Amurehna

*Note* I don't think about Dave and Patrick often. In fact, the only time I think about them is after I've had a dream with them in it. I don't understand why they keep coming back, since I haven't seen them in almost 8 years. At one time I thought they were my friends. I don't like to think about that period in my life because it is just a sharp, painful reminder of how stupid I can be.
Dave and Patrick were in a band, I used to go see them play and hang out at their practices. They didn't care at all when I stopped coming by. That is how little of an impact I made. Fantastic.


Lowe's
I'm at work. Just like IWL, other stores have lent us their associates to help us cope with the extra business the tornado may bring us. One of them is a woman I used to work with at another store.
A department manager expresses his frustration to me, that all our extra help keeps leaving early with the excuse that there is nothing to do, and then our people end up staying late to get things done.
I can see my former co-worker making that excuse and I agree that it's ridiculous.

"They say we haven't had any sales, but they're wrong! There are things they could be downstocking!" He says.
"Yeah!" I agree, "A guy and his son came through here and bought a ton of fishing gear."

((because apparently Lowe's sells fishing gear...))
I see a scene where the man is taking an armful of fishing rods over to an H cart and dropping them.

Dave and Patrick
The setting is a little confusing. The back end of the building is Lowe's. The front is a bar. The Lowe's part is currently closed, all the lights are off.
My phone rings ad an unfamiliar number pops up. Usually I don't answer, this time I do, with a politely questioning "Hello?"

"Julie? It's Dave."
"Dave! How are you?"

He says something about life being too short to leave people behind. He says that his fiance was diagnosed with cancer and judging by how badly his voice is shaking, she has recently died. He asks if I'll meet with him and he apologizes for never contacting me.
I tell him where I'm at and he asks if he can drop by.
A little bit later he shows up.
He's 5'7", wiry, black hair. Always wearing a black button-up with the sleeves rolled up, black jeans and black square-toed boots. [I]((note: in hindsight it's not so strange that I wanted to spend time with them. I'm seeing a trend. You wanna guess what Patrick looked like? If you're thinking he's a tall red-head, you'd be right. Aside from their hair color and body types, they are absolutely nothing like Liam and Jack. What is wrong with me?))

We're in the bar.

He reminds me of the shows he used to put on and I see a different band playing. He waggles his eyebrows at me, suggesting that he'd steal the stage from them if I asked. maybe.
He ventures into the Lowe's section of the building and of all absurd things, he spots Patrick who used to the bassist in his band. I wonder what he's doing here, since I know he moved to another state. He looks different. He has a moustache, for one. And his clothes are a dirty grey. He looks like a homeless person, he's rifling through a bin on the floor.

"Patrick! what are you doing here?" Dave exclaims, looking askance at me as he crosses the sales floor.
"Decided to move back."

Patrick says. I wonder what he'll say to me, if he'll mention the e-mail I sent to him a couple of years ago or not. He completely ignores me. Of course. How depressing. I wander away. Dave follows me out to the front of the bar. There's a raised wooden patio. I climb onto it. Dave asks what they pay me. I tell him my hourly wage. It seems like he has fallen on hard times and the pay isn't bad, I'm tempted to tell him to apply. I reconsider though, knowing that he wouldn't want to work for a place like this. Music is his life. Besides, I wouldn't want him to feel obligated to work with me.

Pirate Ship
There are holes in this dream.
Dave has a pirate ship, I'm there with him. We are fleeing from his enemies.

"They're closing in." I say, frowning at the the pick-up trucks that are parked around us. We aren't even in water, we are stranded in the middle of a parking lot.
"I guess we have no choice."

We exchange an unhappy look. In the holding area below deck there are hundreds of small chests half submerged in water. At his say-so they burst open, light and water pouring out from inside.
At an earlier point there was some sort of time travel involved, that had kept him from sacrificing the innocents whose souls were in those chests. So I'm aghast when he gives the order.

"Call it insurance." He says, "When we did things over I...held some back."

I had thought he changed, obviously I was wrong.
The water from the chests floods out of the ship and begins to cover everything in sight. The trucks have a large empty plastic bottle tied to their bumpers.

"Are they stupid? How is that going to help?" I ask, leaning against the railing.
"Better than nothing, I guess." He replies. I don't really understand still.

There's a lapse. Dave is gone. There's an undead version of a guy I used to work with named Fernando. He's a shortish mexican man, portly with a shaved head. He isn't rotting, he is just extremely pale. When I see him I flee to a 4x4 cubby in the wall with a white-washed door and a black handle, and slam the door behind me. I turn and reach up to lock it, but as my hand is reaching the knob he is shoving it open. I throw my weight against it and try to twist the lock. He gives it another shove. I scramble away as the door explodes inward. He ducks inside and towers over me. I wonder where the hell Dave is.

"Seems like we've taken your ship."
"Seems like."
"You want to come outside? Give me your weapons?"
"Waaaaant?" I say, drawing the word out like I'm thinkin' about it. He clacks his teeth at me.
"Wouldn't want to have an accident, yeah? I could snap your pretty little fingers off with one chomp."

I scowl at him and he steps back so I can crawl out of the cubby. There are undead lined up along the sides of the ship. All just extremely pale.
This is stupid. I see a table nearby, there are knives all over it. I run to it and they don't stop me, because it's my dream and I do what I want. I grab three off the table. I sabotage myself by thinking about how they aren't balanced for throwing, since two of them are kitchen knives. I don't think to change them. I run to another level of deck and there is a strange, tiny creature with giant eyes and long hair perched in front of me. I throw the knives at it and miss with all three.

"Well, that went well." Dave says to me. I run over to him and just stop myself from grabbing his sleeve, it would be a terrible invasion of his space.
"Shut up. What are we going to do about the zombies?"
"You'll see." He smirks at me.

Submarine
In the first part of the dream I'm in Lowe's ((Sigh...)), and a woman is showing me how to work in my new department. It all seems really complicated and I'm not sure I can understand it enough to do my job. She tells me that once I submit the estimate, I have to go over to Millwork and attach it to another one.
Right in front of the Millwork desk the concrete rises into a ramp, so that Building Materials is elevated from the rest of the store. Millwork is enclosed in a tent. We go inside. She says she has to handle something else real quick and leaves. There are two tall men with red blonde hair and a girl about my height. One of the men jacks with us by crowding really close to my left side and scooting us over to stand by the other man. I smack his arm.

"Would you quit that?"
He laughs. "I'm just messing with you."
"Yeah yeah...how am I supposed to look at this screen if you keep pushin' at me?"

He laughs again. I roll my eyes. He wanders away. I look up at the other red-haired man. Just like in every other dream with someone vaguely Liam's shape I am suddenly attracted to him. I bite my lip and he looks down at me.

"Hey, you're new here right?"
"Yep."
"You...are tiny."
"It's not my fault you're huge."

He grins a little. His shoulder is a couple of inches higher than my head. His biceps are about the size of my head. The more I look at him, the less attractive I find him. He's too buff for me. Like always, I start mentally subtracting features, running a mental comparison to Liam. Because I'm crazy.
He leaves and I follow. He's sliding backwards up the ramp singing some church hymn I find vaguely familiar. I decide he really isn't my type, and he disappears. I can still hear his voice though.
I walk up the ramp and slip near the top. It really is more like a slide. As I'm thinking that I trip and slide down the ramp on my knees. I feel like I'm going too fast and somehow direct myself into the Millwork tent.

There's a lapse and when I come to, I immediately understand that I'm in a kind of submarine, stationed under a lake. I know it's called the Hollow Pearl. I can't decide if the name is clever or stupid. Something shifts and I become lucid.
The world is slightly warped. I try to correct it by repeating the same action and focusing on how it should look. I have a little success, but feel like I'm wasting my time. I decide I want to do a front flip. ((God I'm so boring)) I run a couple of steps and throw myself into a flip. Kind of. I stumble and decide to try again. The next time I succeed, but can't stop flipping. Instead I wake myself up and go back to sleep, I very briefly rose into another dream where I was checking my phone. The screen taints the scene around me. I close my eyes and focus until it goes away.
I run out of the room. There's a long hallway full of doors.
I don't remember what happened there. More flipping probably.
Then I'm with my boyfriend, outside. Except he has black hair instead of blonde, just like his WL hair it's pulled back into a tail. I'm leading him to the Hollow Pearl. I gesture to the lake and think about how muddy the water is. There are people in the water, our enemies. He wades in and dives under. I follow after him but I'm afraid of the people in the water, so I walk back out.
He emerges, sputtering, choking. I panic and rush into the water to pull him out. I drag him to shore.
He no longer looks like my boyfriend, and isn't even wearing the same clothes.
He's wearing a light grey t-shirt, with a slightly darker grey neck and sleeves. I put my hand on his chest and lean over him.
He's got high cheek bones and a more narrow face. His eyes have turned a clear grey, his hair is waist-length and black. I remember how the water clung to his skin and eyelashes, how he choked and spat water.

"Are you okay?"

He manages to nod.