non-lucid

Oh, hey, I'm back! This dream was so long and detailed that I had to share.

It was early in the morning, and Dad and I were driving in his new car. He made a stop to pick up some woman, and I realized that I was now tagging along on their date! I also had to give up my front passenger seat and move to the back seat. I noticed as I moved into the back seat that I was wearing a really fitted leather jacket, something I've never had before. Dad dropped me off at a shopping center that the locals call Four Corners. Somehow, I lost my leather jacket once leaving the car, so I dropped into a clothing store to see if I could get a replacement. When they didn't have anything useful, I went to the next store. It turned out to be a grocery store I worked at before, but it was staffed with people from my current job. I knew something was a little off, repeatedly telling myself, "My shift doesn't start until 4 in the afternoon." (Talk about carrying over intentions into the dream state -- I really am scheduled to work 4 PM until close today!) I worried for a while about finding Dad to take me home in time for me to get ready for my shift in the afternoon. I hung out in the backroom with my coworker Kay, who was monitoring several computers. At one point, she got worried about something on one of the computer displays. A guy stopped by to take a look, and I talked to him for a bit before realizing he was Jay, the new head manager. I decided to leave, but I made sure to take a walkie-talkie with me since they're tougher to find when I come in for the evening shift.

I remembered that there was another good clothing shop at the far end of the strip mall on this corner, so I started walking towards it. But there was construction work in the parking lot and the construction crew would not let me pass. I crossed the street, thinking I could get past the blockage from that side. Instead of taking me to the other half of the strip mall, the other side of the street took my right to my house, with my (old) car sitting in the driveway. It was a little odd, especially since I was approaching the house from opposite side away from the main street. But I ignored the odd feeling because I was so glad I wouldn't have to find Dad to bring me home now that I had access to my own car.

I went into the house, but instead of the normal interior, there was now the lobby of a large apartment building. There were people meeting there to plan some type of heist. They wanted me to join them. I went up to my room to grab a larger bag and filled it with things we would need to carry out the plot. When I returned to the lobby, the group was being loaded onto buses. We were told that the place was being evacuated because of a bomb threat. I realized as we left the building to get on the bus that we were in the Four Corners parking lot. On the bus, I went through my bag to get the walkie I had grabbed earlier, but instead I found my bag filled with cash. There was a teenage boy sitting in the seat in front of me who noticed the cash, and he asked if I was trying to buy something. I said no, and he turned around to talk to someone else. That's when I realized he was in the middle of a transaction -- the other guy was giving him money in exchange for a small baggie.

The first dream was fairly fuzzy and difficult to recall, even though I woke up right as it ended.

I was traveling by ship with a large group of people. Somewhere, someone came up with an idea: a group of six of us would retreat to an empty room and "disappear" from the ship for a while. We had to be sneaky about grabbing food from the buffet when no one could see us, and there were a few misadventures when I tried to avoid being scene while moving through the ship.

I woke up because of a cramped wrist. After getting settled in a more comfortable position, I fell asleep pretty quickly and had another dream along the same theme as the previous one.

I am at an old job at a grocery store. I am making my way through the produce department on the way to the break room. There's a supervisor walking with me, the same woman who did my orientation when I was first hired. We come across a produce worker who seems to be passed out drunk. We try to check on him, but he pulls out a gun and shoots me. It happens pretty quickly and I don't feel anything other than a slight pinch where the bullet hits me. It seems that I died, because now I am seeing my family trying to move on years after my death. I find out the company covered up my cause of death, making it look like was my fault so my family did not get anything. I am furious. I try to appear to my sister to tell her the truth. It takes a while to convince of my story, but I think she listens. Then she tries to introduce me to a friend of hers who has also had supernatural experiences. I wonder why she's bothering with this when I've just told her something important that she needs to take action on right away. Then I wake up.

I've been off my game for the last few weeks. I've been needing pain medications that I suspect are messing with my REM sleep. I also had my sister staying with me for a while after some guys broke into her place in broad daylight while she was home, which seems to have influenced this dream.

I'm in an unfamiliar room -- it reminds me of the backstage area of a theater -- with several girls. One of them seems to be the leader of the group. She presents me with a bunch of fake IDs and says she has a fake phone number which I can use to check messages online. I check the first fake ID, which is a driver's license from my state, and I notice it looks nothing like the real driver's license. I take my own license out to show her what it's supposed to be like. I wonder if she can even reproduce something that looks realistic enough since they started adding holograms to the real licenses.

While trying to show this girl my license, I follow her down a flight of stairs and find myself in someone's very large mansion. My sister is here, packing up to leave for college. The mansion belongs to a friend's parents, and all of her friends seem to have gathered to here to see her off. My sister and I talk a little bit while we walk through a living room filled with jewelry displays -- nothing fancy, more like costume jewelry. She tells me that she send me a religious medallion in the mail, but I don't remember getting anything in the mail. She then points to a necklace on one of the displays, and it turns out to be the medallion she sent me. I look at it fairly closely, trying to make out the face of the saint, but I can't make out the details.

I need to use the bathroom, but there's no separate bathroom in this house. Instead, there's a toilet sitting out in the open in the marble foyer. I think I can quickly use it and be done before anyone notices, but it seems my digestive system has issues. I end up taking a very long time on the toilet while everyone comes out of the other room, wondering about the noise.

And it's time for my sister to leave. As I exit the mansion through the front door, I find that the main entrance is actually on the second level. It's a long walk down some steps to ground level. To the side is the driveway, which looks more like a small parking lot. Here, my sister is packing things into her car. I start making my way down there, but there are more steps than I realize. As I get down to the ground level, I see my sister driving off. I'm really disappointed that she didn't wait for me to say good-bye.

Then I notice a lot of scruffy-looking men in dirty clothes are hanging around the end of the driveway. One of them growls and approaches me, seeming to be more wild animal than human. They're werewolves! I realize all the friends that where here with me earlier have vanished. I race back up the stairs with the werewolf chasing me. There's a few times I can even feel his teeth as he tries unsuccessfully to bite me.

I make it back to the entrance, but now instead of the mansion's front door, I find an elevator. I jump in and hit any button to get away from here. I'm hoping that I hit the right button to get into the mansion, but instead, I'm taken one level down to servants quarters. But I'm not safe here because apparently the werewolves work in the building! I race through the hallways, trying to find a way back into the living areas of my friend's mansion. Eventually, I run into my friend's mother, who leads me to a staircase and sends me upstairs.

The staircase actually takes me to the foyer of my own house. I also seem to have a Game Boy in my hands that I don't remember picking up. It's about time I got myself to bed, but first, I want to check that the house is locked up for the night. I go to check the front door and find it sitting wide open. Even the screen door is sitting open. Anyone could have come in here while I was distracted, even the werewolves if they followed me home! I rush to shut and lock the door, but there's a problem. The key I normally keep in the deadbolt is gone. In its place is a little bike key which doesn't even fit in the lock. I scramble to get my own key from my purse so I can lock the deadbolt. But I'm worried about what happened to that other key. If the werewolves took it when they sneaked into the house, then I won't be safe here. I debate searching the house for intruders vs. calling the police. Eventually, I decide to make sure the door to the garage is locked and secure before doing anything else. The garage is dark, and I can't see if any werewolf is hiding in there. I shut the door, which still has a key in the deadbolt so I can easily lock it. However, instead of the normal wood door, this door looks more like a heavy freezer door. I start worrying what to do about any werewolves hiding upstairs and wake up.

Came up short on sleep today. I went to bed at 11:30, tossed and turned for a while, and woke up at 6:45 thanks to a noisy truck.

I'm selling my car, though I don't seem to want to sell. I take it to a dealership where I am told that the new buyer is waiting. The buyer is a guy named Lennart. In a weird twist, I'm sitting in the driver's seat when Lennart shows up, throws a duffel bag in the back seat, and orders me to drive him to the airport. Without questioning it, I start driving. As I drive away, I hear a shout and look over my right shoulder. Lennart never got in the car! Instead, he is running after the car. I feel sorry for him, especially since his bags are in the car, but I keep driving. I'm not really sure why I keep going. It doesn't feel like I'm in control here. Lennart keeps running until the side of the road drops off into a ravine. Then he loses his footing and falls into the ravine. It's sort of funny to watch. He'll never catch up now.

Woke up around 5:45 AM and decided to try taking a sore throat lozenge with menthol to see if it affected dreams. I also thought about attempting a WILD. However, I ended up dozing off too quickly. Also, the lozenge still hadn't fully dissolved by the time I woke up at 8:15 AM, so I don't think there was enough in my system to make an impact.

I'm home alone, so I think I can strip down to a tank top and panties while walking around the house. While I'm in the kitchen, I hear a noise from the entryway. I'm initially nervous because I'm not expecting anyone. I peek around a corner and see Lady Diana Spencer (from her Shy Di days before getting married). She seems to want to hang out like she's my big sister. I'm a little befuddled for a moment, not sure if I should point out to her that technically, she's dead. She also makes a reference to my upcoming wedding, but I can't remember if I'm engaged or not. I start wondering if maybe she means that I'll be marrying one of Charles's younger brothers. While Di gets comfortable, I am distracted by the sight of my winter boots near the doorway. They look like they've been worn in deep snow, and I feel I need to polish them before they get stained.

I woke up before Diana and I could really get talking. It would have been interesting to see what she had to say.

I'm busy with something when I notice an elderly man near me who is clutching his chest. Fearing that he's had a heart attack, I help him take a seat and promise that I'll be back with medical attention. I go to an upper floor of the building and get several nurses. However, the elevator we need to take us back downstairs is a bit wonky. The floors are uneven, and the elevator car is tilted as though it's not hanging correctly. The elevator car doesn't line up with the doors, either. One of the nurses gets in the elevator and promptly drops all of her medical equipment. I wonder if I should have gotten someone else. The whole mess of waiting for a working elevator drags on so long that I wonder if it's been long enough for paramedics to take the man to another hospital already.

I don't remember leaving, but eventually I find myself driving home through the Four Corners area. The weather is awful. As I'm driving west, I can see two rain-wrapped tornadoes over to my left just behind the shopping center. They are small and probably just rate at EF-1. I watch them move east, and I can see the driver of the next car is sitting there, mouth agape, as she watches them too. For a moment, I think, "How cool! I finally got to see a tornado!"

I turn right at the intersection. But I quickly notice that the weather is getting worse. There are more narrow funnel clouds around me. One forms horizontally above the road. It shifts vertical and touches down right in front of me. I quickly accelerate to see if I can outrun it and end up driving right through the base of the tornado without much damage. Was I just lucky, or did not that work as a tornado should? I don't stop to ponder as I take the exit for the expressway, thinking it will be the safest way to get home. But the storms have knocked over a large tree that has fallen on the road. I have to swerve and moves left across four lanes to avoid it.

Wow! Despite being sick, it was a busy night.

Gibbs and Abbey from NCIS are working on a case. They are hunting a guy who has managed to make himself invisible and, unknown to them, he's in the same room. But Gibbs has an idea. He sits down at a computer and starts typing furiously. He's really not comfortable with computers normally, but in this instance he's typing at a furious speed. I look closer and realize it's because he's holding a disembodied hand that it doing the typing for him. Eventually, he figures out what he's looking for. There's an autopsy table behind him. He gets up and slams the table into the wall. Invisible Guy is caught between the table and the wall. He turns visible and collapses in pain.

Woke up, realized that it had only been 5 hours since I went to bed, and did a short WBTB before returning to sleep. Despite walking around for a bit, I was too drowsy to really try any induction techniques.

A woman is driving around in a small urban area, and I'm watching from above. She gets to an area where she can't turn around because she's reached the canopied entrance to a hotel. She goes inside, where there's a restaurant/club. She sits down with her family. At some point, she gets up to dance. She's wearing a pink and purple polka dot scarf, and another woman on the dance floor takes her scarf, which seems odd. She returns to her seat and someone brings her scarf back, but now it had stripes. I don't really think it's the right scarf and can't understand why she accepts it.

This was weird, because I woke up and thought, "Oh, I didn't have any dreams." 5 minutes later, as I'm checking something on my phone, I remember something about a scarf and realize I did have a dream after all. I started thinking about my day, but dozed off.

I'm back in that urban area from before. This time, I'm with a group of guys. We come across a little boy outside a hospital. He tells us that his mother is in the hospital having a baby. One of the guys gets this idea that the mother might be dying, so he insists on taking the little boy with us.

We get to this apartment where there's a party going on. There's a long bench along a wall, and it's covered with cushions for comfortable seating. Either that, or it's a long couch. It looks like both depending on where you look. I sit down by one end and try to talk some sense into my guy friend, trying to explain that he can't just keep this kid he found at the hospital. He eventually disappears without us really resolving the issue. I notice that the rest of the guys are getting pretty drunk. So I start asking around if someone else can give me a ride home because I don't trust any of them to drive.

Spoiler for And then things get weird:

And then a drunk girl whips off her top and gives me a lap dance. She has dark hair and very pale skin. I certainly wasn't complaining. It was over very quickly and she left. I guess she was embarrassed. At that point, the party seemed to be wrapping up. The hostess appeared for probably the first time, and she's not happy. She shows off some toys that some other party guests had built. (What, is this Santa's workshop?) One is an animatronic dog that sniffs its own butt, and the other is a monkey that screams "FUCKIN' MOTHERFUCKER!" when you pull its string. The hostess wonders who would design such horrible kids toys? I suddenly realize it must have been the guys who brought me to the party.

I head out of the front door. This was an apartment earlier, but now it looks more like a freestanding house. Outside the door is a patio that wraps around the building. It's a weird sort of patio since has a stone wall surrounding it, making it more of an outdoor room. I don't get to dwell on these details because I see the guys are sitting at a patio table and laughing. I think I yell at them, but I can't remember what I said and they never respond.

Back inside the house, I see everyone is busy cleaning up. There's one girl who is upset. She explains to me that she works at the bar. They've gone through all the liquor behind the counter and she has to restock all of it in ten minutes. There's a regulation that they cannot stock liquor during the day, so when the bar opens tomorrow night, she'll only have available what we put in the cabinet now. How do they know? She points out that there's a camera pointing at the empty cabinet. I find a bottle of vodka sitting out, so I put it in the cabinet.

I start searching for any more bottles, and I end up bumping into David Blue. He looks a little out of it, as though he's had too much to drink. For some reason, I I point out that he missed by birthday. "When was it?" he asks. I start to give him a date in October, then I realize that I've got the wrong month. After a bit of thought, I give him my correct birth date, then add that it was last Friday. (It wasn't).

I find myself and others in a large, open room instead of the house where the party was. It looks like the lobby of a police station. There are uniformed officers behind glass doors, but they are purposely hiding their faces so we can't identify them. There's a TV mounted on a stand in the corner of the ceiling and it's tuned to a news report about animals in Chicago having trouble surviving the tough winter. They are specifically showing wolves and coyotes trudging through snowdrifts. I look out the window and see snow on the ground, which doesn't quite feel right. I return my attention the TV. It shows wild animals setting up in a CTA station to escape the cold. One of the women in the room ask me if it's true that in Chicago, you get wild animals living in the transit stations. Before I can answer, the police station lobby turns into the lobby of a CTA station just like the one in the television picture. There's an escalator in front of us with piles of straw on either side. There's a chicken roosting on the right side. On the left is a baby goat. Suddenly, a guy with a hammer comes rushing out, screaming, "I'm gonna burn your ass!" He swings the hammer at the goat. I am so shocked that I wake up.

I was floating in the water, watching as these weird boats went by. They were round spheres with a ring around them. They looked more like planets than boats. The occupants of the boats were gathering for a reunion.

Found myself waking up just before 5 AM and decided to try attempting a WILD. I relaxed my body, laid very still, and started counting backwards from 100. I saw some HI and I'm fairly certain I managed to get into SP. But I was still very much aware of my body, thanks to the pets sleeping on the bed with me. And the HI eventually trailed off without any sort of dream. After about an hour (I could hear the clock chiming downstairs), I gave up. Of course, I ended up slipping into non-lucid dreams not long after giving up my awareness.

I'm on the upper level of an unfamiliar house. It seems that one of Dad's friends cannot sell the house and needs someone to occupy it. I'm going to take a bedroom that once belonged to the guy's daughter, who was a friend of mine. It's a square-shaped room, smaller than my own bedroom. The walls are painted light blue. There's a bed on the wall across from the door, and two cots on either side. Otherwise, there's no other furniture. The beds aren't made, but instead there's sheets and blankets spread on top. It almost looks like whoever was staying there didn't really care. I start collecting all the sheets to throw in the wash. One of them is actually from a set I own. I'm a little puzzled to see it here because I remember deciding not to use it at home. As I get to the bottom of the sheets, I find a pile of poop on top of the mattress! I am absolutely horrified anyone could have been sleeping on this mess. I dispose of the poop. The bedding is piled on the floor, ready to go downstairs into the washer. I'm also determined to flip the mattress over so I can sleep on the "clean" side.

The next room has floral print wallpaper, a desk with an old computer, and a computer monitor that has been installed inside the wall. The computer is an old Apple IIGS. Amazingly, it still runs, but as it boots up, I'm surprised to see it running Windows 95.

I head downstairs, but oddly enough, I'm now in my own house. Someone is in the kitchen, playing with the knives in the knife block. He takes my chef's knife and bends it like it's a piece of aluminum. I'm furious! I start yelling at him about how it's the only knife I like to use.

There's a commotion near the front door. I leave the kitchen and look outside. There's a truck that's pulled up in the driveway. For some reason, I believe that they're here to take away my satellite television. Somehow, I have an iPod in my hand full of illegal video downloads. I have to hide it before they find my downloads! Luckily, some sort of barrier pops up blocking anyone from seeing me from the window.

I move into the laundry room to add something to the washer, but it's full. I realize it must be all those sheets from the other house, of course. The door to the garage is slightly open, and I see there's light on the other side. That shouldn't happen unless the garage itself is open. I take a look and find that the TV guys are in the garage, wanting to come in to get the TV.

I'm outside of a jewelry shop in London. It's a Links of London store located at Clarence House. It's a red brick building surrounded by a chain link fence. Good thing there's a fence, I guess, because there's a large crowd of people outside. Although I don't get to go inside, I am given a ring box with the suggestion that my sweetie has ordered something special for me. I open it, expecting to see a ring. Instead, it holds a piece of chain link glued together, not even large enough to encircle a finger. I'm disappointed, but I try to hide it.

I end up leaving with Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg, who is driving a minivan that looks like the one my dad used to drive. His wife is sitting in the front passenger seat, and his daughter Alexandra and I take the two captain's chairs in the middle row. Most of the back seat is occupied with junk, but there's probably enough room for someone to squeeze in. As we drive away, Alexandra sees her friend Stéphanie in the crowd. (The eldest son of Grand Duke Henri will be marrying Stéphanie de Lannoy this fall.) She wants to give Stéphanie a ride. I quickly realize that Stéphanie will be given my seat, so I discretely get up and move into the back seat. It's not as comfortable, but it will do for now. Incidentally, this car is in much better condition that my dad's minivan. The leather seats look like they are brand-new. The grand duke isn't happy with his daughter's suggestion that they pick up Stéphanie. He pull over and gets out of the van. I hadn't noticed earlier, but he's wearing a t-shirt and jeans. It seems a little odd for him to be dressed so casually.

A very brief awakening, and it's back to non-lucid dreaming.

I'm in the basement, where someone tells me that the freezer is broken and all the food needs to be moved to another freezer. I wonder why we can't just pack the freezer full of ice packs. I notice that there are refrigerated display cases along the wall (in my basement?), so I start moving frozen food into the cases.

I look around and realize that the ceilings of this basement are awfully low. I could probably touch the ceiling with my fingertips and I'm barely 5 feet tall. The next part of the basement ceiling is so low that even I would have to duck. But I have to pass through there to get to the exit.

Once I go back up the stairs, I find myself near the reception desk of a hospital. I notice my friend Debby is there in a nurse's uniform. I debate going over to say hi to her. While I'm trying to decide, she walks right past me without any sense of recognition. I end up walking out of the building, heading towards a section with a curved glass roof.

Another rough night. First, I just could not relax enough to fall asleep. Then when I was able to doze off, one of the dogs woke me up because she urgently needed to go outside. The process was repeated two hours later with the other dog. But at least there was one good dream when I slept between both trips.

I nearly WILD'd with this one. I fell asleep very quickly and saw a lot of hypnagogic imagery. I lost consciousness while focusing on it.

I'm in an office where the walls seem to be made of cheap fiberboard. Through the doorway, I can see into another office where there is gas being sprayed from the ceiling. This doesn't seem like a good place to be right now, so I turn around and head in the other direction.

I find myself in line in a cafeteria. It's a really long line, and it winds around a complicated arrangement of buffet stations. The woman behind me points out a section that has a tasty-looking pork dish. But for now, I've only gotten as far as potatoes. I take a generous helping of mashed potatoes, but I realize I'd much rather have baked potatoes with sour cream. Somehow, a platter of potato skins topped with sour cream appears next to the mashed potatoes. I certainly wouldn't have taken any mashed potatoes if I'd seen it earlier. I go ahead and take a generous helping. Then, realizing that my plate is completely filled with starchy foods, I decide I need to take nothing else but proteins.

Except that I somehow wind my way throughout the whole line without getting any meat dishes. I reach the end of the line where there's a soda machine. It has lots of choices crammed into a very small space. I have trouble getting my drink of choice because the labels don't seem to line up with the buttons. They're all numbered, too. But the numbers are not in any order, and the order changes each time I look.

Without my drink, I look at my plate and realize I never got that pork dish I wanted. I look back the line, but it's even longer and has more twists and turns. I'm not sure if I'll even find that dish again.

One positive note on waking: I managed to stay completely still with my eyes closed. So at least I'm making progress on eventually being able to DEILD. I also made another WILD attempt after my second trip taking the dogs outside. I think I got as far as SP and had some mild hypnagogic imagery, but I couldn't relax enough to enter sleep.

Finally! After several days of really poor recall, I finally managed to recall a much longer dream. How did I do it?

Before I went to bed, I resolved that I would remember my dreams.

I'm leaving a building and retrieving my car. I must be in Washington, D.C. because I can see the Washington and Lincoln Monuments in the skyline. I'm parked on a road that runs along the waterfront. It's a sunny day and the water is a sparkling bright blue. It looks pretty inviting, but there's somewhere I have to be right now. I drive off in the car, but navigating the streets of D.C. is a little confusing. I'm not sure which direction I should take. I end up driving along the waterfront until I get to some empty parking spaces near the Jefferson Memorial on the outskirts of the city.

I park the car, cross the street, and climb up some steps to a small stone building. Inside, I get into an elevator. It seems that the building goes down into the ground rather than up. Two other people get in the elevator. As it descends, I realize that I don't want to be in close company with these people, though I don't remember why. I jump out at the first level where the doors open. It seems to be a cafeteria. I pick up a boxed lunch, trying to keep it level so nothing spills while getting into the next elevator.

This time, the elevator takes me to a mall. (The Mall, perhaps? This is D.C.) I walk into a store, which appears to be a Bath & Body Works store during their clearance sale. However, I notice all the fixtures are temporary ones. I strike up a conversation with an employee, who points out another permanent store across the way. I decide to volunteer to help pack up and move merchandise. I shove my box lunch into my back pack, forgetting the need to keep it level.

Moving out of the store, I'm no longer in the mall but on a stage. The curtain is partially closed, but I can see an audience sitting and waiting. There's a woman and two kids on the stage. They look like Pamela and her kids from "Army Wives." The kids are looking through the open portion of the curtain to see if their dad is in the audience, but he isn't there or just isn't paying attention. They start to cry because he'll miss their big show.

I am walking through a French McDonald's with Prince Albert. The restaurant doesn't seem to be operating as normal but has been converted to a military headquarters, with a large room in back where the prince receives updates from the battleground. The windows in the back room are covered with netting, though someone in the group figures out a way to open one. There's also a large jet parked in the room.

Ugh, only six good hours of sleep last night. The plan was to do a WBTB. But I could hear jet-lagged family members moving around the kitchen and felt too guilty to sleep in.

I was throwing a tea party/bridal shower and no one showed up. That made me pout, thinking that no one cared enough to show up to my special occasions. But then I went outside and saw that all the cars were lined up and stuck at some sort of barrier. In the meantime, there was all this ice and show building up on the cars. I started going from car to car and wiping ice off the windows with gloved hands. There was a moment of recognition where I asked myself, "Hey, why am I doing this and why am I using my hands to do it?" but I didn't really think about it too much.

I'm living in an older apartment building with red brick walls. In the other room, my roommate is holding a baby. I spot a pacifier sitting on the floor and give it to the roommate, who announces that she is going to get it steam-cleaned. In the meantime, she makes me hold the baby. The poor thing seems to be in a lot of discomfort and keeps squirming. As soon as my roommate returns with the pacifier, the baby drops off to sleep. I'm a little relieved to hand him over.

Two old friends drop by, but I'm reluctant to let them leave. I know that I'm going to need them as an alibi. Sure enough, just as I plead with my friends to stay, the police show up a bit too early for their cue. Good thing I knew they were coming! But how did I know? My roommate and I must have put together some sort of plot that I'm carrying out alone.

There's a man who joins us who thinks he can help me. He looks a little bit like Lou Diamond Phillips. He thinks he can find evidence by demolishing the red brick walls around my bathroom. It doesn't seem like any great loss, since the bathroom is so large with an odd layout. It actually has three showers stalls at right angles, but we don't need quite that many. As he starts tearing out the brick wall, I can see the sidewalk outside. Pretty soon, the opening is wide enough to walk out onto the street.

I woke up briefly, then managed to re-enter the dream.

I'm on that same street. Instead of apartments, there's a building holding a coffee shop, a resale store, and an empty storefront between them. I seem to own the coffee shop. A suspicious-looking man enters and wonder what happened to the old shop. I tell him that I bought it and reopened it. He asks if he can still get number 17 from the old menu. I have no idea what that is, so I give him a new menu. He keeps asking for #17 with a wink. Eventually, I realize that the old shop was a front for a brothel and he's asking for a woman. I hustle him out the door.

It's nighttime outside and the stars are out. I look at the sky for a little while, though I can't identify any particular constellation. It's almost as if someone covered the world with a piece of blue velvet and poked holes at random to represent the stars.

When I head back into the building, something feels different. I go into the resale shop where I know I have friends working, but they don't seem to know me. It seems that while I was outside, I went back in time by two years -- taking me to a point before I had met them. I wonder if I should take the same path or do something entirely different with this second chance.