Batch

02-19-2013 -- Find myself on the road, driving to some sort of job interview, I think. The area is one I've driven through in a dream halfway recently, though I can't specifically place it. Anyway, some black lady is trying to direct me into the parking lot of a strip mall, and for some reason I don't want to go where she points me, so I make a left turn into a different strip mall, then turn around and try to exit ... only to find myself facing the same black lady trying to direct me. I think it is President Palmer's ex-wife from 24 (which I watched 8 hours of last night.)

So I find myself facing this woman, and there is somebody else in the car as well, who is now driving, and he ignores her and drives right over to somebody else, who he knows. We're not supposed to do this, but he knows her well enough to get away with it, and it seems we are somehow here for interviews for some sort of salesman position, and I know it wouldn't be a good fit for me, so I just decide to leave.

I cross the street to the strip mall I was trying to get to in the first place, and find myself near an older couple (they kind of remind me of Bob and Virginia, friends from the Adventurers Club) who are arguing about something. Then I find myself getting some kind of injection of some sort of prescription drug or something, except things shift almost immediately to getting some sort of additive for my oil.

They are telling us we add this additive, then immediately change the oil, which seems to defeat the point of putting in an additive. Then they clarifying that it is very important that we change the oil very quickly afterward ... within no more than 300,000 miles, maximum. This seems really odd. Meanwhile, one of the other people looking for work here looks like Kensei from Heroes, and is trying to empty out some junk from his wallet into a trash can, but he also loses a few credit cards and things.

He is reaching into the trashcan to retrieve them, but he can't actually see them. But I can, so I am directing him, and I eventually let him know he got all of them, and then notice that he also threw away a bunch of my full-color business cards, which is kind of depressing.

I walk out of there to find myself out in a sort of field or plain, where people are just walking around, and some people are selling balloon figures. But they aren't twisting them to order for people, but have them already twisted, and lined up in long rows of maybe 30 or 40 figures. Caught from the right angle, where you just see the edge of one balloon after another, yet can't see the whole figure, they look very colorful, yet abstract, and I decide I have to take some pictures of them, so I pull out a camera and start snapping.

But even though I am taking wide-angle photos of the long rows of balloons, some people think I am taking pictures of them, and are objecting and making a fuss, and really kind of annoying me! Somebody gets a little more annoyed, and I find myself being shoved through a large wooden door by somebody who seems to be Nina from 24.

Everything switches completely, and the wooden door is the door leading to a train platform that I've dreamed about many times before, and after Nina has shoved against it so hard, I manage to grab it and stop it right before it slams into some sort of railroad bigwig. So we're talking to the bigwigs, while Nina is chained up, and there is some little black kid there. We're talking about how I am taking Nina in, and the train bigwigs are not very bright, so the discussion is kind of comical.

At least it is until Nina manages to somehow break her chains, and starts to flail around. I still have her wrapped in my arms, and manage to hold her for several seconds, then she manages to break free my grip, as well. She grabs the little black kid as a hostage, and dives out of the front of the train, where she falls under it, and everybody assumes she is killed.

I'm worried about the kid, but the bigwigs are asking "What kid?" They didn't see any kid. It turns out the kid was a ghost that only Nina and I could see, and her trying to take him as a hostage obviously did her no good. But unlike everybody else, I somehow know she isn't dead, but that she just grabbed on to the under-carriage of the train, and is still with us. I'll have to face her again at the end of the line ... a place where three train crossing meet, that I've dreamed of many times before, that seems to be where the train tracks crossed Beach Blvd in Buena Park.