Dream Diary #131: Getting Crushed

I am living/staying inside a big house with several floors, surrounded by many people - most of whom are little children.

It soon becomes apparent that two of the children are The Crush's. In real life, he and his wife are more than capable of taking care of their kids and have many, many other babysitter options before me, so I do not know why they are in my care but for some reason it makes me happy and I really enjoy playing with and getting to know them. It weirdly makes me feel closer to The Crush and like I am getting to know him better, through them.

At one point the younger of the two is painting and gets paint on her clothes - she is wearing some sort of fairy or princess costume and I take it off her to put it in the wash and I really hope The Crush and his wife are not angry at me for her clothes getting messed up while on my watch.

I look up and catch a glimpse of The Crush returning 'home' and it seems that he has been out drinking, which explains why I am taking care of his children, although there is no mention, sighting or acknowledgement of his wife's whereabouts. 

He sees me and smiles as it seems he had prior knowledge that I was babysitting his kids (I had no prior knowledge until I saw them) and he stops and engages in quite a long, in-depth conversation with me (in reality he has rarely ever done this) and even tipsily confesses that he thinks he may have a gambling problem (something I don't actually believe to be true) but it humanizes him to me in way as I have had a tendency to put him on a pedestal.

He suddenly stops, as if he's going to say something, smiles at me and then looks away without saying anything and a voice in my head says, "He would tell you how he feels about you, if he could." 

Dream Diary #130: Time Bomb

(The date of this dream may not be accurate as I retrieved this post as a draft without checking the original date I wrote it)

I am transported back to my retail days of working in a supermarket, when suddenly the store is under attack from a mass shooter.

Terrified, I cower in the corner of one of the aisles and though I am shot at several times, somehow I manage to escape from being gravely injured.

I see the culprit walk back and forth past the end of the aisle many times and when I can't see him I can hear the bullets as they ricochet off the walls of the building.

It seems as though I am there for hours, frozen to the spot in fear, conscious of the fact that many of my colleagues were either dead or had managed to escape, but I had no idea which ones.

Just when things start to go quiet and it seems as though the threat has subsided, another man enters the room. I can see him over my shoulder at the opposite end of the aisle that I had seen the shooter; he is carrying a large sports bag and he sets it down on a table and turns towards me, grinning sinisterly.

My heart sinks when he pulls a bomb out of the bag and I know that I hadn't just survived a mass shooting only to be killed by a suicide bomber!

I stand and just as I am about to run, I hear a noise from behind. It is one of my colleagues who had managed to hide in the next aisle along from me.

The man doesn't do very much to stop us, and I put this down to the fact that the bomb would go off imminently. Everything seems to turn to slow motion as I roughly grab my colleague and pull her along with me.

We run towards a lift and get inside. It seems to take forever to get to the top and I feel wave after wave of anxiety in anticipation for the bomb going off.

When we reached the top, we are in a shopping mall and we run through it screaming at everyone to evacuate as fast as they can. I awake before the bomb has a chance to go off.

Dream Diary #129: Don't Look Back

My Love and I had reconciled and I couldn't wait to see him again. I got off the plane and he was waiting for me in the lobby of the hotel he'd been staying in. The mere sight of him after so many years of being apart took my breath away.

I went up to him and though he appeared just as excited to see me as I was to see him, he wouldn't take me up to his hotel room - he stopped me and told me he'd take my luggage up to the room himself.

I was exhausted from all the traveling I had just done but he insisted and told me to go for a walk and he would meet me later. 

We'd been together but a few moments and already I was questioning my choice and whether or not this was what I really wanted. Nevertheless, I did as I was told and started to walk around the fictionalised version of the town in the USA we used to live in together.

As I started walking, I realised another thing; my Love hadn't told me where to meet him. The town was quite small so we were bound to run into each other eventually, but I began to run around aimlessly, not really sure of where I was heading or why I was even there.

Then another thought hit me; if I stayed, I would likely never see the man I'll refer to simply as 'The Crush', (due to the fact he is married in real-life so a Crush is all he can be at this point) ever again.

Though my intense attraction to The Crush makes no logical sense, due to him being married and unable to reciprocate even if he wanted to, the sadness I felt at the thought of not seeing him again engulfed me and overrode any joy I should have felt at being reunited with my Love, which begged the question -- was he really my Love at all anymore? 

That's when I realised how far I'd come and the things I wanted four years ago are not necessarily what I want for my life now. 

Dream Diary #128: Final Destination

I arrived in a picturesque remote town in rural USA. I was trying to get to another state but my plane ticket had only managed to get me as far as this unnamed town. I knew I had to get to the airport and buy another ticket to get to my final destination but I didn't drive and didn't know anyone to give me a lift, so I decided I would have to hitchhike and started to ask strangers for directions. 

The information I got was very confusing and contradictory with one person telling me to go this way and then another telling me to go in the opposite direction. 

Exhausted and weary, I decided to take some time out from my travels and stay in the town I was in for a while, to rest and re-calibrate my plans. 

Luckily, the town had a hotel in it so I asked for a room. The locals seemed intrigued by me and were a bit standoffish at first but soon warmed to me when they saw how in love with the town I was.

The town itself wasn't much to look at from the outside but I quickly fell for the remote location and the vast, wide open fields that sent my amateur photographer senses tingling.

The town also offered a very unique tourist attraction in the form of a partially free range petting zoo in the centre with all manner of animals - some not even native to the USA - on display.

Of course, I was dying to take pictures but every time I pointed my camera, someone would instantly stand in my way. They didn't do it deliberately, but there weren't that many people in the town so it was puzzling how someone always managed to get in the way of my shot. 

I was having such an amazing time that I found myself running through all the scenarios in my head that would allow me stay there permanently.

Dream Diary #127: Character Building

I was on a ship in the middle of a beautiful ocean.

I was working on an actress of a movie; the plot of the movie involved a group of individuals who were hired by a wealthy man to retrieve a ancient ring from an exotic temple as he wanted it to propose to his significant other. 

The movie, which was directed by Keanu Reeves for some reason (?), had all the typical characters you'd expect to see in such a film - there was the handsome main character (the hero), the pretty girl (the hero's love interest), the comic relief, the villain etc. - but I couldn't figure out for the life of me what my role was? It seemed as though if you removed my character from the movie, it would make no difference to the story whatsoever. 

I brought this up and was reassured that although there was a script, depending on how we interpreted our characters and the chemistry between us actors, our roles within the story were fluid and could change at any given moment. 

I suddenly got a flash forward to the end of the movie and the main character was embracing me instead of the actress playing the love interest!

Sure enough, once we started filming our scenes, my character did indeed have more natural chemistry and rapport with the lead actor than the actress hired to play the love interest. 

Filming inside all of the temple's caves and tunnels was so much fun, I completely forgot that we were in a movie. 

The dream then switched a little and I had given my mum and my sister an excerpt of a love scene I had written for them to read. I was apprehensive and nervous at exposing that side of my writing to them but they told me they thought it was really good and that they enjoyed it. 

Feeling proud myself, I took the pages from them and tried to put them in order as they were all jumbled, but couldn't because after several attempts to make sense out of what I'd written I realised it was still in my head and I hadn't written my love scene down yet.

Valentine's Night

Celesta's finger gingerly traced the spines of the books on the shelf inside Jeremiah's study.

He'd been avoiding her like the plague ever since New Year after she'd initiated their passionate New Year's kiss, but had never officially withdrawn his permission for her to use the books in his personal library. 

Besides, it was Valentine's Night and Jeremiah would be out on his date for hours.

Relieved of her maid's duties, Celesta was dressed for comfort in her favourite oversized sweatshirt that hung seductively off of one shoulder, flannel pajama shorts and fluffy ankle socks. She'd planned to borrow a book or two, retreat to the maid's quarters and read until she fell asleep. Or until she heard Jeremiah's car pull up in the driveway - whichever came first.

Thrumming through the pages of the book she had selected, Celesta was about to make her way out of the room when she froze at the unexpected sound of the doorknob turning. 

She pressed herself back against the bookshelf in a feeble attempt to conceal herself and watched as Jeremiah himself strode inside.

Celesta breathed a silent sigh of relief; the staff at Harlequin Manor weren't permitted to enter the Harlequin's private quarters when they weren't on duty and no-one else in the house knew about the agreement between them. The other half of her felt a sense of embarrassment and panic - this was the first time they'd come face-to-face with one another since New Year and there was only one door in the room so there was no way she would be able to get out of there without him noticing. Or so she thought.

Jeremiah seemed barely aware of his surroundings as he paused in the doorway before slowly closing it behind him. He was still wearing the suit he'd left the house in but his tie hung loosely around his neck, his dinner jacket slung casually over his shoulder and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to the elbows. 

He swiftly tossed the jacket onto a nearby chair along with his keys, sighing heavily. He adjusted his glasses and briefly rested his hands on his hips as if contemplating what to do next, before fixating on a cabinet in the corner. 

Celesta watched as he made his way across the room in just a few purposeful steps, un-pop the stopper from a half-drunk bottle of whisky, pour it into a glass and bring it to his lips where he knocked it back in one go. Her gaze darted from Jeremiah to the door and back to Jeremiah again - he hadn't even noticed that his desk-lamp was switched on; would he notice if she snuck out of the room?

However, her desire to stay and be near him overrode her embarrassment as she watched him pour another drink and take it over to the window where he proceeded to stand with his forehead pressed forlornly against the glass. 

It was a night made for lovers. The full moon glowed in the crystal clear night sky, causing the vast snowy hillsides to shimmer and glisten in it's light. 

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Celesta ventured gently, stepping out from her non-hiding place. 

Jeremiah caught her reflection in the window and turned his head quickly to look at her, before turning his attention back to the view outside, "Yeah, it is pretty spectacular," he agreed. "You know they say the snow's going to keep coming down throughout the night? I don't see how though, there doesn't seem to be a cloud in sight?" He added, looking upwards.

Inwardly, Celesta breathed a sigh of relief that he didn't seem angry or annoyed with her. Even so, she didn't want to push her luck, "Listen, um, I'm sorry - I thought you'd be gone a lot longer,  and it wasn't my intention to be here when you got back," she explained as she backed towards the door, "You probably just want to be alone." She turned, her fingertips brushing over the brass of the doorknob.

"Actually, I could kind of use the company." 

Celesta paused and glanced over her shoulder. Jeremiah, whose body language had relaxed considerably since he'd first entered the room, was perched on the edge of the window sill, shoulders hunched, his long legs outstretched before him, crossed at the ankles. His profile was beautiful, illuminated in part by the golden glow of the desk-lamp and the cool moonlight from outside. 

Her heart was in her throat as she turned and made her way back into the room, looking every bit the shy teenager, clutching her chosen book tightly to her chest. He wants to spend time with me, her inner voice chimed.    

"Come, sit," Jeremiah gestured with a motion of his head towards the couch next to and under the sill where he was sitting. 

Celesta tiptoed over to the couch and perched on the edge of the middle seat, it's leather cool against the bare skin of her legs. She placed the book on her knees and nervously began to play with the sleeves of her sweatshirt. 

"How old are you, Celesta?" He asked, staring into the bottom of his now empty whisky glass. 

"I'll be eighteen in May," she told him, causing him to cringe internally; he could've sworn she didn't look or seem this young when they'd kissed at New Year? A moment ago he'd contemplated offering her a drink, thinking it would help her to relax but after hearing her confirm her age out loud, he thought better of it. 

"I don't mind if you drink, though," She quickly added. 

He sighed. After the realization that he'd not only reciprocated a kiss with a teenager, but that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since, another drink suddenly seemed like an order.

"What're you reading anyway?" He asked, eager to change the subject as he poured.

She held the book up to him and he squinted at the cover as he made his way from the cabinet to sit on the couch next to her. The Faerie Queen.

"Oh yeah, that's a good one," he mused. 

"You've read it?"

"Sure," he told her, "I've read most of these at least once," he gestured to the rows and rows of books on the other side of the room, "That one I've read about three or four times." 

Celesta nodded, impressed.

Dream Diary #126: Muddy Waters

I was standing on the edge of a canal and there was barge in the water that I wanted to get to but the only way to get there was to walk across a very shaky, unstable wooden plank. 

At first, it didn't look so bad; after all, if I fell I would just land in the water, right? However, a quick glance in the water showed that the canal was very muddy and oily looking and I didn't fancy falling in, so I ignored my initial desire to board the barge and decided against going on it at all.

I then made my way to the opposite side of the canal, where the water was much cleaner and resembled a typical public swimming pool setting, with dozens of people jumping in and splashing around. It looked like so much fun I decided to join in but before I could everyone decided to get out and go to the muddy side of the canal instead.

I couldn't understand their logic and tried to tell them about the state of the water over there, but no-one would listen.

So I watched as they each made their way over and crossed over the plank to the barge with ease and suddenly I was angry with myself for doubting that I would ever make it across and wished I'd trusted myself to be the trailblazer that I am on the inside, rather than the follower I appeared to be on the outside.