The Running Dream

I was sitting in a friend's dorm and asked where George was. Someone told me he was doing a performance piece, and the frame flashed to a parade where he was dressed as a Naruto character. A moment later I was searching for him in the grocery store I work at, and I found him and Hunter sitting in a couch at the back of aisle nine where the canned fruit is shelved. Hunter was in the middle of a story. I inched closer to them and she disappeared. George said he liked my cape coat. I sat beside him. We parted the sea of people moving around us.

George and my little sister Isabelle were in a deserted parking lot lit by a few flickering streetlamps. I pointed to a restaurant to suggest we get dinner there; I told them I eat there all the time. We walked inside and stood on astro-turf carpet. A few men were sweeping and laughing. The restaurant was only open one hour a day, they said. Isabelle disappeared. George and I ducked into our cars outside and agreed to meet at another restaurant in town. He left first. I stayed in the parking lot for a few minutes and thought about some things, but realized hours had gone by, so I raced down the highway. I took a wrong turn into the parking lot of a large grocery store, and then another, in which I was hurrying on foot because my car was gone. A boy was cleaning the automatic doors and asked me something, but I kept running. I found my car and continued down the highway, which had turned into a dangerous ten-lane road, and it started to rain and the speeding headlights of the cars frightened me as I crossed the lanes, and I realized George wouldn't have waited this long for me.