Undisclosed - Zach Bo1inger
Dream: The Mall
I'm walking in what appears to be an abandoned mall. There is plenty of light coming in the skylights, so it's not spooky or anything. Still that's the only source of light and there is dust and everywhere. Stores have bare wires hanging out the walls where light fixtures used to be. There are a few empty shelves, all broken.
It was a huge mall. Three floors, open center so you can look over the railing and see at least 50 stores in your field of vision. I'm standing on the third floor but I'm not looking in that direction. I've found a small hallway leading away from the center. I start walking down the hallway. It slops up and down and gets narrow. Soon it is more like a hallway in a house than a commercial building. Everything is made of wood. There are a couple foreign looking shops here and there. They are open for business. They are small little shops that remind me of the places in Kuwait market places. I turn down another hallway and it's more of the same, until it opens up and there is a huge comic book store built to look like a giant blue bird cage. When I get up close, it looks like it is made of old prison bars. The comics are all of the Garfield or Archie persuasion. I don't even go in.
Across the hall is yet another hallway. I walk down it. The up and down slopes are a lot steeper. The hallway ends in a filthy dive bar. I sit down and order a beer. I think to myself that this could be my new hangout. It's a total dive, it's hard to find, only serious drinkers would search for and find this place. It's a manly-man's bar.
I finish my drink and go home and go to bed.
My alarm clock goes off (in the dream, not in real life). I fumble around trying to hit the snooze bar. My arm is swinging around like I am staggering drunk. I knock over some empty cans before I finally connect with the snooze button. I'm back in Iraq. Somebody knocks on my door. I make sure I'm covered and tell them to come in. Some guy comes in and says "We saw you fumbling for the snooze button. We're going to bring you up on charges for drinking alcohol in Iraq. Go to the military tribunal at 10:00."
Next thing I know I'm in the military court. The judge pours over my records. I had no idea there was such a huge file on me. As he looks over the papers, the room transforms into a civilian court back in the town I grew up in. The judge sentences me to four hours of community service. He says that he wants me to work on the Mayor's new restoration project at the old mall. I should point out that my hometown is not in need of any restoration project, and there is no mall, and there is no Mayor.
I go back to the mall, and somebody tells me to pick somewhere and start cleaning. I go straight for the bar. Between the entrance and the bar stools is a chest freezer and a sink. They are covered in black grease. They look more like they were from a mechanic's shop than a bar.
I clean them spotless, wash the walls and windows, and then I found a little model of the town and washed it up. The model was kind of like the model that was in Beetlejuice, but smaller. As I'm cleaning I'm comparing it to my memories of the town, and there is a section I don't recognize. I only think about that for a second since it's been about 10 years since I've been back there and who knows what might have changed.
When my four hours is up, I sit down and have a beer. It never even occurs to me that my last beer was what got me in trouble in the first place. The guy sitting next to me asks "How come you got that sink so clean?"
"I got into some trouble and I had to do community service," I answer.
"I know that," the guy says, "We've all been there. Why did you try, though? You can just run a wet sponge over it and get somebody to sign off."
"I like this bar," I say, "and that sink was ruining the view."
"Huh," the guy says, and he goes back to his beer.
An attractive female waitress comes in and starts her shift. She is all excited that the place is cleaned up. She asks somebody about it, and they answer that some guy had to do community service. For a moment I consider making sure she knew that was me, but then I stop and think no chick ever dated a guy because he cleaned a bar.
I get my papers signed and I head back to the court. I drop off my papers and walk down some hall. At the end of the hall is a room. The room is for processing people who arrived back in Iraq through the teleport. I guess that's me.
I wait in line and then step up to a booth that looks like passport control. There is a woman working the booth. "They were really impressed with your cleaning job at the mall," she says. She seems to have some aversion to specifically saying I was in the bar. "The wanted you to have this," she says and hands me 15 dollars.
The first thing that pops in my head is that $15 is nothing to me. I'm tempted to ask her if she knows how long it takes me to earn $15 at my regular job. The next thing that runs through my head is that I just came from court mandated community service and I should not be accepting any compensation.
"I can't take that," I say, "but tell them I really appreciate the thought."
"Good," she says, "that was a test."
"Test of what?" I think to myself.
"You really did do good work, you know," she tells me, "That section of the town model you found is really going to save the town. Nobody knew it was there and it will save them financially." I don't know what to say. I'm paranoid of more tests. I just nod.
A second woman squeezes into the booth and starts talking to the first woman in Spanish. She's talking so fast that I don't understand. The first woman translates for me. I interrupt and tell the Hispanic woman that if she would talk slower, I might be able to understand her (I say this in Spanish). She answers back, in Spanish, that she does not speak Spanish, and that she has been speaking Russian. She then starts speaking Russian to the first woman. Then she turns back to me and says in English, "I speak Russian, Polish, Croatian, Czech, Sumatran, Esperanto, and many others, but not English or Spanish."
I'm not sure if I say or just think "I know about 5 words of Russian and 20 words of Czech. That's not going to be much help."
"You're done here," the first woman says, "Go down to the basement."
I go down a flight of stairs and end up in a church basement back in the States. Some guy sees me and says "More community service. We're moving furniture upstairs." I grab the other end of a desk he's getting ready to move and walk backwards up the same stairs I came down. I'm a little concerned that I end up upstairs at the church, and not back in Iraq where I came from.
We continue on and set the desk in the front lawn of the church, then we go back down to the basement for more. I pick up an end table, and it reminds me of a rotting log in the woods. Some of it crumbles off where I grip it. It's full of little holes and trails carved by bugs. There may still be bugs in it. It's a little damp.
"I think this one should be thrown away." I say to the other guy.
"It's government property," he answers, "If you do, you'll have to write up an LDD form."
"If it sells at the church yard sale, we'll have to do a property transfer form. Either way, there's paperwork."
"There's less justification with a property transfer form," he says.
"Nobody is going to buy this," I say. I set it down and stomp on it to flatten it out. I pick up the pieces and head to the dumpster.
"You should have taken a picture first for the LDD," the guy shakes his head and says sadly, "Also, did you get the property tag off it before you crushed it?" I'm trying to do these people a favor. I find the property tag in all the rubble and write it down for later. Then I throw the heap into a dumpster.
We each grab a box and start carrying them upstairs. As I get to the top of the stairs, some woman comes almost skipping down the hall. She's about forty years old, blond with dark roots showing, wearing a denim mini-skirt and bikini top. She looks good for forty, but not good enough to be dressed like that.
"People, let's keep moving!" she yells, "I'm determined to break the sales records. This is going to be the biggest church yard sale this congregation has ever seen." I turn to the guy I was talking to earlier and ask, "Isn't that my Mom's record she's talking about breaking?"
"Your Mom held the record for one year, Sandy ran the next yard sale and beat that. Since then though, the profits have been sloping down. Don't worry."
"I know what will help sales!" the woman exclaims, and then she takes off the denim bikini top. She prances around beaming at how clever she is. She starts covering her tits in baby oil. Nothing else, just her tits get the glistening oil.
"Yes!" I think to myself, "this dream finally has some tits in it. They may be sagging 40-year-old tits, but at least they are here." (This break in the fourth wall comes from a conversation I had that day where we talked about controlling dreams and steering them towards sex). Then some other woman provides the voice of reason.
"Put your top back on. This is a church function!" some woman yells. The topless women pouts briefly and then relented. The little crescents of oiled skin resting on the top border of her bikini top amuse me for some reason. For a second, I think that she must be a stripper somewhere and if I just knew where, I could go see more of her. Then I stop and think why would I go to all the effort to see a 40-year-old woman again?
At this point, I decide there is no point in continuing the dream anymore. I continue out to the front lawn with the box in my hand, and the dream fades away.