ErraticHopper

This is the last dream this month. I've been slacking. Oops...

From the street I walk into a shop with a person I know from school. The shop front is about two bays wide and completely open, no doors, one single storey. It reminds me of the entrance to an underground car park. The name of the shop is four letters, beginning with A and lowercase. I've forgotten what it was.

We enter and I see that the shop is wider on the inside and stretches far, far back. We begin walking through a section filled with clothes on racks seemingly grouped by colour. As we get to the edge of the clothes I reach out to feel a turquoise skirt with a yellow daisy pattern between my fingers. The fabric feels slippery and textured. I let go and keep going past several clear stands of hairbands and sunglasses and trinkets. There aren't even any paths or open space - the floor is chock-a-block with racks and stands and rails. I can barely see ahead and have to shove and squeeze to make my way.

We step into a big square area of open space. It's broken up by barriers of the kind you see in airport security or any long queue, into several straight lanes each leading towards a till. The tills are along a long, shiny counter - its sides are white and the top is black. The tops of computer monitors peek over the counter at each station. I can't quite be sure, now, whether this area was filled with orderly and motionless queues or completely empty.

We continue straight through the till area and into a mass of white shelves piled with coloured goods. Shelving units facing in all directions fit together like Tetris. There's barely any space to push through. I look up and the ceiling is white and shadowy, starkly bright lights suspended from it on twisted cables and the vented openings to air conditioning pipes. The ceiling is crisscrossed with narrow black beams. I look down and the floor is grey lino flecked with white, and tiny scattered triangles in red, blue, green and yellow.

It seems we are nearly at the back of the premises (though I can't see a wall ahead of me - the view fades to black not far off) when we abruptly turn left instead. Several large, black openings to food kiosks can be seen with rows of screens advertising their menus, like you'd see in a shopping centre food court. Directly ahead is a burger place. Above the kiosks is now an upper floor with full-length tinted windows, up there I can see padded booth seating and faces pressed against the glass. There's a new path right in front of all the kiosks which leads away behind the shop floor and tills. I can't see far down it until the hall becomes enclosed and completely dark.

We turn back and go the way we came, shoving past the merchandise and other customers and walking all the way until we leave the store. Outside the daylight seems blinding. The sky is white and all along the sloping street the shop fronts are single-storey and topped by huge signs. All the colours are bright and vivid. I see a green shop with lettering in a fun red font, and a black man with dreads in jeans and a bright green shirt. Downhill are more shops and cars passing in both directions, but uphill there are no more buildings to be seen beyond the intersection immediately to the right.