Weird Dream

I have crazy, vivid dreams sometimes. Usually between the time I've woken up when my alarm goes off and I've then fallen promptly back to sleep (with or without my alarm still blaring...).

This morning's dream was too strange not to document. Think a Tim Burton style film. Sort of weird and twisted with goofy characters that make you raise your eyebrows and say, "Um..." out of a little bit of discomfort.

The first part had me pulling up in a station wagon sitting next to my dad who was telling me,

"Remember, everyone's fate now rests in your hands...or your backpack really."
I nervously gave it a glance.

"Dad, I really don't want..."

"It doesn't matter. It's up to you now. Are you sure you have a safe place to put it?"
"I think it will be safe enough. But what if there is an earthquake? Or someone gets slammed into my locker or..."
"We'll just have to hope that doesn't happen."

He kisses me on the cheek and then hands me the backpack very carefully. I cringe. I don't want to be doing what I now have been told I have to do. I don't want to take my backpack, with the carefully wrapped, highly-sensitive nuclear bomb that I'm carrying into the school and hope that something doesn't knock into my locker hard enough to set the thing off.

Otherwise, we're dead.

I put the straps on over my shoulders and begin praying that no one bumps into me on my way to my locker. It was already a cloudy, miserable looking day, the one word that came to mind was "bleak". Everything, our whole lives, looked rather bleak. The school - the whole town, really - had been prepping for a nuclear attack for months by driving livestock away so they wouldn't be destroyed. (Why didn't they drive away the people, I wonder?)

I walk cautiously down the long corridor, which narrows and widens at will, like walking through a hallway lined with carnival mirrors. People seem to be purposefully crashing into me. "FOOLS!" I think. They have no idea that I'm carrying one of the scariest things of all times.

When I reach my locker, number 55, I kneel down and carefully put my book bag on the ground and pull out a blue, high-quality looking lunch box. It is the one with the bomb. I hate having the thing in my hands. I really don't want the responsibility of this! But it's up to me now, so I carefully set it at the bottom of my locker. And then I pull out a paper sack with my real lunch in it.

Someone notices, "Two lunches today?"

"One's a snack. I have to stay afterwards, late..." They shrug and move off.

I sigh, and then gently close my locker. What if the lunchbox accidentally falls over? Would it detonate? My fears are all-consuming, and I quickly walk down the hallway. One thing is for sure, if the bomb does go off, I'm just as dead as anyone else. They'd never link the fact that I had brought the bomb into the school. Which is another thing that I'm worried about. Kids are carrying guns into the school now. I see my friend Levi, showing off his new handgun and then sticking it in the back of his pants. I thought guns weren't allowed on school property.

I go and sit in my class. Nervous. Sweaty. It's really humid outside because it has been threatening to rain for months. Colin is giving a special presentation and pulls out his fancy technology to show us who would be affected if a nuclear attack started here, or here or here. The lines he draws on the map are confusing and frustrating, because he hasn't pinpointed the school as part of detonation. And so he hasn't told the class that they were likely to be blown up, not just have their skin melt away.

Class is almost over and I see my dad in the hallway. He quirks a smile at me and as soon as the bell ring I go to the room where my Aunt Bonnie has set up for him. It's a special room, though I don't see what is special about it. The walls are dirty, the ceiling rotted away from a leak. The beds (it is a hotel room) are gross looking, but my dad is laying on one with his hands under his head.

He had checked on the bomb, it was still in my locker. And I kept questioning him on how he knew it was my locker. I kept asking if it was from the last time he was here, and he said, "It must have been the last time." But I'm still racking my brain for how he would know where my locker is.

"Is it safe?"

"For now."

"Good, let's go clean up."

Then something happens, and I'm not sure what, but we see a ghost floating down the hallway and my comment is something like, "No wonder there are ghosts."

We go outside and he has a shopping cart that he pushes around, while I'm picking up litter along the side of the road. We're talking as if there isn't a bomb in my locker. And the world isn't going to end. Just talking about how disgusting people are, and how easy it is to put away your own trash. And I kneel down next to a puddle and pile of mud and trash and notice a plastic set of bowling pins and balls.

"I wish they would have donated this to DI," I say forlornly. People are so wasteful.
"Me too," Dad says. "It would make this a whole lot easier."

We look over our shoulder, and there are ghosts messing around in the graveyard.

"Do you think we're going to make it out alive?" I ask.

He looks at me.

"I hate this," I say.

And then I wake up. There was more about the ghosts, but I can't remember what. And I think my Aunt Bonnie had some speaking parts as well.

It was such a weird dream.... very dark and spooky. And about nuclear bombs, which is super weird as I haven't seen anything that I would think would incite such subconscious thoughts.

I know some of you are thinking that I embellished this or something, but really, my dreams play out like stories or movies. There is SO much detail I don't even remember it all. It's kind of incredible. I've had the weird, disjointed dreams that don't often make sense and they transition quickly from one thing to the next. But for the most part, my dreams are a story.