As Dreams Are: The Kitten and The Boulder

I am standing in a large room.

No. It is not a room. It is more than that.

A building?

Yes. An entire building.

It is the type of building that has layers.

Floors.

Levels.

It is tall. I can see myself from above and I look incredibly small. I can see the entire building from above. I can look through the walls and examine the space as if it were a blueprint. I feel as if something lives here. The space is massive. It is massive enough for a leader of a nation to call home.  

The walls are sandy. It has an Arizona tint. The atmosphere is a slightly burnt orange. The colors remind me that I should feel hot. 

                                                   But I am neutral. I feel nothing.

The building is a large corporation. Similar to a Walmart or a Costco. It is a large supermarket for your everyday needs. I am one of many; stocking shelves that rise with no end in sight.

The products.

Ceaseless.

There is no ceiling. There are only escalators and they only go up.

I ride an escalator to what I believe is the top floor.  It is time for me to leave. To go home. I don’t remember working very long, but I have the sense that I have just spent a lot of time in this building. I run into my father and step-mother. They have a kitten in their hands.

“We just found it. You must hold onto her and deliver it to your sister. Hide it,” my father says.

They are very eager to pass the kitten down to me. I don’t understand why I must hold onto the kitten since we are going to end up at the same place eventually. We will end up home. 

I agree to take the kitten. I smile as it fits into the palm of my hand. It is silent and small. Black and white. Luckily, I have a large knapsack and she fits perfectly inside.

I walk across a large glass ballroom where all of the cars for the employees are parked. It is an enormous square plot. A giant used car sales lot. I find my car and it looks as if it will be impossible to move.

I am inside, behind the wheel. I throw my knapsack behind me. In mid-throw I remember the kitten, but when I search for her I realize she is gone.

                                                              Did she fall out?

                                                        Hide it. Hide it. Hide it. 

I hear these words. I panic that whomever I am supposed to be protecting the kitten from will find it.

I run across the lot and retrace my steps. I see in the distance a large crowd.

Commotion.

People wearing black shirts.

My kitten must be there. Crowds always gather around a kitten.

Black cats and kittens scatter immediately once I begin sifting through the sea of people. My kitten is not there.

                                                                    Crack

A rumbling from above.

I look up and I understand why I never could see the ceiling before. The roof has been replaced by a mountain. The summit is indistinguishable because it is that high.

                                                                      The Himalayas

                                                                            Everest

                                                                             Nepal

                                                                             Japan

                                                                              Fuji

The base is hazy. Rust and sepia. Wisterias somehow have planted themselves amongst the rocks and grass. They fail to climb to the peak.

A dusty clay-like boulder detaches itself from the hidden tip. It happens so fast and before I know it chaos breaks out. The boulder is rolling quickly. It is suspended in midair. I am not sure where to go. The boulder is on a mission to destroy.

                                                                            People

                                                                           Running

                                                                        Everywhere

The boulder knocks through people.

Squishes.

Rolls flat.

It is a bowling ball and we are the pins.

Strike.

It crushes the vehicles. I watch from afar as it flattens my car.

                                                                            Snap

I never noticed the wires before. The boulder has detached metal wires from their post and they are now whipping throughout the air.

           

A man with sandy brown hair, brown eyes looks at me from across the room. I am reminded again of the recently frightening gaze men seem to penetrate me with in my dreams.

“I have a splitting headache,” he screams at me from across the chaotic crowd.

“I have a splitting headache,” he repeats.

A group of three runs in between us.

It is loud.

It is so very loud.

I think back to the kitten and wonder where it is. 

Is it safe?

Before I can go anywhere or say anything another wire snaps and whips through the sandy brown-haired man. It slices through him. His body falls apart vertically. Into thirds. Evenly spaced pieces. He slinks to the ground. His heart is in pieces but his head is partially intact.

I am standing next to him. His face, from his chin to his eyes, is sliced apart but his brain, his skull cracked open like an eggshell, is still as one. His eyes. Slowly blinking. I watch him breathing.

“I have a splitting headache,” he says once again. His eyes. Never leaving mine. He never stops watching me. He never removes his gaze.

                                                               And now it is quiet.

There are still thousands of people running for escalators and elevators. They are all searching for a place to retreat to. They are all searching for a way to get away from the mountain. Running away from the boulder. Sprinting from the wires. They can’t find a way to lower ground. But it is quiet now. I cannot hear them screaming. I cannot hear them yelling out for lost family.

I think back to the kitten. I think back to when the boulder crushed my car.

If I had never lost the kitten then I would have been inside when the boulder crushed my car.

           

There is no way I would have survived. This realization makes me feel uneasy. I am appreciative for the kitten.

                                                                         Panic 

Just the tiniest change in events could have altered everything. I feel as if I will be stuck forever feeling as the woman who beat death by a second.

                                                  And then everything is different.

I am back at the beginning, but it feels slightly off. I am still me. It occurs to me I am living in an alternative timeline.

I am back at the beginning. I am back stocking the never-ending vertical shelves. I am back with a kitten in my knapsack. I walk to my car in the lot of in-tact, packed-in vehicles. The kitten is in my lap. Before I can start the ignition a spherical shadow is looming behind me. I see the mountain in my rearview mirror. I never noticed I had parked at the base of a 30,000 foot mountain.

I see the boulder. It is heading straight for me.

                                                                        Déjà vu.

This is the timeline where the kitten never left. This is how this short-lived life plays out.

I stare at the kitten and I am angry. I do not understand why my life is so heavily determined on such a small object.

                                                                        Darkness.

I am back at the beginning.  Restart. The kitten has left. The boulder has never reached me. Wires snap, flailing left instead of right. The boulder rolling, careening right instead of left.

“I have a splitting headache,” the man screams out over the hysterical mass. A wire snaps through him horizontally instead of vertically. He falls apart again, still in thirds. His eggshell skull exposes his now barely functioning muscle.

The amount of timelines are endless. I fear that I may never wake up. I am worried it may soon be my turn to fall apart into thirds. I panic for when my splitting headache may be too much. I do not know how to escape this cycle.

                                                                               It is loud

                                                                              The cycle

                                                                              It repeats

                                                                                It ends

                                                                               It begins

                                                                   It repeats all over again

I am angry for thinking about the kitten. I fear that my thoughts have instigated this repetitive sequence. How does it end? How to make it end? I want this dream to end.

But it doesn’t.

And then… everything is hazy.

And then…everything washes out to yellow.

                                                                     And then…it is quiet.

As Dreams Are: The Man

I fell asleep. 

An unnamed city. It did not look familiar. But I knew the way home. It must have been Spring because I was wearing my light trench coat and I wasn't cold. It was night time but it wasn't dark. I was on the phone with a man. He was in the theater business. We decided phoning would be easier than skyping. The streets had the criss-crossed cobblestone patterns you find in old cities. 

There were bright colors on the low rise buildings. I noticed that there weren't many cars. A few people stood around on the sidewalk; outside of their shops. A few buildings were having work done and I stayed on the road because I recalled a friend once expressing fear from walking underneath the scaffolding. 


The blur of colors: blue, orange, black. 


I talked to Daniel on the phone and he gave me advice about the steps needed to take to enter into the theater business. He made me laugh. We talked as if we had been friends for a long time and for a moment I worried that I had confused him for my other good friend Daniel. 


I was aware I was speaking loudly. I could not hear him. There may have been music or construction work happening in the distance. It was hard to hear. 


"Can you repeat that," I repeated but he only spoke in low, soft tones. My wandering led me from the close-quartered city streets to an open space. I could see to the horizon: to the left, to the right and ahead.

The streets were wide and it had that feeling as if it was a street that should be off-limits to women wandering around at late hours, but that could just be hindsight. There were a few lit buildings at the end of the road. To the right was a field. A very large field and it was obvious that grass had just started to grow. On the field was a large abandoned brick building with broken windows. 

It was very similar to the buildings in the town I had lived in in Georgia. I was still on the phone. I was speaking louder to compensate for Daniel's quietness. He asked me if I wanted to meet him in person. To talk. I hesitated. I was confused, as I often am, about what would develop between us. 'Must keep things at bay,' I felt. Before I could answer a very tall Man, traces of Asian roots, khaki's, a white undershirt approached me. He had a dark car parked by the field at the end of the street. Things felt open. I did not feel threatened. He did not say anything but motioned with his hands, wavering his palms above the road. 


"I'm sorry, would you like me to be a little more quiet?" I asked him. 


He nodded and his eyes appeared to radiate a 'thank you.' I could feel Daniel waiting for an answer from me. I began to speak, to begin explaining my delay. "There is a Man here but it is okay. I am too loud," I wanted to say. But before I could...

The Man slapped me. My phone was in my right hand, I kept it on. I stared at it hoping Daniel would hear this and save me. The Man's eyes were fixated on me. He said things I could not remember. He mentioned rape and I recalled in my dream the previous dreams I have had recently where the men announced upfront that they were going to rape me. I usually keep silent in my dreams but recently I have been loud. I have kicked. I have screamed. 

I yell "Help."

My perspective changes as I imagine Daniel on the phone listening to the words of the Man, to my cries and screams, and I hope he contacts somebody. I know though that he won't. I feel as if he may think it is a joke. He may assume that he does not know my location so really how could he help? My voice is hoarse and I see a short man with dark round sunglasses, slightly balding, a green tattered shirt approach us. I ask him for help as the Man is on top of me and the green-shirt man looks at me and shakes his head 'no.' He looks disgusted. I get the impression that these two men know one another. The Man appears to be embarrassed. 


The streets feel very empty and very dark. It is quiet. The Man disappears. I don't remember how I got away. I run down the wide street and enter one of the abandoned buildings. There is an elevator inside and I run in. I think to myself "I must be in Georgia and there are only a handful of Asian men in Georgia." In the elevator is my friend Christopher who lived in a village near me in Georgia. He is getting ready for his flight back to America and he has a baby in his hands. 


"Let's take a photo together," he asks me and I receive a weird feeling that if I do we will get married and I don't want to play these games anymore. 


I ask him what one should do if she was attacked. He says 'no such things could happen here.' I ask him 'if I were attacked by a foreigner would it be easier to track him down?' and he does not answer. 


The Man, the attacker, enters the elevator and I jump. I make noise. I tell Christopher that it is the Man but he does not listen. The Man leaves. 


The elevator stops on the floor that is designated for flights but it looks very similar to Grand Central Station or a similar train yard from the 1940's but with a slight modern twist. There is grey. There are metal walls and very sharp angles. I follow Christopher into a room where his host family is and I ask again where I can find police officers to report an event. He does not listen. I leave to walk and I find guide books to the city. I keep entering different floors with receptionist desks and a faceless blond lady. Nobody can point me in the direction where the cops are. Nobody can help me. I look through windows and I see movie theaters. A lot of empty seats with a few people facing away from me. They are wearing blue vests with white writing but I can not make out what it says. There are people on a stage and they are preparing for a presentation. 


I re-enter the room where Christopher is and he has the baby still. I tell him that my attack was real but when he and his host sister ask if I was raped I do not know what to say. I can not remember. I am unsure. I tell them I think he was Asian and they insist it will be easy to find him since there are no Asian men in Georgia. Christopher takes me into a different room where there will be a movie playing. It is an old movie house and he still has the baby in his hands. He introduces me to a very large man and I fear that he is actually one of the dark fog monsters that always seem to track me down in my dreams. Christopher gives me the baby to hold and he says that we will have a family one day and the child cries. 

I am in a room of a big house. There are many levels and I think to myself that this may actually be a ship and it is going to sink soon. There are men everywhere. I can not see them but I can feel them. Every time I enter a room trying to find a way out I hear laughter. I am reminded of Christopher and I feel guilty for leaving him. I am reminded of the Man and I feel guilty that I may have lied. I think about how I probably will never get a job with Daniel in the theater business because he heard me on the phone and he will never be able to look at me the same way again.


I am broken. 


The house is bright. It is open with a lot of white space. I can hear a teacher. He sounds like a teacher and I think maybe it is a drama teacher of mine and he is testing me. I do not feel the surge of fear or worry and in a strange way I miss it because it is what I know. 


I am quiet here and I am confused. I think about the eyes of the Man and his power. People are running in and out, but nobody listens to my story.