My All-Nighter

Now before you get all excited, this isn't a post about some raunchy adulterous escapade. Damn (I know!). But after 12 years of wedded bliss life, I'm not about to screw things up in that department!! No, this post is about my recent dream.

I dream a lot. I remember many of my dreams. Mostly I dream in vignettes. Several dreams in a night, but I don't usually remember the stories behind most of them: most often the ones right before I wake.

Occasionally, however, I have one of those marathon dreams...do you have these? It's like I have the same dream ALL NIGHT LONG. Vivid detail, complicated scenes, and seemingly authentic sensory stimulation. I wake up exhausted from processing (manufacturing?), all this information.
Whenever I have one of these dreams, I think about it obsessively. There is so much to consider, I feel like there must be a deeper meaning. The theory that the dream is simply a massive dump of my brain cheapens the experience. So I analyze, ponder, dissect...and frequently don't come up with much. Some things are just destined to remain mysterious.

So the dream: I am leaving out a lot of the detail since this isn't a novel. I'll try to hit the highlights.

I'm in a floating restaurant with my in-laws, but not my husband (?). We are having a nice dinner, when all of a sudden the restaurant starts pitching and rolling like a yacht. MIL says we have to leave, and quick.

Cut to the escape: we're in a car speeding over a long low bridge. To the left is a low-profile steel-domed building hugging the bank of the river. My MIL is bitching a blue streak about how she has joined a group that's been trying to sue the "nuc-u-ler guy" because his plant is interfering with the environment...blah, blah, blah...and all I'm thinking is: "Nuc-le-ar. Nuclear physicist. GAH!"

The building sends out a large sonic-boom type sound and the bridge starts shaking. I look behind and there is a wall of water rushing at us. The bridge ends on an uphill. FIL floors it, and as we crest the hill the wall of water engulfs the restaurant, bridge, and building below us. We are safe.

Cut to the park. My in-laws are gone, and now I am in a Jeep Cherokee with JeepMan driving. We are cruising through a sodden basin-shaped park, trying to find a way out. There are other vehicles all around us stuck in the mire. JeepMan decides to drive up an incredibly steep hill. I am telling him, then screaming to him, that we can't make it, it's too steep and the grass is too slippery but he floors it and we almost make it...then we are sliding backwards and the Jeep slams sideway against a tree growing out of the hillside, wedging itself there. I'm pissed!! I get out and start stomping away as JeepMan is trying to justify his risky, stupid action. Whatever. I squish through the slippery grass as a group of hippie-kids at the bottom of the hill trying to unstick their van start yelling at me about how cool that was, rock on, far out dude...

Cut to downtown, dusk. Nondescript city, I am walking in a herd of people that I don't know, together but anonymous. We are all heading somewhere, but I don't know where. The concrete is slathered with a thin layer of river mud that sucks weakly at my shoes as I walk. I look down and can hardly believe it but there's a soggy bill. I pick it up, and it's a $20. Sweet. I keep walking, and there's another. And another. Now I'm looking ahead and seeing them scattered all over the place. Others are noticing, so I start scrambling. One of them is a $50. I'm starting to get a stack. The money is soggy but, hey,it'll dry. A money truck must have gotten caught up in the wave or something. More bills. I'm scrapping with the frantic crowd. There's a $100 bill. And holy crap, a $200 bill...

My consciousness comes up for a gasp of air and I think, "Hey. I don't think there's any such thing as a $200 bill. Is this a dream?"

Then I'm pulled back under and I'm in a house with a bunch of people I don't know. I'm going up the stairs with my wad of soggy bills and I overhear someone downstairs say the cops are out on the streets stopping people to recover the money that is all over the street. I can't believe they didn't stop me but here I am with a giant wad of bills, and I'm in a house, and they can't come in here, right? A second disembodied voice says it doesn't matter, the money's worthless, they have the serial numbers and if anyone spends the money they'll be busted anyhow.

I should turn it in, but I can't, just can't. It's so much money!

So I go into a bedroom and there's Leonardo DiCaprio and I'm unfazed, like I expect him to be there. I show him the money and he says we have to hide it, somewhere safe. There is a young woman on the bed, sleeping, and her face is covered with the dew of fever. He glances at her with indifference, saying, "...she's sick. I don't know what's wrong with her." Then we head to the bathroom and he takes the money and melts it down, then pours it, drop by drop, into a big jug of water. Each drop hardens into a sphere of platinum and sinks quickly to the bottom. I am left with a bag of platinum marbles. There. The police can't track the money now.

We head back to the bedroom and the girl looks bad, real bad. In fact, upon closer inspection, she's dead. He face is covered with open seeping wounds and Leo says it was leprosy. Suddenly he's scared; he thinks he gave it to her. He gets twitchy and says we need to hide the body. I tell him no way, I'm in enough trouble already what with the money thing and all. He's wrapped the body in a sheet and is ordering me to help him lift it when I hear the cops break down the door and start raiding the house.

Cut to me running down the stairs, three at a time, four, until I'm leaping from landing to landing. There must be a dozen flights, I don't remember there being that many. I end up in a basement crouching behind a pool table. Others are clamoring in, and I can hear the approaching bootfalls and shouts of the police. Suddenly the room is full and there are dozens of people and the cops are pulling their guns and shouting. It's mass chaos but I stick to the wall and manage to sidle along until I join up with a group of people heading up the stairs and we're moving as one creature up the stairs as cops continue to stream down one by one, ignoring us in favor of the cacophony downstairs.

Then I'm outside in the dark and trying to sneak away. The air is cool and fresh and I inhale deeply before I realize that people are running everywhere. I watch police chase them down one by one, tackling them and cuffing them. I just want to hide. I crouch in the shadowy lee of a garage and try to be small. I'm alone, in the dark, on the lam with no one to reach out to. I know they're going to catch me - it's only a matter of time.

I wake up with my heart pounding and the lingering panic sensation of hiding in the dark being hunted during a police raid.

What the heck?

Analyze that, Jung. Freud. Dr. Phil.

'Cause I don't get it.

***no sleeping drugs were involved in the making of this dream. or bedtime snacks. nope, this is pure, unadulterated brain droppings***