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.

Victorian eaters

Last night I was feverish and my dreams were nightmarish. I was on a road trip with quite a few people stuffed into 1 car. John David was there. Erin was there. There were a few faces I can't make out now, but one Arabic girl named Matiya who, to my knowledge, does not exist in waking life.

We had stopped by a clearing with a beautiful old Victorian house. The house was perhaps three stories tall and painted a pastel color - some faint teal. It was very beautiful and every single window had curtains so you could never see inside. It was in a clearing, but surrounded by the woods. Murky sunlight still hit the house. The house was haunted, we knew. We had heard tales of how it ate its occupants and no trace of them was ever again found. I and two others got out of the car. To take a closer look...to clear my head. I am not certain why. But when I turned around, Matiya had driven off. The three of us left looked at the disappearing car in disbelief and though we screamed at it to stop, did not attempt to run futilely after it. A police cruiser pulled up and a cop named Clarke came out.

At first she was sympathetic and gave us good advice about where to stay for the night with our friends gone. I had adamantly told her we would not be staying in the carnivorous house. She nodded and agreed and said there was a good place in town, if we wanted to catch a ride with her. I was trying to make up my mind when we heard the roar of the car and Matiya came back. Everyone pooled out of the car.

Officer Susannah Clarke (for that is her name) suddenly changed her tune. She insisted we stay in the house, that with so many people, surely nothing would happen. I began screaming at her that if we stayed overnight at the house, we would die. Everyone watched the argument and chimed in momentarily to back me up.

I woke up, feeling flushed and hot and cold. I headed to the restroom to wash off my face and to pee, feeling fuzzy-headed and sore.