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Kind of a lame lucid dream, but I had it.

Something to do with Lego People in Minecraft or Minecraft people in a Lego world or something like that.


I was in the family van with my mom and dad. They were driving over these steep sandy hills preforming jumps. This was the first sign that I was dreaming; I began to question how the family van, being almost as old as I am was able to handle 20-foot jumps and landing on its nose with no sign of damage or distress.

At one point we drove through a barn. I got worried not only that this might be reckless and damage our van, but that an angry owner might show up.

At one point we stopped because my dad had to check the engine. I preformed a nose pinch. I could breathe fine. Dreaming. I looked up at the sky and saw five moons in the daytime sky. One of them was huge, obviously. I looked away and looked back and saw that the moons had somehow become conjoined together.

"Uhhh... that doesn't' look right."

"What are you talking about? It's just the moons sticking together. That's what all the craters on the big one are for, so all the little ones can fit nicely in the basins."

It was my mom. I told her that this was a lucid dream that I was going to leave her and go fly. I started climbing up one of the sandy hills. She started begging me to show her how to lucid dream like I do, thinking that it was really cool. At first, I told her no, but after she asked three or four times, I gave in.

I decided to teach her one of the first things that I had ever learned in lucid dreaming; how to run at high speeds. We found a black asphalt path. I explained to her that part of it is preforming the correct physical motion and part of it is having the correct mental state, knowing that your dream control has to work.

She took off running. I tried to go after her, but she didn't look back to see that my high-speed running had actually failed. But I still went after her for a minute. This led me through the woods, over a wooden bridge and to a small gas station/cafe place deep in the woods. There was a small lot with some strange cars in it nearby.

To be honest, I find that my parents, in lucid dreams make for pretty annoying DCs. In hindsight, I probably should have made an effort to get rid of her or distract her. She asked me why my running hadn't worked. I told her that I didn't know, but if we went into that gas station, we might be able to cheat the dream into giving us what we want.

I started to walk in, I pushed the door open and tightly squeezed the metal handle with my hand, picking up some dream stabilization. "A good friend of mine works here, I think she'll be able to help us." Luckily at this point was actually the last of my mom that I saw in the dream.

I came in. It was a small convince store that sold candy, chips and the likes. I saw a menu above the counter and apparently they sold a variety of common hot foods. (Pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, etc.) There were a couple of dream characters waiting in line. I just cut in front of them and they didn't care.

The person at the check-out counter was a short black lady with straight hair. I think she had the face of one of my old gym teachers from middle school. (Man parents and middle school teachers, this whole dream is just a host of awkward and uncomfortable dream characters.) She also had a bionic arm on one side. I kept looking at it, though she didn't seem to appreciate that. (She didn't seem particularly cheerful to begin with.) It kept changing sides.

"Are you going to buy anything or just stare?"

"No, I'm not hungry. Is Manei off her shift yet?"

"Yeah, I'll let you in."

Success. Manei was in the back room. She had on one of those really heavy native American ponchos for some reason. She was talking with this really short black boy who I assumed was the woman's son, and this fat girl with brown hair. I said hello and she said goodbye to her friends.

"What I tell you? No meet me in gear room! Meet me in bedroom! I tell you ten times! Now I cannot *do something* for ten days. Why you no listen?"

I open my mouth to talk.

"Come, we talk downstairs, in private."

She takes me back out front of the store and to the women's bathroom. I look in and there is a toilet filled with poo. (And I mean filled, like a mountain of poo.) There was also a lot of pee and *ahem* other liquids on the floor.

She closed the door and then opened it agian to reveal a flight of stairs with a bed at the bottom. She asked that the both of us jump at the count of three and land on the bed. We do it. Completely pointless but we do it.

"Now, Atakonk yatoo tahuatok bararr satago izquen lavis al Ukatok. Urtem kaso aleey" (Something or other.)

"Manei, I don't understand your dreamspeak all that well, remember?"

"I know, but I want you to listen- I want you to listen- I want you to Lis-Lis-Lis-Listen."

"Katago Lalataktaktak. Katago Lalataktaktak. Katago Lalataktaktak. Katago Lalataktaktaktaktaktaktak..."

Manei.exe has stopped working. Would you like to close the dream or check online for a solution?

The dream faded to black slowly around here. I tried to squeeze the pillows and blankets on the bed we were in to hang on, but I guess that's no different than squeezing the pillows and blankets in your waking life bed.

I was a popular artist, and some high-end museum had commissioned some work. I was going to take some tree roots and cover them with paper mache. But somehow all the supplies for my artwork ended up in this black guy's car. He started driving off with them. So I hopped into my car and chased him. I followed him all night. Finally he stopped for gas at a convenience store. As he was inside paying, I hastily piled all the stuff from his car into mine and then got in my car and floored it back to my studio. Then I wrote a letter to a friend, telling her what happened.

I am participating in an airsoft battle at an abandoned military outpost.I am running around,trying not to get hit by enemy fire.While running through the abandoned buildings i run into a bunch of military cadets from the academy, that i could see behind the group, doing some jogging.One of the people in the group is a friend of mine so i decide to sneakily make my way to him so the commanding officer doesnt notice(i distinctly remember that the officer had moustaches).I somehow manage to sneak in without anyone,accept for my friend,noticing.We talk for a while until we cut a corner.There in front of us i see a steep hill rising 2 meters off of the ground and assume that that is where we should go.I sprint ahead and try to climb the hill.I dont think i climbed it the normal way.It is kind of like i am trying to run up while staying vertical,but i am not sure.Anyway,i fail and fall back on the path.While turning around my friend sprints past me and up the hill.He succeeds and makes it but quickly falls back down.I turn around and see him lying on the floor in full MK-5 armor(from Halo),he is having trouble breathing.He is having an astma attack.I start wondering why he does not have an inhaler.I think i was yelling for help but i am not sure.While standing there,i decide to try to calm him down so he can breathe easier.I put my hand under his head and instruct him to try to calm down and controll his breathing.It worked a little bit but he is still having trouble.His older brother runs up to us and he tries to assist me in saving him.We turn around to ask people for help and when we look back,he has died and has turned into a shriveled up piece of skin that i picked off the ground.We are both very sad.The building next to us has a ladder and we climb it to the top and turn into anime characters.His girlfriend also appears.They try to convince me that there was nothing i could have done but i do not agree and leave pissed off.I enter a abandoned factory with the machinery still intact,still angry.I look at the floor and see some kind of fancy sci-fi device,and i feel like i am being watched.I hear an ethereal voice that tells me to pick it up and i do so.I try to figure out how to use but i dont know how,so the voice instructs me to press this not-very-obvious button on the top and it shoots out spider webs.I use the device a couple of times to try it out.
Now i am home,exiting my room and going down the stairs into the living room.I decide to test out the device to swing around the room,but the web is too weak to properly carry my momentum.I see a shadow moving above the stairs and swing myself onto them.I see a bluish-gray kitten on the top of the stairs covered in spider webs.I come closer and notice that it is having slight trouble breathing.I assume that it has gotten some into its mouth.I help it and clean the webs off of it and go into my room to find out why that happened.When i enter,i see some shadows behind the window curtain and after moving it,i see three more kittens there hiding in fear of something.They look at the top of my closet and i do the same when suddenly,something starts shooting webs at me.
I am exiting a hotel,POV is in 3rd. person.I am chasing down a guy who has stolen something.I try to swing with my web but run out of juice so i run after him at a speed that surprised me.

3rd. person view.Rarity and Applejack are fighting about something on some hill.I am playing Applejack here.After some time,the argument escalates and AJ throws dirt into R's face.R in turn throws motor oil on AJ's head but she doesnt mind since she is a coutry girl.She throws motor oil at R and she gives up.1st. person POV.AJ is looking at R while she is leaving.Environment suddenly transforms into my room and AJ realises she needs to wash her hair so she doesnt have motor oil on her head.She exits the room and finds herself at a crossroads between a bunch of stone corridors that resemble something out of an Egyptian pyramid.No success.

I am that chubby blonde actor guy that died recently(too lazy to look up his name).I am in a store,trying to find things to buy.I scan the shelves and find a bunch of gourme food packed into a fancy bag.I remember there was some kind of big orange thing in there that migh have had little balls on it but not sure.I look for a price but i cant see anything.I want to buy it,so i look to my right.There is a cash register in the corner there with two women.I ask one of them if she could tell me the price but she disregards the question and starts talking about what stuff this bag contains.After a while i get the impression that she is telling me that i cant afford it and leave before she got a chance to finish.I was quite annoyed.Now i am me.I look at the shelve where i found this and i still cannot see a price tag.I leave the bag and pick something else instead.I look to my left,where i left my school bag and go there to put the food in it,but on my way there Fillip H. and some other guys i used to go to school with appear out of nowhere and form a circle around me while arguing about where to go next.They do not appear to notice me so i make my way to my bag on the floor so i can put my food in.I manage to get it and they finaly disperse but they leave behind (don't remember his name) J.,who got very upset that they left him there.I turn around to look at his face and he yells at them with an angry expression on his face.

01-09-2013 -- [This one is titled kind of odd because the dream was all over the place, and it would be halfway difficult to come up with a good title for it, but for the sixth or seventh day in a row, somebody has been showing up in my dreams who really has no reason to be there. And since a friend has jokingly theorized that this woman can put herself in other people's dreams, and since she has recently commented on how often others have mentioned dreaming of her, I can't help but start considering her a sort of stalker, placing herself in my dreams.]

Doing a mystery shop at a convenience store over by Universal Studios. Since they don't have a fountain drink area, and since the hot dogs look really mangled, I am being forced to buy coffee, which means this must be a Circle K shop. I am wandering around the store checking on all the things I need to check on, and am amazed by the guy that seems to be buying one of the hot dogs that looks like it has been setting on the rollers for days or even weeks.

The cashier is asking me if I need any help, while I am approaching the coffee counter. I get there right before a pregnant woman, and grab a coffee cup, but it seems to be the last one of any size. It also feels very flimsy, and I am worried it might not be a usable cup, anyway. Since I don't want to hover around the counter, I start to move toward the back of the (very large) store, and stay out of the way for a possible few more cups to be put out.

I find myself far in the back, near a restroom, and decide I'll take the chance to check it for the mystery shop, but right before I walk in, somebody who works there walks in. I figure I'll wait, but am rudely told the restroom is not and will not be available. I seem to remember the same thing happening the last time I was here, and start to argue with them a bit, wondering why these people won't let anybody use the restroom.

I end up walking and talking with a young punk-like black guy and slowly start to learn that this is a huge building, and it has more than one business in it. Toward the back, there is a construction firm, and their bathroom is for their workers. They aren't going to let anybody else use it. This actually makes sense, and knowing what is going on makes me a lot more accepting of it, though I do think they ought to put up some signs or something, so people know they are no longer in the same store.

I thank the guy for his information, telling him I really appreciate his letting me know all this, and he gets very belligerent, asking me if I am mocking him in a way that is very reminiscent of Karl's Otis at the Adventurers Club. He thinks I am making fun of him, but I'm not. He soon leaves, and I find that as we have walked and talked, we exited the building to the East, and are now in a small gift shop a door or two down from the convenience store I was mystery shopping.

The gift shop sells food (perhaps pizza, considering later bits) and a bunch of motivational and educational-style posters. They seem to be about 1/3 grammar, 1/3 humor, 1/3 motivational, and kind of blend into each other so it would be quite easy to buy the wrong one if you weren't careful.

I try to walk the few yards west that ought to take me to the convenience store, but somehow it doesn't seem to be there, and I walk something like a quarter or a half mile until the street dead-ends in front of a freeway. The last little bit I reach, there are a bunch of little kids (mostly girls) that seem to be doing some very weird and spasmodic (but somewhat cute, since they are little kids) dancing to what seems to be Christian parodies.

As I am standing there, I hear a loud chuckle, and a very familiar voice saying something like "It took me forever to learn to ..." whatever it was, doesn't stick in my mind, but I look up at the freeway, to see a car at the side of the road with Anne clearly visible in it. About that time, the car starts to drive away, but not before Anne looks down and sees me standing there. "Great," I think, "She is going to be convinced I am stalking her, now."

I glance down a narrow sort of alleyway, and see a pizza parlor. It seems to be an Al's Pizza (a very small Kissimmee chain with two or three units, though one or two may have closed down), but when I look again, it seems to have changed into a small sort of tent. The whole area is now looking more like a flea market or something, and as I am feeling hungry, I approach it to see about maybe getting a couple of slices. But somebody else pushes in front of me at the last second, and instead of wasting time glaring at him, I walk a little further down, looking at the other booths, before I come back to try and get some pizza.

I am thinking of buying three or four slices, but it seems like they may have just sold the pushy guy their last slices. Anyway, as I am trying to juggle all the stuff I am carrying (I had nothing to carry a moment ago!) I find I already have two pizza boxes and four slices on plates stacked on top of that. I obviously don't need to buy any more pizza. I find myself thinking I might want to reschedule my mystery shop, since I've somehow passed the place, except I have to go back there to get my car, anyway.

Except as I get back to where the street dead-ends by the freeway, my car is sitting right there. And I somehow have two tiny kittens, one black, and one white, climbing on me. They are mine, and I take care of them, but they weren't with me just a moment ago. Since I have these pizza slices just sitting on plates, and these cats all over me, I soon have cat hair on the slices and pizza sauce on the cats. What a mess. I am trying to get all of them in the car.

Almost instantly things change from me trying to get them in the car to driving down the road. Problem is, since they weren't with me originally, I have nothing to carry the cats in, and they are getting into everything. One of them seems to be almost rolling in the pizza slices, and I am paying so much attention to trying to get them out of the mess that I am not watching where I am driving.

When I look up again, I am in a narrow, brick-lined alleyway, very narrow, just a few yards from a short brick wall blocking access to a sort of drainage ditch / Los Angeles riverbed. I am so close to the wall, I don't even bother trying to brake. I crash right through the brick wall, and find my car teetering on the edge of a large 'ramp' of stone steps leading down to the river bed. At this point, I am still thinking if I back up carefully, I might be able to get out of this, drive off, and pretend like nothing ever happened.

But I can't get any traction, and as I continue teetering, I see some rednecks down at the base of this sort of 'stairway' with fishing poles in the 'river', laughing and gesturing for me to come on down. Suddenly the car tilts forward a little more, and I'm bouncing down the stair ramp, the rednecks diving out of the way as I plow through their fishing poles. At least it shut them up. I crash through another wall, and find myself teetering over another ramp, this one steeper, and leading right into the water.

I have no roof anymore, and seem to have very long arms, so I am grabbing stuff from the car, and trying to toss it out to somewhere safe. There are back packs and boxes of stuff, pizza, and the kittens. I try to put the kittens on the ground, but my aim is bad and I seem to toss them into a very shallow fountain. One of them is fine, but the other is right under the tiny waterfall, and though it is very little pressure, the kitten is so small it is drowning, so I need to reach in and fish it out.

About this time, there is a siren, and an ambulance-like vehicle pulls up. It seems help has arrived. There is an older lady with white hair who kind of reminds me of Sarge, a bus driver I once knew, and a younger lady who kinds of looks like Jane from the Britcom Waiting on God, who is wearing what seems to be a cross between a hazmat suit, and one of those protective bubble-type units in a hospital ward. Inside the see-through suit, I can catch glimpses of her partly clad and scarred body, and it kind of seems like her belly has been opened up and stretched, so that she has a sort of external womb, complete with several babies still attached by umbilical cords, sticking out of the backside of her suit. Yuck!

[Wednesday, October 31st, 2012]
I'm at Circle K, picking Alex up. I park it and walk inside. I have to go to the bathroom pretty bad, so that's the first place I remember heading. I walk in, and the door won't shut because of boxes and other things in the way.
I try pushing them aside and get it as closed as I can. I see Leila trying to help me, but I can't close it all the way and I give up. I end up stealing something, like a pack of gum or candy bar... and it was almost subconscious how I did it.

I walked outside of Circle K, Alex must have been waiting on me forever in the car. I get out there and Alex is spraying something on the tires and rims. She had an explanation like that it was to clean the tires or make them work better. I shrugged.

Then I noticed the car was parked HALFWAY up the hill, almost completely on the wall.
"WHOA. I did NOT park like that." I knew for a fact that I would never park like that.
"Well, you did." Alex assured me.
"No, fuck that. I did Not. I never park that far up."
I tried climbing up the hill and it was almost too difficult to do that; I almost slid back down.

"Fuck it."
I ran back down the hill to calm down for a moment. Turning around, the car is on the ground, down the hill. I don't think anything of it, and I hop in. The car starts, and I roll the rest of the way down the hill...
It won't brake very well. I throw it into Forward and... It goes forward. I park somewhere else and try braking.
But it doesn't brake... hardly even slow down. Alex want's to go say something to someone inside, but I stop her-
"Uh, Alex... the car isn't working. I run over the curb and fall off a small incline and land on the road in front of traffic.

"WHOA WHAT THE FUCK AUSTIN."
"THE BRAKES AREN'T WORKING."
Me and Alex were driving away from Circle K- And my car wasn't braking anymore.
"The brakes must have been clipped." I suggested, I started driving slowly through the backroads.

<I wake up.>
<I roll over and fall asleep.>

Now Alex is driving, and we're headed to my Dad's to see if he can fix it. The brakes are working for now. We turn the wrong road, but I don't realize it until the road becomes narrow and lines with hedges. She turns left at a strange Fire Department building. With the garages closed, but a Cop car parked in front. We turn around and park... and stop for a moment... We get out and walk around.

There's a couple really sweet vehicles like Mustangs and a black sports car here too now. Some other people drive up, get out and look around as if they're tourists. They admire the cars with us, and then I decide we should leave. We get in the car again, and have a small arguement that leads to us being grumpy at each other.

"FUCK" I stop myself. "I'm stopping, I'm stopping." I bang my fists on the steering wheel once.
"I'm not talking to you like this." She starts grabbing her stuff and putting it in her bag and opens the door.
"Wait! I'm not even angry!" Frustration kicks in. Why is she mad right now?
She starts walking away.
"Oh come on, please don't do this!" Tears well up in my eyes.
She turns around, "Stop crying. There are people around here!"
I wipe my face and realize my face is soaked with tears now.
We start walking again.

"Apparently, Seth is up ahead. He's crying over something too." Alex let's me know. We walk on a sidewalk that runs along several buildings that came out of nowhere. A group of people are sitting on the ground listening to a British exchange-student friend of ours. She hasn't been here in almost a year. But everyone is listening to her tell a story. We weave through the people, ignoring it- and I see a few people sitting down up ahead.

I light up a cigarette as we reach Seth. Alex and Seth start talking and I tune out. I take a drag, and exhale. What am I doing here? I wonder for a moment... Then Alex starts walking the other way. I follow suit.

As we reach the exchange student's circle again, someone hands me a paper with the story printed on it.
"When We First Kissed" by Hellogoodbye begins to play and the words change to match along with the song...

"Sometimes,
Making points on white neon boards
Is like,
Pulling stars off the black sky"

(My first dream lyric. And it's not exact, but it captures the point.)
<My dream ends and I wake up. "When We First Kissed" still playing in my head.>

When I woke up, I couldn't remember any dreams from last night. After a few minutes or so, I started to vaguely remember a couple fragments. It took me awhile, but I think I've managed to recall all that I can. I still can't remember any of them too clearly, but I'll write down what I can, and I'll try my best to keep them in order.

1. This one I can remember fairly well. I was playing some sort of computer game. However, my field of vision was limited to what was on the screen (as if it were actually there in front of me rather than on a screen) - the only way video games ever seem to work properly in my dreams. It was one of those point-and-click adventure games. On the screen for the main area at the beginning, there were at least three different paths I could take. One led to an underground tunnel, one led to the basement (which was actually below the tunnel for some reason), and one, in the bottom-right corner of the screen, went to some kind of storage room or something.

I selected the tunnel, but I couldn't continue because it was too dark, so I went to the storage room to get a lantern, which I brought back to the tunnel and just... left it there. Then, I went to the basement instead. I encountered the same problem here - it was too dark. I went back to the storage room for another lantern, but there wasn't one. I checked my inventory screen in case I had one (or anything else I could use for some light), but all I had was some milk and some other stuff I can't remember. I went back to the basement anyway and found that there was an electric light already there, so I switched it on.

2. My mom and I were in this little convenience store. I was hungry. We were waiting for my dad and my brother to arrive so we could have supper, since the store had like a mini-restaurant area where you could order pizza and ice cream. That closed at 8 PM, and the store didn't sell any other food (what kind of convenience store doesn't sell food?!), so, when my dad and brother finally arrived, we had to go find somewhere else to eat.

3. My friend had a giant hotdog. It looked to be about two or three feet long. She offered to share it with me, since she didn't want to eat the whole thing, but I said I didn't want any of it.

4. This one was actually fairly clear. For some reason, I had to go find a bunch of items, like a scavenger hunt. My brother did, too, but we weren't working together; we were doing it separately. My dad somehow knew what I was supposed to be finding, so he would help me by giving me hints. I remember having to get the Stone Mask (from the Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask). For some reason, it was on the living room wall, as were a bunch of other masks. I couldn't reach it because it was too high up, so I stood on the arm of the chair and reached it from there. I wish I'd realized that this wouldn't have worked IRL - in the dream, the window was a few feet to the right of where it should be, and I think the chair was a bit to the left, but, in real life, I only would've been able to reach the window, not the wall. Anyway, I got it. Wearing the mask, I went onto the deck to show my dad. He waved at me, and I told him he wasn't supposed to be able to see me while I'm wearing the Stone Mask (in Majora's Mask, it actually does make the wearer invisible).

At first when I woke up, I only remembered one dream. But as I was recalling the one I had just had before waking up to go to the bathroom, a couple of dreams I had had earlier suddenly popped into my head.

In my first dream, I’m in the cafeteria or snack bar of what looks like a high school. I’m trying to get myself a soft drink but I’m having difficulty. The students have one way of getting and paying for food and drinks, but I am a visitor and have to use a different method. There are special cups and lids that I have to use and, while trying to get myself a cup, lid and straw, I end up knocking everything onto the floor. I pick everything up and try to put them all back the way they were, all the while conscious of the fact that one of the students is watching me. But I feel like some kind of idiot because at first I pick them up and or/stack them wrong and I know the student watching me knows this. I finally get everything back the way it was and go to the machine to fill my drink. The machine is large and rectangular, like most coke machines in the waking world. This one is painted white, with a red vertical rectangle on the lower right side and matches the design on the cup I have; that’s how I know which machine to use. There are about 10 different buttons on top and a single slot in the bottom where you place your cup to be filled. I want to get diet coke, but don’t know which button to press because, while a couple of the buttons have the type of drink listed on it, most of them don’t. One even just has a gum wrapper instead of a drink label. So I look around, trying to see if I can find a student to see if they can tell me which button is diet coke.

In my next dream, I’m in a convenience store walking up to the cashier. As I’m approaching, a young man with a mohawk and carrying a floor waxer is climbing out from behind the counter and leaving the store. There is a small crowd of customers gathered around and as the man leaves the store, they all applaud the cashier behind the counter, who happens to be a friend of mine from work. I look outside and see the man walking back to a truck parked in the street outside and there are two or three other men with him. The man with the mohawk is angry and saying something to his friends. Suddenly he turns around and tries to run back into the store but his friends restrain him. At this point, I notice that the street is all torn up, like somebody dug up all the concrete in different places. It suddenly dawns on me that the men outside are some kind of con men, who go around contracting with different businesses to do different jobs but don’t actually do the job (or do it badly), then demand to be paid anyway. I turn to my friend behind the counter and say, “Let me guess; they tried to con you into paying them to wax your floor”. To which my friend replied, “And he didn’t even do anything.” All the other people had been applauding my friend for making the man leave the store. But I am worried that the man and his friends will come back and harm (or even kill) my friend.

In my last dream, I’m in a kind of club with a bunch of people, including Danny DeVito, who seems to be in charge. There is a girl standing up on a small stage, wearing heels, shorts and a sleeveless button down top. She appears to be new to the place and a little bit nervous because she is auditioning to be a stripper and has to take her clothes off in front of us as part of the audition. After a little coaxing from the crowd, she finally removes her top and her shorts. I notice that her breasts, while not very big, have large nipples and areolas, which I find very attractive. Some of the other men in the crowd make favorable comments as well and one man even follows her when she leaves the stage to go into a small office. At this point I get the idea to “pass the hat” and collect a bunch of small change and give it to Danny DeVito, telling him that they are the tips the crowd gave the girl. My reasoning behind this is that Danny thinks the girl will make him lots of money but by giving him just a bunch of loose change, it’ll be like playing a joke on him. As one man pulls out a pocket full of coins, I notice that they look strange. They don’t look like regular American quarters, dimes and nickels. The backs of all the coins have little full color flowery borders on them, with a little poem or quotation inside of it. I can’t recall what it said but I remember taking offense at one of the quotes, since it doesn’t seem very patriotic or American. One of the guys standing around assures me that the quote is correct and has every right to be on the coin. I then give the money to someone and tell them to give it to Danny DeVito. But when they come back, the person tells me that Danny wasn’t in the office, just the girl was, and so he gave the money to her. He says she was resting and didn’t look at the money; she just looked up from the couch and said, “Thank you” when he told her it was her tip money. At this point I am angry because the joke didn’t go over as I had planned and because the girl will most likely be offended when she sees how little money is there. At this point I wake up.

I want to point out that the man who tells me the quote on the coin is okay is a friend of mine who lives in another state. We belong to the same scuba diving club and only see each other when we go on scuba diving trips. We are on such a trip right now.

NON-DREAM DREAM
We walk towards the door, which appears level with the path I slow down mid-sentence when I notice that the front door is ajar. A sense of dread. (perhaps linked to the story I was telling Frida last Saturday morning 26/2 about experiences of my childhood house being robbed consecutively and how I used to have recurring dreams about coming home to an empty house)


Perhaps we approach the door quietly, listening if anyone is still inside, and we hear men’s voices speaking in Russian deep inside, because I panic and run as fast as I can, to the other side of the street, before we are noticed and devoured by danger. I run straight to the Coates’ house, knocking on the clear glass door, the mother approaches with a drink in her hand, smirking with her mouth full as if she’s having a party in the next room and they’re telling dark jokes. She answers the door mischievously at arm’s length. I smile and ask her if I can use her phone quickly. I call the real estate agent, and anxiety builds, anticipating (like when I called Stuart on Saturday night with only 88cents of credit) the credit running out, listening to repetitive automated messages, before finally I get an answer.


I report to him urgently that someone has broken into our house and that they are violent (dangerous) and need to be removed. The man on the other end says that they will be prepared to proceed with the matter once I supply them with the arrest report and that he can’t do anything now, that I should’ve called the police first, and as I realise the mistake I’ve made, the stress returns, he questions why I was never taught that I had to do that.


There are few scenes of us standing across the road from the house, indecisive on the Ash’s council strip watching for any movement.


While I sit outside the Coates’ house, I see Mum come home, pulling up in the station wagon. She gets out, with Margaret, walking towards the house. I call out to her but she doesn’t hear me. I shout out in a hushed tone, so not to raise the alarm of the men inside, but she’s getting closer to the house still. In desperation I begin shouting for her to get away from the house, but only Margaret hears me, stopping on the lawn, shocked by the intensity of my voice, but my Mum has already entered the house stupidly, and I have to grab her by the arm and march her out, insulting her for not hearing my warning and ignorantly putting herself in extreme danger, and she apologises a little embarrassedly, thanking me cheerfully, still not realising the seriousness of the situation.


There is another memory of sitting on the grass in the backyard of the Coates’ house, where I find 3 identical kitten, white with dark spots, and my friend tells me that they are dangerous. I ignore him, talking to them, so as not to frighten them, staring at me and shifting their formation slowly. I pick one up and it starts thrashing about, clawing at my wrist, trying to get free and lunge at my head, as I lean back and to the side defensively, as the others gang up on me at the same time.


At one stage, sitting on the concrete, like a loading bay combined with an outdoor cafe seating area, next to the convenience store, there are two young men standing above us, arms crossed and necks crooked towards each other, talking in German, and I point over to my Mum, who is mid-sentence with Margaret, pursing my eyebrows to indicate the two men, and without further explanation she quietly translates their conversation in real-time, which is about us, judging us contemptuously.


Sitting out the front of the Coates’ house, night-time, which is now a brightly-lit convenience store, and I go inside, filled with young people dressed up like a Friday night on King Street, perhaps because I spot Laura (who I saw at the Friki Tiki on Saturday night before the film screening) because I approach her specifically so I can borrow her phone to call the police. She doesn’t want to lend it to me, and not because she is broke, making up an excuse, awkwardly, saying thanks instead of sorry.


I then ask Cordy in the other aisle to use his phone quickly, which he hands me without hesitation, but I realise that the criminals have sabotaged the emergency line, a strange mix of different voices digitally contorted, which I interpret as muffled laughter.


I thank him and tell him that it was no use because “they’ve fucked with the [police] line”, at which point he suggests casually that I go up to the police station. I say it’s a good idea but I don’t know where the nearest one is, and he says that it’s just up the street.


Enthusiastically with pace, I walk up Peacock Parade which is a dark, semi-industrial area, with lots of old brick warehouse fronts, and junk out the front on the sidewalk, broken wooden crates piled up against a telegraph pole, obscuring my field of vision, an illuminated sign on the other side, but standing discarded against the wall, when I hear one of the criminals screaming indignantly, running at full speed from the house, passed the bend in the road where I started at the convenience store, and I start running as fast as I can.


The short guy catches up to me, around my age, and he runs straight to the bottle shop, open like a fruit market, and picks up a bottle of red wine from the rack, and threatens me, saying that he’ll bend my arm back the wrong way with the bottle against a chopping board, or something, a hard surface but unfixed.


The police station is right next door and I suddenly make a bolt for the open doorway before he has a chance to block me off, and beat him to it, feeling invincible by passing the threshold, slowing down like a sprinter, down a narrow hall towards the shoulder-high wooden bench with a large authoritarian insignia printed on the front of it, even though there is no one manning it at that moment.