Visions in the Dark

The dream starts off in a large grocery store. I am in the frozen food section looking for something and there are several people throughout the store who appear to be shoppers. I look over my should at one point and see a former friend of mine, Cathy, standing in the doorway to the supply room. I am not happy to see her and I am even more annoyed by the smug look she has on her face. Everyone who I thought at first were random shoppers, myself included, turn out to be prisoners who have to "work off their debt" to be free. Cathy is the one who has imprisoned us and forces us to work in the grocery store, and as of yet no one has ever worked off their debt or escaped.

I am stocking in the soup isle and I find a newborn, sleeping baby, wrapped in a white blanket, laying in a sale bin. I sense that she is related to me somehow and I so pick her up. Slave master, psycho control freak (as she is in real life) Cathy comes over to give me trouble because I am not working and I tell her that I have to call my sister-in-law to come and pick up the baby. Cathy tries to take the baby but I become confrontational and Cathy wisely backs down. For the first time in the dream she doesn't have that annoying smirk on her face because she realizes that I am not afraid of her and will do serious damage if she tries to mess with me. Cathy tells me that she can't have children at her store and I have thirty minutes to get rid of the baby. As the slave keeper walks away I yell "or what? You'll fire me?" but she does not know how to respond and disappears into her office. Several of the other prisoners seem happy to see someone stand up to the boss for once, though they meekly continue with their slave labor.

I leave the grocery store and enter into the large shopping center to which it is attached and beeline for a public phone to call my sister-in-law. She says that she and my brother will be there shortly and I tell them to meet me at the mall entrance. I have no intention of returning to the grocery store and plan on using my brother and sister-in-law as my escape route. When they finally arrive, my sister-in-law takes the baby and says that she is happy to have her daughter back and thanks me for taking care of her. I jump into their mini-van and tell my brother to floor it, but he just stares at me blankly and asks me if I have to get back to work. (*facepalm*) I call him an idiot and tell him to drive and when he protests my sister-in-law also gets on his case until finally he drives away from the mall.

I am both excited and apprehensive. I wonder how long it is before Cathy figures out I got away and hope to get as far away as I can before then. My brother drives along a road that follows the ocean. The sky is overcast and grey it is slightly foggy. We drive in silence for a long time before my sister-in-law asks how work was and I tell her about the perpetual slavery that the workers are forced to endure. My brother asks me something, but I forget what now, before suddenly swerving his mini-van off the road and into the ocean. The vehicle goes deep enough to fill halfway with water and get stuck in the sand, but not deep enough to sink and submerge the entire mini-van. My sister-in-law just gazes out the front window, cradling the baby, like nothing has happened. I feel extremely mortified that my brother is a complete moron, but cannot get a reason out of him when I demand to know why he has sabatoged my plan for escape. I know that now the mini-van has been disabled, I will eventually be found and sent back to work at the grocery store prison, and that makes me very frustrated and angry.