier said that wild animals were still able to get into the camp.

The soldier said, "I don't mean that a dingo is going to eat your baby or anything."

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a big, concrete structure like a parking garage at night. I was on one of the floor near the top. But I was down at the bottom of some stairwell that opened from the road. There was some room at the bottom of the stairwell. Some of my old friends or co-workers were in the room. This place was apparently my office.

My friend from work, M, had been instructed, I somehow knew, to deliver a manila envelope to a young man in the office. The envelope contained a hiring package. The man was now employed by my company.

Then M walked away to get another package. I was still standing out in the stairwell. I knew everybody in the office knew about the next package, what it would be. Even thought nobody told me about it, I also knew what it would be.

M brought the package to me. The package was basically a letter saying I was fired. M treated me kind of coldly and told me I couldn't come back into the office.

I walked up the stairwell. I was out in the parking garage. My office desk was out there. I figured I should clean out my desk. Near the desk was a dining table. An older Asian man and a little girl, the man's daughter, were seated at the table. I was ashamed to be around the man and girl after just having gotten fired.

Dream #2

I was getting onto the subway. I was going somewhere kind of far away, and I might have been planning to be there for a while. I was wearing a big backpack, which went all the way up my back and even a little higher than my head.

As I was getting onto the train, an older black man followed me. He had a white beard and a wool cap. I felt like I'd seen him all over the place, wherever I'd gone. We were the only two people getting on the train. So obviously now he was following me.

I wanted to yell at him and ask why he was following me. But I didn't feel like it would do any good. So I let him go ahead of me on the train.

We were the only two people on the train. The train was kind of dark. The seats were set weird, like the benches were all lifted on a platform, and there was a guardrail right in front of the bench. It didn't look like there was any legroom.

The man lay down at the far end of the bench and fell asleep. I crawled across the bench and tried to find some way to sit down.

Dream #3

I was in something like a living room with an old woman. We were part of some karaoke contest. We were about to go on. But suddenly the woman sprang the idea on me that we should do a duet. She suggested some song I didn't know.

I didn't want to do the song, since I didn't know it and I'd be horrible. But I felt grateful to the woman for some reason, so I figured I'd better do the duet.

The woman showed me some lyrics and gave me the tune. I still didn't know the song, but I thought I had the words.

Now we were out on a big stage. The music began. I recognized the tune! I started to sing, but I suddenly realized I'd forgotten all the words.

The old woman looked at me, terribly disappointed.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a car with my grandfather (who, in waking life, passed away about two years ago). We were in a parking lot. It was night, probably a cold night. I was in the driver's seat, and my grandpa was in the passenger's seat.

My grandfather told me that he had a disease and that he was going to die in a very short time, maybe as short as seven days. I got very sad to think that my grandfather was going to die so soon. What struck me more than the fact that I would miss him was the thought of him standing so close to the complete uncertainty at that moment of death.

I started to cry. I clenched my throat and grit my teeth as I cried, as if I were trying to stifle the cry. But my tears were also very bitter, as if they were somehow electrified.

I now stood outside of and just in front of the car. There were two trees in front of the car. They were right next to each other, possibly crowding into each other. The tree on the right (as I faced the trees) may have been some kind of evergreen tree. The tree on the left was barren of leafs, with a strange, parallel branching, with the final branches sticking out almost perfectly straight. These branches either had big, red buds on them or else something like Christmas lights.

My grandpa was floating up into the barren tree. I may have been holding on to his hand as he floated (or climbed?) higher up into the tree. The tree was something like the way to heaven. So in this sense, my grandpa was already dying. Eventually I had to let go of my grandpa's hand.

Dream #2

I was in a small house like a log cabin in the middle of the woods. The place was crowded with people, all probably "my family." One man in particular, an older, skinny man, lay on a scanty bed, probably wearing long johns or a tank top and old-looking pajama pants.

It was a really cold day and I needed to get somewhere to check on something, possibly some other house that might be in trouble. The house may have been separated from us by a lake, which was frozen now.

I probably would go across the lake by taking some kind of vehicle -- which, now, seems to have been something like a hovercraft and ski-doo mixed together. But to drive the vehicle, I'd need fuel.

All over the room there were these stumps of wood, stood upright, like columns. On top of the stumps there were upside-down lids for metal garbage cans.

The upside-down lids were filled with some kind of substance. This, I understood, was fuel for the vehicle. The fuel was clear and had a kerosene-like quality to it. But it was in a partly frozen state in all the "pans." It was melting from snow-like blocks into the clear liquid state.

I asked the old man if I could use some of the fuel for the vehicle. The old man asked me about the conditions outside. It had to do with something about the level of the snow outside. I'd been outside only a while ago, and I knew that the conditions were bad. I didn't lie to the old man.

The old man said, "Then, no. You can't use any of the snow. You know what kind of danger you'd be putting yourself in. And in weather like this, the ice on that lake is weak. That vehicle would melt right through the ice, and you'd find yourself inside the pond."

Dream #3

I was out walking with one of my old friends. We were up on the crest of a snowy hill. It was a sunny day, and the sky was clear and blue.

To our left were something like footprints. To me they probably seemed like human footprints, even though, now, they seem to me to have been gigantic footprints.

For some reason, these footprints proved that the snow was pristine, virgin snow, untraversed by other people. This was a relief to me, as I had been afraid this whole time that people had already been climbing this hill, and that sooner or later I'd have to deal with a lot of jerks while I was out hiking.

I looked further down the snowy slope to my left. At the base of the hill was a small town. I think I mostly saw one-story houses, probably from the 1960s or 1970s.

Dream #3

I was "talking" (in my head?) with a few of my family members. They had asked me to stay wherever I was for a little more time. I decided that I would.

My family members then told me that as a reward for staying a little while longer, they would also give me a couple final days all to myself and give me a free trip (or free tickets?) to the beach.

At this point I realized I was in Philadelphia. Apparently Philadelphia had this very short stretch of beach, but it was one of the best beaches in the world.

I now saw this beach as if I were flying over it from a couple hundred feet in a helicopter. I saw how short the stretch of beach was. The water into which the beach receeded also looked a bit murky, greenish black, not the kind of water you'd want to swim in. It also seemed like all sides of the beach were bordered by a rather intimidating fence. I saw people on the beach. It didn't look like a very fun place to go. But I kept telling myself, It's a luxury beach, one of the best.

I felt guilty. I didn't know why my family would feel like they needed to give me such an incentive to stay around a little while longer. They should have just been able to feel like they could ask me without having also to give me something.

Dream #5

I was outside in some kind of semi-suburban area that kind of feels to me now like Princeton, New Jersey. I was out in an area of open, wide, rolling lawns. In the distance were some houses and a short, long structure that was something like a church. There was also, somewhere else, a tall, stone statue of a figure like Christ.

There were a few other people in this environment, men, around my age. At some point, some man blew a bugle or made some general call to everybody. This, I told myself, was a "changing of the guard."

Apparently we had all been playing a game where some people were in charge of the other people. At the "changing of the guard," the people in charge were no longer in charge. I don't think anybody would be in charge at that point. Possibly the game would just be over.

At the "changing of the guard," we all had to go to one specific place, at the top of one of the rolling hills of grass. I was heading to that place. But at some point I saw one of the men in charge.

I had to scurry away in some weird way so that the man wouldn't see me. If he saw me, he'd taunt me or hurt me or make me do something embarrassing. He was allowed to do any of these things, because he was still in charge. And even though the "changing of the guard" had been called, if the man didn't know it, he'd still act like he was in charge. And I, for some reason, would still obey like he was in charge.

Now I was at the top of the hill with the same man, who was apparently an old friend of mine. The game was over, and it was now time to relax. My friend had brought some women with him. The women were naked. They were younger than we; I'm not sure how much younger. They were pale white and had pale red-brown hair.

My friend and I were going to have sex with the girls. Before this time, I now noticed, my friend and I had simply been "having sex" by masturbating and then coming onto torn up pieces of styrofome cups. I was still holding a piece of cup that was the base of the cup with just a little bit of the vessel still rising up off of it. The cup was a kind of pale, blue-green color.

I was just getting ready to come into the cup when my friend pointed out a girl to me. She was mine. My friend immediately got busy with another girl, right in front of me.

The girl who was mine kind of looked at me shyly. I felt bad. She kind of seemed afraid of this whole thing. I told her if she didn't want to do anything, we didn't have to. But if she did want to do something, she should lay down on her back.

So the girl lay down on her back. I think she was lying on a soft, colorful, plaid blanket, instead of on the lawn. I was now naked. I lay down on the girl. I had a little trouble getting aroused, even though it felt good to be on the girl. Eventually, though, I did get aroused, and I finally went inside the girl. It felt good. I asked the girl if she felt okay, too.

Dream #6

I had apparently gotten a new phone. I couldn't figure out how to make something on the phone's internet work. I had typed in a number of addresses for sites I wanted to get to. But none of them had worked. At this moment I wanted to get to some site where I could see some info related to my work. But I couldn't get it.

A woman who works as a coordinator for a volunteer event I go to in waking life said she could figure out the phone for me. So I gave her the phone. She's an older woman, kind of tough, but very nice. She's a little stout, with skin tan from always working in the sun. She has grey hair, which, in the dream was, I think, extremely frizzy.

As the woman figured out the phone's internet for me, I suddenly realized that a lot of the sites I had tried to access on my phone had actually been pornographic sites. I was hoping that the woman would just access the site I needed for work and not see any of the pornographic sites.

The woman now said she had figured the phone's internet for me. She seemed happy at first. But then she stopped, a little grossed out by whatever she had seen. She handed the phone back to me and gave me a disappointed look. I knew she had seen a porn site.

I took the phone, wondering what site the woman had seen. The screen had purple lettering on it saying "Daddy's Little Girls." I thought, Oh god, please don't tell me this porn site is what it sounds like. But I knew that it was exactly what it sounded like.

The background showed the side of a house with a pair of some kind of instruments that looked like something related to whatever I was looking for for work purposes. They didn't look like exactly what I was looking for, but I felt like they were close enough.

So I said to the woman, "Oh, there it is! The product I was looking for. That's the only reason I was looking at this site!"

The woman just continued to stare at me with that grossed-out, disappointed look.

Good morning everybody.

Dream #1

I sat in the dark, facing a bunch of boxes. I would tap the sides or tops of the boxes or gently squeeze the boxes, and they would produce chime-like notes. I may eventually have started to play a song on these boxes.

(I woke up to my headphones playing a tune from a music-box from the end of a song.)

Dream #2

I was in "my mom's house." It was dark. My mom and my nephews were in the living room with me. I sat on the floor, in front of the front door, facing the right arm of the couch.

My sister came up from the basement. She was really angry. She yelled back down the stairs some sarcastic comment that made it clear that some guy and his mom were downstairs, possibly with my brother-in-law. The guy was either running from the police or was a generally shady character that my sister didn't want around the kids.

We were all afraid to have to deal with these people and get them out of the house. My sister eventually went outside to her car. My brother-in-law may have been there as well. My sister was getting ready to leave the house. She also may have been calling the police. I wondered if there was some car I could take to get me back to my hotel for the night.

Dream #3

I sat at a cafe with my old friend H. The cafe was open, a little dim, with greyish daylight coming in through the windows. The floors were white tile, and the tables were a thin kind of wood. There may have been potted palm trees somewhere. The place was kind of empty.

I ate some kind of carrot bread while trying to explain something to H about how we'd been here or near here in the past. I said something like we'd been at the back end of this cafe, more pointed toward the Sunrise Market (?).

I could now see outside. The cafe was a part of a two-floor complex. Just a ways away, across a wide stretch of sidewalk, was a much larger shopping complex, apparently the market I had been mentioning. It was brown- and tan-painted concrete. It looked like a grocery store with another floor or shops on top of it. The sky above was a pale grey.

I was now in a dim grocery store, walking past a bunch of widely, randomly spaced displays (like some kind of farmer-style produce section) and toward a refrigerator full of drinks. H sat at a small table near the fridge.

I wanted to grab a drink, pay for it, and tip the person who gave me the drink. I knew I could tip the person by leaving the tip (a few quarters) in the slot from which Ib had grabbed the drink. But there was some creepy grocery store worker kid who looked like he was just waiting for me to leave the tip so he could steal it.

I asked H what I should do. She told me just to put the money in the slot, and that it would wash away to the person. I looked at the slot. There were little holes through which jets of water flowed. I saw that the coins would be pushed through the holes and to the person, who apparently worked behind the refrigerator.

I was now in a nice room, like a nice hotel. There were a lot of Mexican boys and girls. They all had suitcases. They tumbled about and had fun. Then they lined up by the door. I lined up behind a few of them. I understood that we were all heading toward some bus or flight.

Dream #4

I was sitting at a school-cafeteria-style table with an older woman who kind of reminded me of my grandma, except that she was blonde and a tiny bit overweight.

I was discussing a number of things with her. At one point I had an image in my head of a lot of stainless steel boxes, like heavy safes. Some of the boxes were for data memory. Other boxes were like small servers. Other boxes were just boxes for holding the other things in. I saw some kind of advertisement lettering somewhere on the image that said something like 275 MB or 275 MW.

The woman now explained to me that for my report (?) I should contact a man she knew in Vegas. He'd become an expert in probabilities. As the woman told me this I could see a hand holding clear green dice with white dots. The woman told me that the man was a slightly shady character, but that that had to be expected after the tough times he'd had to live through. And, besides, sometimes you had to get to know the shady characters if you wanted to get good, new information.

The woman then also told me to contact another person she knew, a scientist with a lot of knowledge about (something I forgot!). I had an image in my head of a man in a white robe, with a long, white beard and long, white hair.

Some other people had now also come and were getting in the way of the woman. I was saying goodbye to her. I was talking to her from over a tall, wooden railing. We may have shaken hands as she explained something else to me about my report.

Good morning, everybody. My dream recall has been slim over the past week. But I remember three dreams from last night.

Dream #1

I walked up through some tangle of vegetation, out onto a clearing that looked like an enormous, slightly sloped, corrugated tin roof. The roof was surrounded with vegetation like tree limbs and shaggy vines, which seemed to be hanging down from the brick walls of buildings. It was a sunny, cold day.

One of my old friends, M, stood on the roof. His face was grizzled. He was balding a little, and his hair was unkempt. He wore a brown and white flannel shirt.

I had been sent by a group of people (pretty girls?) below to offer something to M, something to keep him warm or entertained while he was hanging out on the roof. M had sent me away once, refusing whatever I had offered. But the pretty girls now sent me back, offering something else they thought M would want more.

M got annoyed and asked me, "Can't you see that all I really want is to be left alone for a little while?"

I realized now that M's being up here in this weird space was part of some kind of training or re-charging practice. He needed his solitude for the whole thing to work.

M began to tell me some kind of wierd story about popping chesnuts. I looked down at the roof and saw that chesnuts lay all about. Something about roasting and popping chesnuts fit perfectly with whatever M was trying to do up on the roof.

At another point, M was standing by a tree limb. Something like the seed case for a milkweed plant hung from the limb. The seed case quickly expanded like a balloon (or a condom!) until it was 1.5 meters long, transparent, and yellowy white. I knew the tree was about to release seed or even a whole organism, either a tree or possibly even some kind of animal.

Dream #2

I was with some people (my mother and some other family members?) in some plaza-like area that seemed to be at the top of a hill. The plaza area was before some kind of public area like an amusement park. There was a winding complex of roads, circles, and walkways, bordered by nice, red- and tan-stone buildings. It was a sunny day.

I looked into the distance, down a straight stretch of road, to another complex of nice looking buildings. We had come to pick up something from the buildings in the distance. But I'd made the mistake of getting us to this nearer set of buildings. I wasn't sure how to get to that complex of buildings. I figured the best way to get there was by walking (even though I'm pretty sure we'd driven to get here and could easily have taken a car).

One of the group, possibly my mother, started complaining about how far away the complex of buildings was (it was three or four hundred meters away). She complained that I'd come here not knowing how to get what I'd wanted and that now I didn't even know how to get to the place where I could get what I wanted.

I felt like arguing with her, telling her that I did know how to get what I wanted, and that I'd just aimed a little wrong. But I didn't feel like getting myself distracted or my mom upset by argument. I figured I would just stay confident in what I wanted and keep going forward.

I led us through some kind of long pool that went before the front of a long series of short, red-stone buildings that looked kind of like college dormitories. The buildings were to our left. To our right was a narrow, stone path, to the right of which was another long series of buildings. The pool was about waist-deep. The walls were white, and the water was clean, like chlorinated water in a swimming pool.

I called back to the people with me, "Don't you see we're going right where we need to go? We're taking a straight shot there, and we even get to cool off in this pool!"

Before us now was a staircase leading out of the water. Two little girls wearing purple swimsuits (one girl wearing a one-piece and the other wearing a bikini with a fluttery waistline) walked up out of the water. We followed the girls up the staircase.

We were now in an old-looking building that seemed like a museum or an old library. The lights were all off, but plenty of greenish-yellow light came in through windows. The floors were some kind of waxed concrete or dull-colored stone. There were stone columns everywhere, and some heavy, wood counters just out of the corner of my field of vision.

The group of people I was with was now two or three young adults, probably all women. The building was a hotel, and one of the women was talking to an older woman, asking about the pricing for the hotel. The older woman wore a long, blue skirt and a white blouse, and her black hair was done up in a 1950s style. She also may have been wearing some kind of gold necklace with a cameo pendant.

The hotel rate was something like $499 (or even $700) a night. The older woman explained that that was the way things were when you were in the city in Hawaii. I told the girls I didn't think there was any way we could afford a hotel at that rate. We couldn't stay here.

The older woman then pointed out a black and white poster on a column, advertising a special kind of "two- or three-room hotel" for only $299 a night. The older woman explained that once you got out of the city, things got a lot cheaper.

I couldn't help thinking that being that far out of the city would make the hotel cheap and risky. But the woman continued talking about the hotel. She said that each hotel was more like a house. It had two to three bedrooms, was completely separated from other dwelings, and even had a yard. The only reason it was so cheap was because nobody wanted to stay outside of the city, even though the trip back into the city wasn't bad at all. "20 to 30 miles at the most," the older woman said.

The situation kept sounding better and better to me. But I was still a little uncertain. I kept wondering if we'd have some kind of surprise roommate once we got there -- some guy who would be a complete creep. I also kept seeing all kinds of vegetation covering the house, and I was wondering whether the vegetation was corroding the house and making it unliveable.

Dream #3

I went to some kind of convention, probably with other people, possibly family members, including my mother. The convention was in a wide building. I walked into the lobby first. The lobby was vast. It had white tile floors and was bright with harsh, green-white fluorescent light.

There were tallish, round tables everywhere. People were gathered lazily around the talbes, talking to each other, doing stuff related to registering for the conference, and waiting for the conference to begin. A couple of tables may have been staffed by workers, some of whom may have had boxes full of t-shirts on their tables. In one wall of the lobby was set a little concession booth.

I may have had to go back out to the parking lot to get something I'd forgotten. I was kind of afraid to go back out and come back in. The registration people didn't seem to like me, and they made me feel really uneasy.

I was now in an auditorium. The presentation I had attended in the auditorium was now finished. Everybody was filing out of the room. I stood at the front of the auditorium, possibly near the woman who had been presenting. The woman was now putting some materials away and getting ready to leave the room.

Near me was a cardboard box, probably with clothes in it. I realized I was wearing a white, silk-and-lace teddy and white pantyhose. I wondered how I could have missed for so long the fact that I was wearing this outfit. Nobody said anything about me. Nobody even seemed to notice me. But I felt like I needed to change out of these clothes and into my regular male clothes as soon as possible.

I walked through a set of hallways, looking for a bathroom I could go into to change. As I walked past groups of people, I got more and more afraid of being noticed and ridiculed. But nobody seemed to notice me.

At some point I found a restroom. When I went in to change, I seemed to have difficulty figuring out how I could take off this lingerie while putting on my regular male clothes at the same time. It seemed inconvenient and embarrassing. At some point I may have thought I would just put my shirt and jeans on over the lingerie and leave it at that until I left the convention.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was "at home" with my mom and possibly a couple other family members. The house had two floors and probably a basement. The stairway up to the second floor was near the back of the house.

There was a policeman in the house. He was tall, white, with reddish-tan skin, blue-green eyes, a balding head of red-blonde hair, and a mustache. I saw him in my mind's eye, but I'm not sure if I ever saw him physically.

The cop hurried out the backdoor of the house at some point. He may have had some kind of goodbye scene with some of my family members.

I then realized that the cop was on the run. He had murdered another cop (who may have looked exactly like him, except pale white). The other cop's body, I knew (seeing it in my mind's eye) lay sprawled on the final few steps and the floor of the basement.

I felt like my family should have done something not to let the cop get away. I also felt like I should go after the cop or help the other cops find him. But I was too afraid to do so. I thought the cop would probably kill me.

At some point I realized that I had also murdered somebody, so that if I informed on the cop, I would only be letting the cops know where I was, so they'd come after me, too.

Dream #2

Some woman dressed as a ballerina with a tan, fluffy skirt and a black leotard-top was trying to get away from a killer. But at some point she had fallen from some height and broken her legs.

She was panicked. She now pretty much knew she was going to die. The killer, who may have been some kind of ghost-hag woman, would catch up to her and toture her to death.

Good morning, everybody. These dreams are all influenced by an anime/manga event I attended on Sunday.

Dream #1

I was at some kind of chicken fast-food restaurant, possibly in a mall. I'm not sure if I was an employee or a customer. I think the store colors may have been blue and white.

At some point I was in the back area of the restaurant. There were a lot of workers rushing around in a panic regarding the chickens.

Apparently live chickens were kept in another room. The chickens were then killed and cooked. But someone said that the arrangements for the chickens didn't make sense, that something was wrong about the whole thing. The thing wrong may have had to do with the chickens never seeming to go to the bathroom, or with their waste never having to be removed from the room where they were kept.

I went to the room where the chickens were kept by exiting a back door in the restaurant's food prep area and then crossing a small hallway that was like the back area for a mall and an alley. I'm not sure if I ever went into the room with the chickens.

I think I knew, however that the fact that the chickens were producing no waste meant one of two things. The first possibility was that the chickens were being manipulated in such a way that they didn't create waste, i.e. they were just being made into something like food machines, big globs of meat.

The second possibility was that chickens weren't being used at all. I imagined that babies were actually being kidnapped at random and being used in place of the chickens. The "chicken room" was just a front, a room with nothing in it at all.

Dream #2

A man got mad at me because I was doing something (I have no idea what) that hindered his ability to help preserve a whole bunch of new species of fish that he had found. I decided to stop doing whatever it was I had been doing. It may have had something to do with using up some kind of funds.

I was now out over a huge body of water. It was a bright, clear day. I was skimming over the water as if I were on water skis. Just to my right was some kind of track or some kind of dividing line. It was barely visible above the surface of the water.

The fish that the man had discovered and preserved now began jumping up out of the water as I passed them. They all had the same kind of look. They were almost cartoony. They had the look of a children's book drawing of a whale: the bulbous head, flat belly, and fan tail. Some of them looked plasticky; others looked scaly. Many of them had jewel-like dots on them. Some also had silvery bands floating around them or above them.

I seemed to be happy that I had done whatever I had done to allow these newly discovered fish to be preserved.

Dream #3

I climbed up through some dark area and found myself in the top area of some place like a temple or a church. The place reminds me of a belltower, exept much wider. It was daytime, with a clear, blue sky.

A young man (who I spoke with at an anime event in waking life) was playing with a computer. The man was a little overweight, with tan skin, short hair, and black-rimmed glasses. He wore a black t-shirt.

The young man was showing me some anime he was really excited about on his computer. He eventually told me that it was related to some other anime. He had to go somewhere, but he pointed out some magazines that were behind me. These magazines were also related to this other anime.

I turned around and was suddenly in "the young man's room," on a swivel chair. The room was dim. I was looking down at a small desk with a couple of magazines on it. The magazines seemed to be about making 3-D art on the computer.

The magazine covers showed a bunch of half-finished 3-D characters, mostly cute girls in frilly dresses. The faces, in particular, were often unfinished, so that the eyes just looked like peach, plastic globs.

One dress struck me as very realistic. It was light blue and satiny, with white frills as trim. It suddenly struck me that these anime art magazines were very similar to fetish porn magazines. But I decided I'd keep that opinion to myself, since I didn't want to offend the young man.

Dream #4

I was apparently Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I was living out "a scene from Neon Genesis" while also remembering/watching it.

The story was (in my "memory") that Shinji had been dissolved in some battle. He had been evaporated by a huge mass of white steam. But somehow scientists had managed to reconstruct his body. So he was now, in a sense, artificial.

Now I, as Shinji (not inside the giant robot Eva, just as Shinji, all on my own), was in the huge mass of white steam. I was waiting to be dissolved. But I wasn't dissolving. This was kind of disappointing to me, and I wondered if I had remembered the story correctly.

I was now climbing up a wall, out of the steam. I still kept thinking and hoping that I would be dissolved. I assumed that the steam would surprise me by jumping up, pulling me down, and dissolving me. But it never did. I just kept climbing up the wall.

The wall was like a wall leading up from some kind of industrial drainage area or some dam. The wall was green, as if it had a forest mural painted on it.

I'm not sure how I climbed up the wall. There seemed to be some metal, rebar-like, squarish portrusions to my left. I seemed to be using them somehow to climb. But they seemed to be too small to be totally practical.

It was getting harder and harder to scale the wall. I didn't know if I would make it. But I finally got to the top.

At the top was a grassy area, like a park. There was a huge "fire" (actually a huge pile of burning ash) on the grass. I knew that this fire was being used to melt down a large, golden statue of Buddha.

I watched the fire, however, and saw that the golden Buddha was not melting into the ashes. In fact, no Buddha was there. Instead, the Buddha's hand emerged from the ashes. I knew that the fire was actually creating the Buddha from gold that had already been melted. I may have wondered whether enough gold had been placed into the fire to create a Buddha sized in proportion with the hand, which itself was probably as tall as I.

I now found myself in a museum, watching the creation of the Buddha on a TV screen. The gold rising up from the fire took all kinds of shapes, but nothing resembling the Buddha. I somehow got the impression that very few people actually watched this video, because they were too afraid to actually watch something rise from the flames instead of being melted by them.

I backed away from the screen and looked around at the room I was in. My mom was somewhere nearby. The room was open, light, with white walls and adobe-red floors. It felt very free, though the room was small.

I was now in another room, looking at the video of the creation of the Buddha. But the screen was now behind a glass case set into the wall. The screen also seemed to be like a frozen image, a still photograph on pasteboard, even though it also still seemed to be a moving image on a TV screen.

The image of "the Buddha" was actually a huge, golden structure that looked something like a menorah made out of bricks. It looked almost Assyrian. At the top, where flames would normally be depicted, there were, in some spots, flames, but in other spots, just cubes of golden bricks.

An older Jewish couple walked into the room. The man was humming a Jewish folk tune. He bent down and pointed at some title card in a display near the melting Buddha display. (The display the man was in front of may now suddenly have been the melting Buddha display.)

The man may have said something to his wife about the similarities between Judaism and Buddhism.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at "my office," which was nothing like an offce. I stood on the top of a gigantic (30m tall?) Kitchen counter, looking down over a gathering of flowers that were almost as tall as the kitchen counter. The blossoms were about 5m across and looked like a mix between lotuses and zinnias. They were a cream-white color with yellowy centers.

From down on the floor, from which the flowers grew, I could hear my company's CEO and someone else talking. They had been planning a party. (There may have been an earlier part to this dream in which I had been helping with the party planning.) They now may have made some reference to me, as if I were not present.

I thought I would get their attention. I thought I could hop from flower to flower to get closer to them. But I figured that wasn't a great idea. The flowers were probably weak. They might not support my weight.

At some point, it may have seemed like the flowers were floating in a body of water, as if this gigantic kitchen had been flooded up to the level of the countertop.

Something had been settled regarding my role in the party, and I was now walking along the counter-top, trying to get to wherever I needed to get to take care of my task. The kitchen floor seemed to get closer and closer, and things took on more and more of a regular proportion.

At some point my CEO walked past me, coming from the opposite direction. He may have been walking on the countertop, but I think he actually was down on the kitchen floor, which was now only 3m or so below the counter-top. I said hi to him. He said hi and addressed me by my name. I was pleasantly surprised that he knew my name.

I walked past some tall cardboard boxes that were on the counter-top. At the end of the counter-top was something that looked like a way-oversized wheelchair-ramp leading down to an oversized lobby that looked like the lobby to a small office building in a suburban office park.

I somehow found myself on another ledge, like an oversized counter-top, looking down (about 5m) to an oversized area that had been set up "to look like" a 1950s-style diner (even though I don't think now that the place actually looked like a 1950s-style diner).

The place had clean wood floors, white walls, and a few round tables. Over the huge front door was a huge "1950s-style" sign which looked like a mix between a clock and a spoon. The name of the restaurant was given, with a (not very convincing) "1950s-style" slogan underneath it.

I'd had to turn around to see the sign. I turned back around and was now in a smallish theatre, which was still, somehow, the "1950s diner." I stood (on the floor!) at the top and back of the theatre.

The theatre was full of young people, mostly boys. The theatre's seats were all set up at a couple of different angles. The seating was very steep, like stadium seating. The chairs were red. Down at the bottom was a small stage.

I understood that an anime festival was about to take place here. Some presenter (possibly a shortish, youngish-looking Asian woman in a grey t-shirt, pale blue jeans, and glasses) was about to begin speaking.

I found a couple of my friends: a man I don't recognize and my female friend T. They were sitting at the back of the theatre, on red-leather and chrome stools like counter-stools in a 1950s diner.

I went over to my friends. I lay down across a couple of the stools, stomach-down. I wondered if these seats were very good. After all, this place was packed. Once the presentation started, would we have a bunch of people constantly crowding in front of us?

My stool-tops now seemed to come directly out of the floor now, instead of being atop chrome poles. T, wearing a long skirt, lifted up her skirt to straddle me and sit on my back.

I kind of got mad that T had lifted up her skirt. I knew that she'd lift it up enough so that anybody looking would easily see the crotch of her panties. There had already been some creeps looking in our direction. Now that T had basically flashed everybody, these guys would probably really want to cause trouble for me.

At some point I may have had to tell T to get off me. The way the stool-tops were set and the way T sat on me were putting a lot of pressure on my spine. I figured I'd just roll down onto the floor and let T sit on me that way.

After this, T and I were standing by some doorway, just outside the theatre, looking into the dark theatre through a half-opened door. We stood in a white walled hallway.

We were talking to a couple of older, rich-looking, white people, probably a man and a woman. The man and woman were famous and possibly had had something to do with the anime and manga industry. We may have been making plans to collaborate on something.

Good morning everybody. It's Saturday, so I have some time for side notes. Usually I post my dreams via phone, on my subway ride in to the city.

I remember five dreams from last night. But I can't remember any of them very well. I've been pounding NyQuil every night, and that really affects my recall -- though it doesn't seem to affect the weirdness of my dreams too much.

Looking back on these dreams, it seems pretty obvious a lot of the imagery comes from a photo article msn.com had yesterday about huge mansions. A lot of the mansions had movie theatres. And one of the mansions had the "organic shape" of the science lab in the first dream.

I was lucid for about half a second in the fourth dream. I seldom get a solid lucid dream. Maybe once a year. I don't try. Lucidity, like meditation and OBEs, seems to be bad for my nerves rather than good. I don't know why. I usually let my dream life just take its course.

Also -- sorry to MoSh for appropriating his avatar into the fifth dream. I think I have found the dream-sharing interactions on this site so interesting here that I made up a DC to dream-share with.

Dream #1

I was in a restaurant with my female friend T. The restaurant was nice, dim, with tall tables and chairs, all widely spaced. There were very few people in the restaurant. However, I ended up talking with some guy sitting a few tables away from us.

The guy and I ended up talking about spiders. I was trying to make some point about how spiders are actually nicer than a lot of people think. I was trying to use some weird etymological (not entomological) argument.

Eventually I turned to T and asked, "How do you say 'phobia of spiders?'"

T asked, "In Japanese or French?"

I said, "In French, of course!" as if the argument had all been based on French etymology.

T gave me the phrase. But as she did, it was also like I was trying to work through the phrase in my own mind, trying to recall it for myself. As I did so, it was like T was explaining a whole series of things regarding phobias.

T expanded over my whole field of view. Darkness surrounded her. She was eating some kind of tofu soup. I now focused deeply on one of the cubes of tofu. It seemed to break in the broth. The fragments dissolved and became something like stars in the darkness.

As this happened, T was explaining the optical, neurological, and muscular processes of a phobia. As she finished her discussion, the stars became directed toward moving out of some kind of wall. I seemed to be moving with the stars. They pushed out through and past the wall. I went with the.

Outside the wall, I looked back to see that this "wall" had been some kind of half sphere of organic material, like a microscopic picture of a spore. The view of this was in black and white, with all the outlines and ridges of the "spore" in white and all the smooth parts of the spore and the spore's surroundings in black.

As this was occurring, I heard T say, "You see, we can take any sort of psychological process, such as the phobia of spiders, determine its physical characteristics, even down to the temperature change of the body, and re-engineer an organism through these phenomena. And that is how we've created our first mouse."

I was now floating deep in the blue waters of a sea. I saw, down at the sea's floor, an organically curved building, which I recognized as a research lab, covered in sand.

I thought to myself, Why would they have created a mouse? Wouldn't they have created a human from all that human data? But I then realized that you would first have to create small animals, then work your way up to larger animals. I also realized that all of this would have to take place in the depths of the sea, because you'd need the pressure.

I now saw inside the research lab. I saw inside an office that was unlit. The only light coming into the office was from another room, and from the wall-sized window which showed the blue sea outside.

A man sat in the office. He was young, tall, strong, tan-skinned, with slightly curly hair that went just below his shoulders and gentle blue-green eyes. He wore a slightly loosed blue-green t-shirt and blue jeans.

The man was on an old-style, big cell phone with his girlfriend. He was talking about how hard this work was. He sometimes wondered if it was even worth it for him to continue. He also wondered something like whether it was ethical for him to be doing this kind of work.

But he then told his girlfriend, "But, hey, they're paying me 30 a month! That's right! I mean 30 Gs!"

I quickly did the calculation and realized this was a lot of money.

Dream #2

I was in a stadium-style movie theatre. The movie was playing. The movie theatre was relatively empty. In fact, the only people who were there, I think, were friends of mine. The movie theatre may have been part of something like a hotel or resort, and we all may have been at this resort for some specific lesson or project.

I saw my friend T down a few rows from me. I went down to her row and started flirting with her. We ended up cuddling, and getting to the point where I had her long skirt pushed up pretty far on her legs. I thought we might even be getting ready to go back to her room.

But T got up and went somewhere else. I sat watching the movie for a little while. Then I saw an extremely attractive, blonde woman in her mid-20s down a couple of rows from me. I didn't know her, but I went to talk to her. She was very well-groomed, and she wore a pale purple, fuzzy sweater and a long skirt.

We were talking for a little while. Then she started leaning and nuzzling against me. I thought I probably shouldn't respond so much to her, after I had been messing with T and getting her so excited. But I eventually got so aroused by the woman's advances that I began responding.

We started getting pretty involved. I thought to myself, All my friends are in the rows behind and above me. They can all see what I'm doing, right after I'd been doing it with T. What will they think? And what if T is still back there?

The blonde woman and I were now in some store that looked like a dollar store full of Christmas decorations. We were embracing each other fondly and calmly, as if comfortable with the thought of soon being in bed with each other. We stood near a wall-height window in the store. The sunlight was bright and golden-white.

Suddenly I could sense T coming from some part of the store behind us. I thought, I can't let T see me like this! She'll be so upset! She likes me so much!

So I took the blonde woman, folded her up (like she was now only three feet tall), and shoved her into a clear-plastic shelf. The shelf was also holding metallic red and gold letter-shaped Christmas streamers wrapped in flat cellophane packaging with cardboard tops.

I turned back and looked along the aisles. It was a little bit dimmer farther back in the store. I could see T walking up toward me. She was smiling somewhat innocently. When she finally got up to me, I could see that her hair had gotten long and kind of messy.

Dream #3

I floated down from the ceiling of a basketball auditorium. I descended over a wide staircase, at the top of which was a wide entranceway. At the bottom of the staircase was the basketball court.

A group of people walked out from the entranceway as I descended the final slow feet to the stairs. The group was led by a white man. He didn't look real at all. He looked like a cartoon. He was amazingly wide, with unnaturally tanned skin, a plasticky wave of hair, and a frozen grin. He wore a sea-green polo shirt and khaki slacks.

Behind this white man were five black men, dressed up like the Harlem Globetrotters. They all looked like terribly exaggerated cartoons! One of them even looked like the bottom half of a bowling ball in red and white striped shorts -- with no top half for his body!

I told myself, This is unreal. I'm dreaming.

As soon as I realized I was dreaming, everything took on such a tactile clarity that I felt like I was awake. I said to myself, Oh. I guess I just woke up from my dream. No wonder I thought I was dreaming. I told myself, Well, hopefully next time I'll realize I'm dreaming while I'm actually dreaming.

The basketball players all ran out to the court. I ran out as well. It was like I was supposed to play against all of them. They all ran around me with the ball. I kept almost getting the ball from them. But they would pass it around and keep it away from me.

At one point, all five basketball players were in a line, tossing the ball back to the next person as I approached the person who had the ball. I was especially frustrated not being able to get the ball from the player who didn't even have a top half to his body!

The players were now all around me, near the hoop. The were surrounding me. I felt like if I didn't get the ball now, I would lose for sure! Suddenly, a white woman dressed up as Super Mario got the ball from one of the players. She bent over to look into my face (as if I were waist-high -- only a child?) and nodded at me, letting me know she was on my side.

The Super Mario girl soared up into the air. It looked like she was going to make a slam dunk! The hooped seemed to be 20 feet high. But the girl looked like she was going to make it. But as she approached the hoop, she just threw the ball straight at the net. The ball flew off and rolled away somewhere off the court.

The Super Mario girl landed. Some of my other teammates gathered around me. (I only came up to their waists, as if I were a child, although this didn't occur to me in the dream.) The Super Mario girl may now have been wearing spring-green overalls and a pink shirt with tiny, little flower designs on it, though she still had the Mario nose and mustache.

The teammates all explained to me that the Super Mario girl could have made the dunk. But that wasn't the point of this game. I looked at the ground. I didn't want to hear that. I thought, If she could have made the dunk she should have just made it. The basketball players had all frustrated me so much. Somebody should just have dunked on them!

Dream #4

I was in a basement of some really fancy hotel or house. The basement was like a nice, den-like room, with warm, orange walls. There were a lot of people here. We were all having some kind of multi-day party or retreat. We were all somewhat rich, and most of us had been friends for a while.

There were a few groups of us standing in a few different lines to get night-time desserts from a number of different small bars before heading to some late-evening recreation like playing an easy sport or watching a movie.

I was (or was seeing from the viewpoint of) a white man in his 50s or 60s. I was somewhat tall, strong, with tanned skin. I had grey-white hair, short, and well-combed. I had steel-blue eyes. I wore a blue shirt, possibly navy blue, and pale-khaki or white khaki shorts.

In front of me was a little boy. He was blonde, very pretty. He seemed to be wearing only a pale blue, long-sleeved, Gap shirt (which is what I wear as a shirt to go to bed) and nothing else. The shirt went down almost to the young boy's knees.

I and the boy still had a few more people to go before we would get served. The bar we were at looked like it had some kind of tropical theme: it had bamboo shoots for the bar front, and had a roof over it that looked liked thatched palm leaves.

I seemed to be hugging the boy from behind. The boy finally told me he didn't feel like he wanted to do this, and that he really didn't want to do the late night activity. I understood that the boy just wanted to go to bed.

I got out of line with the boy and began walking out of the room. As I did so, I said goodbye to a few people, explaining that I was heading out for the night, because the little boy figured it was time to go to bed.

I noticed how all the other older men were with older women, like they were with their wives. I couldn't figure out why I was with a little boy.

Dream #5

I walked into an apartment that was a maybe three or four floors up in its building. The apartment had brick walls, and it looked out over some kind of city scene, like in a slightly busy area of Brooklyn or Manhattan.

It was late afternoon. The light outside was dim blue. But inside the apartment it was warm and well-lit. The apartment felt cluttered, but nice and comfortable.

There were other people in the apartment, all friends. It was like we were having a party. Everybody was happy and cheerful. But I also had a sense that we were really here to strategize about something. It was like we were making plans to defend ourselves against some really bad thing that was about to happen or that had already begun happening and was in its early, relatively mild stages.

The apartment may have been a very large studio, so that the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and the bedroom, were all really "one room," even though the place was large enough and the space was varied enough so that each diferent place felt like a "different room."

I walked over to the dining table, near the front windows. The kitchen was just to my right. I looked at a sheet of paper. It was in a different language. I began talking about what was written on the paper.

One of my friends, a young man all dressed up in fancy garb and a powdered wig, like the picture of Vivaldi in MoSh's avatar on this site, came up to me and asked me if I spoke the language on the sheet of paper.

"Oh, no," I replied. "I don't speak Latin. I don't speak any language other than English. I mean, I think people are fooled, because I learn songs in other languages, and I sing those songs pretty well. But that's mostly j-pop, and I definitely don't speak Japanese."

I felt stupid, having to admit that I didn't speak Latin, after I had spoken, apparently with a tone of authority, regarding the language on the sheet. I thought I had acted in a misleading way. So now I tried to make up for it by thinking of a song that I knew in Latin. But all I could think of was Leporello's aria from Mozart's Don Giovanni. And I knew that "wasn't quite" Latin.

I began to see the words of Leporello's aria handwritten in pencil on a sheet of paper, very watery and blurry.

Good morning everybody. I remember two dreams from last night. But my memory of both is a little fuzzy. I took some NyQuil last night because I have a cold.

Dream #1

I had just gotten off a plane. I got into an old, baby blue VW Beetle, which was in something like an underground parking lot. I'm not sure exactly what I did in the Beetle, because I didn't move the car.

I walked up into some kind of terminal corridor at the airport. There were very few people around. The place looked old and dim. I walked though this terminal and into another parking garage.

I was walking through this parking garage as if I were just going to walk straight out of the airport. But then I remembered that I had a car in this parking garage, and that I needed to drive it home. It was actually my mom's car. It was a Cadillac, like from the 1970s.

I turned around and walked back in the direction I had come from. I may have been able to see back into the terminal, which may now have looked like a big, empty living room with a big concession stand in it.

I found the Cadillac parked so it faced a concrete wall. I got in and began to pull it out of the parking space. I figured this would be a fine car to drive back to my mom's house.

But then I remembered that I already had my mom's other car, the VW Beetle, parked in the parking garage on the other side of the airport and way underground.

I stopped the Cadillac, trying to figure which car I should drive back to my mom's house. I hated the Beetle. But it was my mom's car, and I would have to bring it back to her. I couldn't figure out how I could get both cars home. I also couldn't figure out how I'd gotten both cars here in the first place.

I pulled the car back into the parking space. Something about that action felt so good that I did it again and again. I couldn't quite get the car between the lines of the parking space.

I began imagining myself as a businessman from the 1970s: a tall, white, handsome man with blue eyes, a silly kind of permed hair-do, and a full but well-trimmed beard. The man's hair was brown but greying a little. The man wore a very slim grey suit with a pale blue shirt.

Dream #2

A man and woman in their 40s or 50s were trying to escape from some group of people. The man and woman ended up in a room in a building like a mansion. In this room, you would perform some kind of ritual and it would do something like make you immortal.

The man had gotten the woman to undergo this ritual before the people had come. The view had been from outside the room, so I couldn't see what had happened inside the room.

Now it was like everything had started all over again. The man and the woman went to a few different places. Then they ended up being pursued by people who didn't want them to do the ritual.

The man and woman were on the run. They were back at the mansion. They stood inside a dim, wood-walled room. They were trying to unlock and open a huge, heavy wood door. There was a feeling of urgency, as if the people pursuing the man and woman could be here at any moment. The lights in the room were flickering on and off, as if it were thundering inside.

Finally the man and woman got the door open. Beyond the door there was a lot of flashing. I was really curious what this whole thing was about, and I didn't want this "movie view" from outside the room. I really wanted to see what happened in the room.

I now identified with the man. I was him. I stood in the room. The room was wide and square, and it was almost entirely taken up by a strange pool. The pool seemed to be filled with clouds rather than liquid. The clouds may also have been flashing, as if with lightning. I now understood that this pool was some kind of portal to another dimension.

The man and woman knew the people were coming. So they had to jump in the pool. The man/I decided to go first this time. I jumped out really far and did some kind of twirling diver move.

I began descending through the clouds. There was white light and a calm, but almost electric, feeling all around me.

Good morning. This dream is kind of weird. I think it's also just a fragment.

I was in a busy mall full of people. The mall had a lot of very narrow corridors, rather than a few wide corridors. The storefronts may have been small and packed with items like tall posters or stands made to look like anime charcters. The place was extremely packed with people.

I knew this was a "fetish mall," a mall filled only with stores catering to people's various fetishes. I had been here before (possibly in the first part of this dream, which I may have forgotten).

An attractive, young woman poked her head out of one of the storefronts. She was pale, with long, brown hair, a blue or green t-shirt, and blue jeans.

She asked me some question about the store she was about to go into, something about whether the fetish comics in the store were appropriate for women as well as men. I told her that it was fine if she wanted to read them. She nodded and popped her head back into the store.

I continued walking through the crowds of people. I wondered either why a woman would want to read fetish comics made for men or why a woman would ask permission to do so, especially permission from some person she didn't even know, like me.

I turned left, into another fetish store. The inside of this store was huge. It seemed like a big bookstore, but it had other stuff in it. I think it actually may have looked like a cross between a bookstore and a dollar store.

I didn't look around very much. This place wasn't as crowded as the corridor had been, but it was still very busy. Plus, I felt like I was going somewhere with purpose. I felt like my feet were walking, almost gliding, toward a certain place on their own. But I also felt like I knew where I was going, like I'd been there before.

I felt like one of the higher ups at my old job, a woman who in waking life had been extremely supportive of me, was following me. I then felt like a lot of people were following me, mostly people I'd known from work.

I walked down a staircase that had a sign above it. The sign was white with red capital letters. It listed the items being sold below.

I was downstairs. It looked like a department store, a cheap department store. There were some displays showing bed sets, some displays showing living room sets, and some displays showing toilets. Sometimes all the stuff was mixed together.

A woman off to my right caught my attention. She was maybe in her late 50s or early 60s. She had red hair, tanned skin, and thin eyes. She wore a blue dress. Her hair was arranged a little weird, almost shoulder length, but permed out to one side, so she looked lopsided.

The woman directed me into an area full of lingerie. She intended for me to try on certain items. I wondered if that would be alright. After all, would they really want a guy touching that stuff, especially if he didn't intend to buy it?

The area the woman led me into was a big, red room. There was nothing, or very little, in the room. There were dressing rooms along the right wall.

We walked past a table of black and red underwear. They looked kind of satiny and lacy. A sign over them said "2 for $5." I thought maybe I should buy a pair of these right now to wear while I was trying on this other stuff the older woman had for me. That seemed polite to me somehow. But I decided instead to wear my own boxer briefs while I tried stuff on. But I felt bad about that, as if it were rude of me.

The woman stood me in front of a dressing room. She began showing me different articles of underwear. She went into great detail on their design, showing all kinds of things like stitching. But I really wasn't interested in this. The more I looked at the panties, the more they somehow looked to be made out of the same fabric as basketball jerseys.

The woman now showed me a pair of panties that she said were made with padding. I couldn't figure out why they'd need padding -- maybe to give women a better shape? I looked at them. They looked like a mix between underwear and diapers.

The woman told me to feel the padding. So I did. It looked like the inside of a diaper. But it felt like bags of sand, like the tiny sand bags in weight-exercise bracelets.

I looked at the underwear again. They looked like a mix between Ace Bandages and diapers. The price was written in pencil on the bottom: $19.50. I thought, That's a bit much, for something I'm never actually going to wear.

The woman said, "This pair is the first thing I'd like you to try on." She motioned me into a dressing room stall.

The stall was barely large enough to fit me. It was dimly lit. I was mostly undressed, except my underwear. I thought I'd keep them on. But now I had nothing on. I was holding the diaper-thing in my hand. I was looking for all my clothes.

Now I had nothing at all. I was trying to figure where I'd put everything. Now I realized I'd actually thrown everything over the dividing-wall between stalls. The dividing-wall was just above my head. I reached over to discover the other stall packed with clothes, all the way to the top of the divider.

I kept reaching over the divider, trying to find my clothes. I even tried to find the diaper-thing figuring that that article of clothing was almost mine anyway, and that it was better than nothing. But I kept pulling up completely unknown articles of clothing. All this time, the changing stall may have gotten smaller and smaller.