Ghost Story

From Scooby Doo Games

I slept, to find myself in a town plagued by very corporeal ghosts.

The first scene erupted in a prison or school gym with a ghost hunter using a special spray weapon to imprison and destroy ghosts.

His weapon failed on a freckled fat-girl ghost, who used it against his team.  She then began forcefully escorting people and ghosts to opposite ends of the hall.

I spoke up, and she dragged me to the stairwell leading up -- I suspected most ghosts were going up there, and was worried for my life.  Her final prod was a threat to bite off my head!

Intimidated, I went upstairs and avoided some pleased-looking ghosts by hiding in a locker room where I could see everything coming and try to dodge danger.

A group of specters I had seen downstairs was talking around the corner in the shower room, when suddenly, they noticed me.  So I ran.

The second level of the school met the terrace of a street in back, so I jumped out the window and fled down the street.  A car screamed up to me and I irrationally feared more spectral foes.  Instead, the ghost-hunter leader picked me up and proclaimed "the specialists have arrived."

In answer, two dumpsters with the classic Mystery Mobile coloration pulled up and spun into place around the car.

Scooby Doo, Scrappy, an extra dog, and several characters beyond the original gang jumped out like a ghost S.W.A.T. team.  It was on!

The Night Shift

I hate dreaming about work, mainly because I don't love my job.  I like my job well enough, like having steady employment, like the money it brings, and like doing necessary, engaging work alongside good people.  But in a dozen or so attempts, I have yet to find a job that I truly love or that I cannot stand to be away from for any length of time.

One perk of my current job that they do not discuss in the benefits package is the ability to clock out.  I can go home at night and choose to not think about work-related issues until the next day.  Dreaming about office politics and the petty injustices of the bureaucracy entirely negates that needed separation from my daytime labors.  My work dreams nearly always involve stressful situations and feelings of tasks left unfinished.  In that way, I find such midnight experiences to be truer mirrors of my open-eyed life than many dreams.  Real life comes with frustration, stress, bosses climbing all over one's back, failure, and the shame of unrealized potential.  Those are emotions I would prefer to eliminate from my snore-side life.  Plus, dreaming of work simply reminds me that my employer currently holds a third of my life hostage.  How can it be just to yield another unconscious third to the cubicle meat-grinder?

Now that you've endured my rant, I invite you to share your own awful work dreams either in the comments to this post, or by contacting me.

Tireless Recruiter

I first remember checking in with building security, not uncommon when on one of these campus visits.  Between my company ID card and business casual dress, I did not expect to get a hard time.  In fact, for a work dream, I felt remarkably cool and comfortable throughout my night-side journey.  I had come up from our midtown office to the suburbs in order to track down three potential registrants for our upcoming conference.  I do not specifically recall sitting on a train, nor could I tell you exactly what sort of conference we were planning, or why I needed to follow up in person with three college students who had tentatively signed up.  But hey, as long as the checks keep coming, I do what the boss tells me.

With all that in my head, I followed this gray-hair through two doors, around a corner, and into a smallish room on the first floor of an antique-looking, classroom building.  He verified my credentials, then sent me upstairs.

I sat down at a three-person desk along the wall of a small library, and laid down my binder-clipped stack of notes and registration forms.  My prospective attendees unerringly appeared soon after.  While I recognize that we had probably arranged to meet beforehand, I felt like I had basically ambushed them in a well-used hallway.  The brown-haired boy and blond girl certainly did not seem like they were expecting me.  They actually looked pretty creeped out.  I tried my best to explain that I was from the firm of so and so, there to verify whether they truly intended to participate in our two-day training conference for rising second-year students in the field.  Their names, as well as that of a third friend, had appeared on our early registration lists, but we had never gotten confirmation from any of them.

The boy responded by asking me questions that signaled he wanted to ditch on the conference, but was reluctant to say "no" if that would result in punishment or a monetary fee.  I reassured the pair that I had come as a courtesy before we crossed them off the list, that the entire training experience was offered gratis, and they had no need to worry about their rejections affecting either their wallets or their chances at future employment with the firm.  I felt confident, eloquent, and comfortable throughout our short interview, and I was little surprised that they eventually cancelled their registrations, and their friend's.

Job done, I walked downstairs again, and ran into this curly-haired fellow who clearly ran the building, a dean of some species or other.  Despite having cleared my presence with building security, I now found myself compelled to explain my presence and errand to this officious, Jeri-curled fop.  Worse, he wanted to meet in his office, near the security desk.  Now, I could get lost in my own house, and trying to find a desk from an earlier part of my dream proved quite frustrating.  Several wrong turns ensued while Mister Oily Hair walked uselessly in front of me, guided by my inept navigation.

We ended up in a converted doctor's examination room, with cabinets, a sink, and paperwork up front by the door, and a working toilet near the rear.  A janitor had just deposited a dozen cans of cleaning product, along with tools and gloves, on the floor near the toilet, and we calmly stood aside to let him work before we sat down for our interview.  Though supremely confident in my credentials, I think this last crappy bit of bureaucratic time-wasting annoyed me beyond sleeping, for I awoke.  Cussing about work dreams coming on Sunday, I got up, ready for that first cup of Joe.

Sent through the gate between February 5th and 6th, 2011.

Scavengers of the Old World

My wife and I were refugees, tagging along with a band of drifters and other loosely allied exiles.  In the post-Earth future, we were cruising through the stars, surviving on what scant shelter and necessities we could scrounge from the husks of decaying worlds.  But this trip, we got sucked through a vortex, a wormhole or other portal in space and time.  It propelled us down onto the surface of a planet we soon came to realize was Old Earth, the original human home-world.  For us, it would be centuries into the future, the 2500s.  To the crew of our wandering vessel, it seemed amazingly ancient and legendary, like a place that no longer existed.  It felt more familiar to me, though, like maybe my wife and I were from there, and hitched up with the refugees only after they dropped through the hole.  I got the sense that I best knew what was valuable and useful in this broken, gutted shell of a land.  We were scavenging after all.

We poked our way through a grocery store, yanking old favorite items off the shelves like they do in zombie movies, scrabbling for food that might keep for decades at a time.  I soon had a full cart, one that my wife kept straightening so it wouldn't tip over.  The rest of our party had gone back to whatever spacecraft we had landed in, so the two of us followed.

Wheeling the cart out of the store, we arrived on a curving road still inhabited by what few people had not perished in the apocalypse and subsequent wasteland.  I felt secure, perhaps secretly armed, yet we watched each face we passed to make sure more predatory scavengers didn't ambush us for our rolling mound of salvage.  At one point, we passed two men conversing closely across the route, one standing outside the remnants of a seedy bar, while the other sat in a lawn chair beneath a cloth canopy.  Under the ragged awning he sold incense, rugs, umbrellas, and other assorted items.  Both men met my gaze, one nodding reassuringly, though the other fidgeted at our strangeness.  I began to worry that we would not be able to find our way back to the ship in time.  But, as if summoned, an old woman in a shawl and thick, sackcloth dress appeared, and directed us around a corner where a very modern, neon sign advertised "Good Eats" in dark letters.  Beyond the abandoned eatery we found the rounded hatch that gave entrance to our craft.

Climbing aboard, we entered what I can only describe as a Victorian era mansion, or the alumni club of some over-funded Ivy League institution.  Hard-wood paneling, dark leather seat cushions, extraneous wall art and mounted animals heads -- why in the name of all surviving gods did we need to scavenge when we had such lush appointments?  In any case, we rolled our cart full of booty through a hall, beneath a clothes line strung across the open space, and into our suit of rooms.  While my wife set up our trove in our tiny apartment's private kitchen (again, why scavenge?), I checked out the sitting room.

In the miniature salon, I at least glimpsed some good evidence of post-Earth misfortune and a return to galactic wilderness.  No sooner had I entered the room, then I noticed a very large arachnid landing in the empty corner between the couch and easy chair.  The thing didn't look that threatening, more like a massive daddy long-legs than a poisonous brute.  But it clicked its legs together in excitement at seeing me, and began to scuttle across the floor on ten-inch legs.  Had our new digs been its personal home until that moment?  Should I step on it, I wondered, or try to drop something on it?

Apparently, these questions, and the sheer oddity of scrounging for frozen waffles and canned beans while coming home to a mansion shorted out my brain.  Two smacks of my shoe on the floor and I managed to not only squish the spider, but wake myself up with a pounding headache.  In the far future, mighty my shoe and its resounding impacts!

Sent through the gate between February 10th and 11th, 2011.

Hero on the Run

"Thanks for meeting with me again.  I know it's short notice."

"You are welcome, and do not worry about the timing.  It is a fact of my studies that dreams often demand immediate recital to ensure accuracy and meaningful interpretation."

"Well, however you say, I didn't want to forget the details before we spoke."

"Indeed.  Tell me, what about your dream compels you to share it now?"

"I wasn't me again.  I mean, I was in someone else's body in my dream, and I shouldn't have been there.  Like last time, my situation was all foreign, and wrong, and I yet I wasn't afraid like you'd expect in a nightmare."

"What happened that you feel you should have been afraid?"

"Well, my first memory is of a bunch of soldiers or cops shooting at me!  Although, I wasn't really a hapless victim.  We had a gunfight.  I started out running through woods on the edge of suburbia firing a handgun back at the badges chasing me.  I got the impression my sandy-time persona was a wrongfully accused fugitive.  I'd go so far as to say I was a hero, and the guys after me had been conned by a clever frame job.  Problem was, we got to this hill just inside the tree line, and I turned to fire a rocket launcher down into a knot of my pursuers!"

"What about that action makes you call it a 'problem'?"

"It wasn't very heroic, self-defense or not!  Plus, I didn't get a feeling of guilt for killing cops (maybe they were soldiers), just satisfaction that I could get away easier with them dead.  The emotions seemed wrong for me, like my consciousness was attached to another person.  Anyway, my out-of-body ride passed out of the trees and emerged into some rich guy's country club home -- you know, great view of the golf course, Greek-style white columns, and a drive-through portico to keep you protected from the weather while getting out of your car.  I found the rich guy himself under the covered driveway, popping the tires on a Rolls-Royce and setting fire to an antique convertible of some sort.

"My dream carrier lost our temper.  I got swept up in it, and it felt like my temper, but it definitely came from him.  I was furious that he had ruined my getaway.  I told him so.  It was the only thing I remember saying in the last five or six dreams: 'Do you hate me so much that you would ruin your own property to foil me?'  I said it very formally, like a dire accusation."

"Was the act of speaking more significant to you than what you said?"

"I think it was a sign of how caught up I was.  Do you follow how much back-story I was wading through?  They all knew me and wanted to stop me, to the point that I expected the rich guy to deliberately sabotage me.  And enough had passed between me and them that I was outraged!  It only got worse, too, when the rich guy snarled, 'Yes, I hate you!' and spat at me.  I ran on feeling alone and cornered in a mad world.

"Then, confirming my fears, four strong, male nurses tackled me on the 16th green, overwhelming me despite the karate moves I randomly displayed to fight them.  This doctor closed in with a syringe, ordering them to hold me still.  Right then I could've been a dead ringer for Arnold in Total Recall, or Leo in Shutter Island.  I wanted to bellow at them to stop, that I had done nothing wrong, that I didn't even know who I was or why I was there.  But before I could, the doctor stuck me and I woke up."

"Hmm, so backing up a little, the abundance of detail in your dream -- 'back-story,' you said -- has caused you to conclude that you were in someone else's body?"

"Yes, whoever I was riding along with, he was too connected with everything to be an ivory figment.  And that doc decided me."

"Do you assume the doctor was a psychiatrist, perhaps, and the nurses asylum staff?"

"Oh, I don't know, I suppose that was the impression.  But the important thing is that he knew I was there!  As the nurses restrained my dream form, he told them, 'Gently, don't hurt him, he's not in control.'  It was like they blamed me for the man's violent actions and crimes.  And when the doctor injected me, I woke up.  He'd driven me out.  The sand had sucked me into that man, and the drugs had shoved me back out.

"I tell you, my dreams are not my own!"

Dorm-Warming Gift

I don't remember where I got the thing, but it was easily the best housewarming gift ever.  Excited like Christmas, I rushed out of my dorm room, looking for a place to try out my new javelin.

I exited the building by a ground-level door I just happened to be at -- no hallway, stairs, or elevator getting me there.  And I walked onto a plain side street lined with brick or concrete school buildings and smaller, brightly painted houses that could have been college property, too.  It could have been a part of nearly any campus I've seen in NY, New England, or western PA.  I even checked for cars, and approved of midday's lack of traffic.  Stepping out into the road, I watched my right hand heft the white, wooden javelin.  And then, feeling like Zeus surely did with his first lightning bolt, I made a first, experimental toss.

It sucked.

My first four throws all sucked, in fact.  I posed really well before each one, striking a classic Greek stance with the shaft extended along my arm.  But upon launching the javelin each time, it wobbled forward a few yards and then clattered down awkwardly on the pavement.  Not once did I manage to even get the pointed tip aimed down first.  Apparently, I had the best gift ever, and no ability to use it.  I shrugged and moved on.

After some completely illogical dream-reasoning, I concluded that I simply needed a better practice venue.  My final toss had landed past the row of cars parked street-side.  Retrieving the javelin, I walked over to the closest building and entered, for no discernible reason.  Fortunately, the hangar-shaped structure turned out to house a gymnasium with high ceilings, a wood-paneled floor, and wide windows that looked out onto a hillside scene of winding trails and pine trees.  Sadly, the entire floor of the gym was taken up by couples practicing various types of ballroom dance, and even my dream self knew better than to hurl a sharp javelin among a horde of swaying, circling bodies.  I carried the pointed pole through the center, feeling that the trails and hillside paths beyond the far doors held more potential.

Tracing an upward winding path over rocky outcroppings and past drooping trees, I failed to discover a clearing where Zeus-style hurls could be mimicked with my white, wooden lightning bolt.  Instead, I proceeded down a decline that curled around into a natural spa area of mud pots and lounging bathers.  In round, brown-filled cauldrons, a series of swimsuit clad hedonists enjoyed the twin luxuries of mineral-rich mud and sexy bodies.  Further along the line, the partakers of the dirty baths became decidedly more Indian in appearance, skin matching the pot contents while lavish, colorful wraps floated unspoiled on the surface.  The lighting had gone from mountain-top sunlight to subterranean cavern-crawl dimness.  Yet here, in the shadows, the mud-pop steam wafting to the tunnel top, amid the secretive bathers, I found help.  An older Indian woman, wrapped clothes untouched by the mud she lounged in, beckoned me to join her, with the promise of assistance in my javelin-tossing endeavors.

It was about then that the real sunlight streaming through my apartment window tore me back to the real world, where my best college dorm trinket had been a mug labeled "JAVA" on one side.  Oh, well.