Dream Spores - 9. Oma, For Girls, Rapid Guilt

Like a large setup and dressing room at a fashion show the carpeted room was filled with bustling people, the make up artists, clothespeople, hair stylists and those who had come to let them work on them. A short grey haired man I should have known from TV greeted me very politely and took my jean jacket to a room with racks of jackets and other apparel of visitors. He gestured to the chair in front of a large mirror, his work space apparently, for me to sit down, and asked me what I wanted for my hair. I had neither the money not the wish for a new haircut, so I refused and went to the racks to get my jacket back to leave. I picked it out among other jean jackets and found something that didn't belong to me but I wanted to take as well. So I waited a little and looked around for witnesses to take it nonchalantly when no one was looking. I was eager to leave, but still took my sweet time with this.

I don't remember if I did take it, though. Because I ended up in a room not far from there (without actually moving there), part of that place apparently, which was exactly the room I live in in reality right now. A strange woman was in bed with me. I had nothing to do with her, she was just there, sharing it, awarding me only the simple, quiet kind of attention you would pay a fellow train seat occupant, without any talking. I was going to leave but it was not quite the right time yet.

So in that idle moment I peeked into the nightstand and saw a small but colourful collection of dildos and vibrators there. I recognised one of them as my own, and as moans and gasps of an unmistakable nature faded in and wafted in through the open door, the realisation dawned on me that I had brought the toy here to use in ... some action. I suppose I was in a brothel or swinger club of some kind. I took the vibrator back, knocking it against the nightstand door and the door against the bed, and apologised to the occupant, the stranger who kept looking at me with only very mild interest. ... And I suppose I packed it up somehow and was ready to leave then, because I stepped halfway through the door of my actual room into the corridor of my actual house, looking straight into my father's room, where a girl was practically nailing another with a strap-on on my father's desk. The blond woman lying on the desk moaned quite deliciously. I gaped for a few seconds until the strap-on girl noticed me and broke her rhythm. I tried to mitigate my staring intrusion by giving her an awkward thumbsup accompanied by a rather confused embarrassed smile, and she smiled back a bit proudly and I think she was panting, and then she turned her attention back to her ... uhm. Work.

I turned away, trying to give them their space, and found myself at a hotel strip on a beach. This part is patchy and boring, involving buffet food, a cute trannie woman and derelict beaches, but it goes over into a dark chase.

Some kind of sci-fi agent woman was looking for someone, she told us. My vague friend and I became curious at her waterspeeder vehicle and got a pair of our own to plow the seas. We had only to start them and zoom out to open sea when she began following us. We rode through black glittering, roiling water with no land in sight, into gloom that gradually but quickly turned into night, and managed to evade her with speed.

We reached a white-lit, open platform out on the ocean, that had two walls like a shop showroom and two tiny helicopters on display. It sat fast just above the water's surface, so it must have been built on poles or stilts. We might have remained camped out and hidden there, but I itched to try out one of the mini helicopters. The black one, to be exact, that looked like it might have weapons on board. Indeed our enemies did come closer and into view and my friend and I each squeezed into one of those toys. You really had to fold yourself into it and zip it up around yourself like a shaped sleeping bag.

I never learned if I fit, though, because then I stood at a terminal door to Arabia.

Barefooted with only my wide cargo bermudas and a long t-shirt, I stood before a stunningly beautiful girl with long black hair, and I smiled at her hopefully. She smiled back and lowered her head a little as if she were flattered, then gestured for me to step through into her home country. I was grateful that she allowed me to enter (after all, that's what I was standing there for, right), and understood somehow that she also let me know I should wander around the city for a while and then find her. We would be each other's destination.

So I stepped through the door and found myself in a short brickwork tunnel. Well, this wasn't very Arabian. It looked rather German. I took it as it was. So I began to wander. Exiting the tunnel at the end I had faced, I looked around and saw a city around me, a very German-style one, not at all Arabian... the right side had some higher buildings and one with a big clock on it, so I took it as more central and more likely to lead me to the girl, so I wandered in that direction. I padded around on my bare feet very dreamishly, deliberately naive, and it felt really peaceful.

However, this was supposed to be Arabia, so maybe it was smart to hide somewhere? Given my attire, looks, nationality, and everything?

I passed a kind of open stall which was very tall, like an insanely huge shelf, where there were old records (also big) and old Donald Duck comics. I liked it. And it had a convenient hollow space behind the first row of records on the very top. I jumped up there and curled up in it to hide and sleep a little.

The rest about people coming to watch me, purple crisps and pancakily flattened children's corpses is too muddled to recount, which is a shame. It was quite fascinating.

I used an old black and green desk chair I haven't had since summer last year to skate around in the streets, or mostly the pavement of this city, probably supposed to be my own, but a bit more consequential (metropolitan and pretentious, if you will). I knelt on the seat and had always at least one hand on the back, because that was really necessary, as rapid and wild as this thing was.

It was fast and nearly uncrontrollable, but that was why I used it. It was cool and exciting.

It was also my job to cook some sort of snack, or I was asked to, or I wanted to, or all of the above. I botched up something with chocolate that I put into a box of something else... not important, I was just a little guilty for messing it up, because it was supposed to be for a friend.

He chanced a look at me and my bad snack. I also soaked a few old slices of white bread in a sweet mix of egg, milk and flour, to roast or bake with raisins or something, but looking at the pans on the stove and the grill plate (the ones we have at work - this was my restaurant kitchen) I knew or feared that it wouldn't work.

I had to turn away anyway and take care of something.

You, Matt, were sitting with a friend or acquaintance of yours at a crossing I have in my neighbourhood. One of the low houses there seemed to be yours. Both of you sat on stools at a small high round table like the ones they have in front of chipper vans and coffee stalls, in front of your frontyard on the pavement.

It was dark, either early morning or late evening or whatever. It was nightly dark. (but streetlamp-lit, of course)

I came out of your low frontyard gate with some card in my hand, like a greeting card. I placed it on the table where some similar things were already stacked and standing, and turned away from you to the traffic light, ashamed of something (being there in person for you and your friend to see?) and guilty for not acknowledging you.

You acknowledged me and the card, and mentioned me to your friend. I was sorry as I stood there waiting for the lights to turn green for me.

Then I came out of some building onto a dark early morning street (or was it evening? Who the bloody hell cares) that was lined with parked cars, those in turn framed again by a typically German patchwork of apartment buildings. The concrete and pavement glinted wetly.

I looked to a street corner where I'd left my chair.

There was a young man in half a suit (jacket wasn't on), who looked around and lifted my chair, apparently to take it with him.

He appeared to be saying something to himself along the lines of "If no one's there..." with a shrug in his voice.

And he proceeded to carry my chair towards the opened trunk of a car.

I hurried to him, calling: "Heh, that's my chair. Oi! That's MY chair!"

He acknowledged me the second time I called but didn't put the chair down.

He put it into his trunk and somehow made me understand that since it had been on the pavement by itself it was free for the taking, tough luck for me. But I happened to know the law.

He shut his car and left it standing there, and put on his jacket and began to walk across the street and over a bridge rather briskly, and I followed him closely, and kept next to him as best I could.

I said "Are you a lawyer or something?"

He said with some kind of pride: "Well yes, I happen to be" writing a book something blah di blah.

I said: "Well, for a lawyer you don't know the law very well. That's still my chair."

The sky lightened a bit.

And I was woken up.