I like when you sleep, when you sleep next to me

I had a weird nightmare last night... it was strangely continuous and fairly long. It had me in its grasp such that after I woke up to turn off my alarm, it dragged me back into its eerie embrace. It was one of those nightmares that affected you even after you're awake – even though I was half an hour later than my usual routine, I could not muster myself to move very quickly. I was stunned, still enthralled and contemplative, and as a result I still spaced out in the shower despite every intention of speeding through that comforting time trap.

It started with work. Except we were now located in a mall. And on this particular day, Irene wanted me to pick up roses for her from this store in the mall, and she had handed me an invoice from the store. I remember telling her that $24 was a bit expensive for roses, and she looked a little ashamed and said she liked the proximity of the store. I didn't push it further but I was curious as to why she was buying roses. Similarly, Mark, who doesn't work anywhere near me, also had two receipts for me to pick up some things in the mall. The work day went by, and there was a club inside the mall that we were going to go to after work. So Richard, Irene and I headed down there, and there was this other crowd of indeterminate extras that I was talking to as Richard was laying on the charm at the bar, and I was explaining to them how he's always charming like that and popular. Except currently he seemed a little drunk and no one was around him. He was working on some girl across the bar though. I was satisfied that he'd have a companion soon... and then I remembered about the errands I was supposed to run, and the mall was about to close. I ran across the mall (Irene told me to go in the wrong direction), and when I finally got to the flower shop, I realized I didn't have the receipt. So I ran back the short distance to the club to grab the receipts from the jacket, intending to grab Mark's stuff for him too.

And this is where it really began. I consider it some kind of miracle that I remember all the details before this, and they are all still very clear in my mind instead of the usual uncertainty that comes with remembering details of dreams.

I grabbed my jacket, and I noticed the various bouncers were ushering everyone out, except for a few people here and there. I overheard one of the bouncers tell Richard sarcastically “yeah, yeah, only the cool people get to stay”. I was one of the few that wasn't ushered out, and we were all directed to this theatre room. I remember being very shocked and confused as to why I was being chosen to stay, and I wanted to get out there and hang out with Richard but was too curious about what was about to happen here. On my way to the theatre room, I noticed that Snoop Dogg was one of the people heading there, and apparently I knew him in this dimension. He had a pocket on the arm of his jacket, and I unzipped it and searched in there for some clue of what's about to happen, since Snoop seemed to be the type of guy to be in the know. Nothing but some money and a bus token, and I handed him back all his materials and then I never saw him again for the rest of the dream.

In this theatre we sat for a short while and then we were herded onto a bus, and it started driving us into the countryside. The sides of the road looked golden, and I was suddenly reminded of jPod and (spoilers warning!) how Ethan got on this bus and he didn't know where it would take him and it could easily take him into a slavery at a sweat shop, and I started getting worried. Maybe this was where the nightmare seed was planted in my mind and the dream changed. I'm not too sure of how they work. Then Brad Pitt, who was the club proprietor, except he wasn't Brad Pitt, came on the bus P.A. System and announced that we were all going to die, and that we started thinking about our last wishes. As everyone around me were shocked and mildly freaking out, I began to seriously agonize over what my last wish would be. I thought about something that would maybe buy us some time, but I couldn't really get a hold of it. Then Pitt announced that first he was going to come around and break our knees with a baseball bat, and then he would come around to ask us the meaning of life, and if any of us answer 42 as some of us “must” do, we would be mutilated and tossed off the bus immediately. I was unfortunately sitting near the front of the bus, and I braced for the pain as he wound up his bat, but I knew I could not move or duck away or I would be killed. I imagined the pain I would be in moments from then, but instead, he turned around to harass a lady on the opposite side. A balding man in the first seat opposite me grabbed some rope and stealthily manuevered around Pitt. I thought to myself, maybe I should help him when he attacks (he forcefully put the rope around Pitt's neck like a garrotte at this point), and as I was getting up, Pitt twisted around quickly (I guess the balding man did not hold him tight enough) and stabbed him with a small corkscrew type thing. I sat down from shock and fear that he had seen me wanting to take action against him and would kill me next. Pitt stabbed the man a few more times in the neck for good measure and left him on the floor.

Pitt cleaned himself up at the front of the bus and as he walked past me to the back of the bus, he threw the corkscrew weapon into my lap. It was the size of my pinky, and I was curious as to why he handed me a weapon. He probably did see me half standing and was daring me to make a move. I gripped the weapon in a fist and remained calm and seated, wondering if I had failed the balding man and questioning whether I should have moved sooner.

There were ocassional scenes throughout this part that focused on these two eighteen year-olds who were somehow left behind in the club. They couldn't find a way out because the door was locked. They did not know each other before this crisis. Somehow I ended up back at the club. There was a clear slip in time and space that I'm not sure can really be explained. I checked the front door and found that it was a thin wooden door. I found the teens and scolded the male teen: “Surely you can break through a wood.” When the female pushed on the door it opened. It wasn't locked at all. At this point I was incensed but managed to keep my cool, knowing that I needed these teens to get help. So I showed them on an interactive map like you would find in WoW using Cartographer that happened to be on the wall by the door. According to the moving dots, the bus group seemed to be somewhere in Africa and moving rapidly east through Asia. I asked them to hurry and get help for the people there. At this point my mind asked why I couldn't leave, and it reasoned that Pitt must've threatened my family if I had left when I returned to the club.

The bus crew returned, with a few people missing, and there was entertainment. It was a sinister sort of entertainment, like a siren's song. One of Pitt's cronies was singing karaoke, and all his ladies were entertaining guests in the pool, which I stayed out of. No one bothered me, surprisingly, and I walked around the pool. The girls were drowning various people and I felt sorry for them. I thought of all the dead bodies in the pool. There was a girl who managed to surface, and the Pitt girl pretended nothing was going on and continued to be sweet and soothing, but the girl was irate and could not be soothed. When the song was done, a girl I used to know, Vivian, asked me to sing a song, but I told her to go ahead, that she had a better voice anyway, and she went into the booth. I felt some despair as to the helplessness of my situation and how sinister it was that there were all these dead bodies everywhere in broad daylight that was pouring in now from the newly revealed skylight. Yet I felt some relief that nothing has happened to me yet and that I still had hope that help would find us here instead of searching in Africa and through Asia as I had directed the teens. I wondered how Pitt got back from Africa so fast, and of course, the answer was that it was the same way I got back here so fast.

That's when I realized that my alarm had already alerted my it was time to wake up a while ago. Uh oh.