The City Dream
Cars were sliding down a steep road into a city that had been closed and deserted for years because of the constant accidents that happened from driving down the hill. I was almost hit by a car behind me. The city was being re-opened for a day. Things seemed back to “normal”; there was a deli that was teal colored inside that seemed to pick up business again like the city was never abandoned. Heaps of metal were piled up everywhere and they sky was polluted with grey smoke and a mold-colored haze. I stopped by a hole in a chain-link fence and noticed a man walking towards me, pointing a pink gun. He said to me and surrounding people that “we knew what to do”. I lowered myself into a cardboard box, curled up and watched the man walk by through the hole in the fence, still pointing the gun at me. Someone else had found their own box and moved it next to mine. We talked for a few minutes, peeking out over the sides.
Cars were sliding down a steep road into a city that had been closed and deserted for years because of the constant accidents that happened from driving down the hill. I was almost hit by a car behind me. The city was being re-opened for a day. Things seemed back to “normal”; there was a deli that was teal colored inside that seemed to pick up business again like the city was never abandoned. Heaps of metal were piled up everywhere and they sky was polluted with grey smoke and a mold-colored haze. I stopped by a hole in a chain-link fence and noticed a man walking towards me, pointing a pink gun. He said to me and surrounding people that “we knew what to do”. I lowered myself into a cardboard box, curled up and watched the man walk by through the hole in the fence, still pointing the gun at me. Someone else had found their own box and moved it next to mine. We talked for a few minutes, peeking out over the sides.
There was a house under a gigantic overpass, and I went there to visit an old man with some unknown companions. He worked at the baseball stadium next to the highway that curved a mile above his home and there was an elaborate pulley system to get up there. I heard a game being played on and he insisted that he introduce me to the star player. I forget the player’s name, but he swung a sword around like someone throwing shot-put instead of a bat.
An alarm sounded throughout the entire city. The city was being torn down and everyone had two minutes from the time of the alarm sounded in each building to evacuate. I found George and we ran through one building to another. When we got to the last one we ran down the staircase to the basement, which was a movie theater, and rows of people were still sitting there watching something in front of them. I told them all to leave or be crushed, and we had seconds left. I took George’s hand and we sprinted through the double doors, but I saw us running together in slow motion. I felt myself moving at normal running speed but saw myself go slowly.
Once everyone was standing around outside, the armed man from earlier approached us and said the same thing. I was shaking. I thought I’d be shot until a girl I recognized from my Life Drawing class pulled a taser from her bag and stunned him. He was immobilized, just frozen in one place hovering above the ground, so I ran up to them and pried the gun from his hand. I was disappointed to see that it was just a plastic water gun.
I looked back to the skyline and instead of seeing the buildings being destroyed, they stood up and started walking, the bottom corners of their structure tip-toeing forward like a crab.
My dream-self woke up from the dream and entered another one, where I told George what happened in the previous one about the city.
Then I woke up from all of it.
