Charon carry me home

I dreamt a tale the other night. I was attending a wedding and I tried to do something surreptitiously and interrupted and all eyes were on me. I walked out with my head held high and the dream faded.

I was a boy and had woken up with a friend in what appeared to be Victorian sewers. There was a canal with dirty green water flowing by me. The ceilings in the place were daunting, large and all-encompassing. My friend knelt down without a word and began tying together comforters and floated comfortably into the green-grey water without getting wet. I frantically tried to weave together the remaining blankets, but to no avail.

How do I do it? I called after him in panic, wanting to hear the answer before he rounded the stone bend.

You have to find redemption. It won't stay afloat until you do, he called back to me. Within moments, he had drifted from my sight. I wasn't sure redemption for what.

I took stock of my surroundings and began to have a horrible feeling about it all. I knew I couldn't stay here long, but the reason I had wanted to float down the canal was because there were all these built-in places on the sides of the canal, sticking out at odd angles. And I knew that walking through there (places which I sensed would be dark) would be far more horrible than what awaited me in the canal.

Without thinking, I began speaking aloud, asking for guidance. Where am I? I remembered asking. A disembodied voice answered You know where you are and what you have to do. I think I did know where I was and had a vague idea about what I had to do.

Please let me tell you how I came to be here. Perhaps you will understand when you hear. The voice was silent, but I knew it was listening.

The scenery changed as I reminisced. The dream changed to become sepia and Victorian. I was a happy child and my parents loved me and made me work to develop a good work ethic. I was a newspaper delivery boy and enjoyed my job. My parents were merchants, with good business acumen. I remember once my parents took me to see the first movie ever made and they let me pay for my own ticket. I was thrilled, so proud. This period was the happiest time of my life.

The family business did too well however, and my parents began squabbling and fighting about money...things fell apart.

Here I stopped telling the story. The dream ended there. I think the canal was the River Styx modernized and the voice Hades. In the dream, everything was so clear to me.