Dream Story #1 Night of July 29th, 2018

An odd story crafted from a dream I recorded from the other night. A part of a new series of writing experiments.

Muffled groans accompanied the sounds of shuffling feet, a busy parking lot, and unknown items shifting in their containers. The group of men flickered and faded in the dim evening light. The group heaved like a great many-legged beast, though it jostled and separated in ways a unified creature never could. Military green metal boxes wobbled and floated on hands that cupped them like precious memories that slipped, like dry sand, away. Some boxes were held by many men, others seemed supported by their own power, the men carrying them no different from the thing they held.

A building, all tan stucco, venting and metal roofing, leered over them. The doors wrapped around the group in eager welcome, and they entered that embrace without a sound.

I stood blinking in the bright light, a gangling, unsure creature in a blue vest and tan slacks that fit poorly. The department store whirled in a haze of busy shoppers around me. Shiny steel and blue plastic carts pushed by hectored mothers and portly fathers flashed like still photos in my vision. Classy wooden shelves screamed out the desirability of their wares to all who would look, just look, they begged.

Where was I to go? A poor, voluntary employee to sort and catalog medical leftovers of a war I never saw? I had lost the men transporting them.

A space opened on the concrete floor, the crowd a storm of color around the calm. There I saw a recognizable figure. He stood tall, legs splayed wide down to his booted toes, his hands tucked behind his camo-dressed back in self-assured authority. Timidness. Hesitation, for my part. Here was the repository of my answers. But would I be a fool to ask? Doubt gnawed at my mind.

A girl stood before him, she asked the questions. Dismayed--horrified--to ply the man with the same question so soon after this girl. Rooted in place, I strained to hear his reply. A deep, kindly voice it was, distorted by time and distance, only a few traces of words met my ears. ...Make your way to the Halloween section, and turn left from there…

The girl is gone and so am I. A growing feeling of unease pricks the back of my neck as I jog down aisle after aisle of curtain rods. Silver, gold, steel, brass, bronze, wood, white plastic. Capped ends and open ends. Everything shrouded and hidden under a covering of cloudy plastic.

A T-junction ran up abruptly. Here the holiday decorations lay scattered about, picked up and discarded by minute generations of disappointed children told, No, we don’t need that. The decorations were gaudy, tinsel and glitter covered things in garish shades of purple, lime green, and orange. The parent’s disapproval was easy enough to understand. I stood among the refuse, hand splayed in despair. Which way to go? I couldn’t recall. The directions had been so scant before, and now they were evaporating in my mind even as I tried to remember. I hazarded a right.

Classy extravagant displays of cool blue and grey bedrooms greeted me. Swathed in light cotton drapes and heavy down duvets, walnut and oak bedroom sets whispered my need to have them in my home. Could you ever be comfortable without them? The department store became a labyrinth of angular cool-toned walls and stark white trim. All the rooms blended together in the solidarity of a winter company catalog and yet somehow retained a sense of uniqueness. I felt I could buy any of these mass produced sets and still believe I was the only one with a bedroom just like that.

Stylish women, all skirts and curls and smokey eye, flitted about these displays. They oohed and sighed, and counted their credit cards. One bent over the vanity sink in a model bathroom, as if to check her makeup and outfit in the lighting. She hummed and stepped back, holding a new skirt up to herself. She flushed and stammered and dropped her things as she caught me watching. I was just finishing. You can use the room now. She left in a hurry and was gone before she walked out the door.

But I didn’t use the room. I had no need for it.

I moved on, bemused and distressed.

A pale young man stands in a corner, hiding his eyes under a mop of brown hair. His mouth is determinedly set in a line of melancholic apathy. Can I help you find anything?

Of course, he can, but he clearly doesn’t want to. I ask him the way to the medical supplies. A moment of understanding alights his figure, and he leads the way.

Thick white incandescent light assaults the eye as we leave the comforting bedroom displays. Once again every product one could imagine-- if one had the imagination of a million minds-- is on display, leaping and cavorting in wild dashes of color and text. I’m not surprised you’re lost, the melancholic employee comments. This department store is too large. Too convoluted. He’s right. The shelves rise high over our heads. They seem to sway under their height. Even further away is the ceiling, composed of steel beams, insulating panels, and the oppressive industrial lights. The light throws everything into sharp contrast. Everything seems to be so much more in the light. If one was to look in any one direction for too long, you could see into eternity. I don’t understand why it's so large, he continues, bemoaning fate. This place is only full of things people don’t know they want and don’t think they need. He says more, yet the words fade into the misty background sounds of the store.

And there we were, the furthest back corner of the store. A place where things go to be forgotten. A receptacle of out of season items and damaged goods. The lights here are sparse, compared to the sales floor. Yellow, they are dim and yet sufficient. The shelves here are made of unfinished plywood, with steel tracks painted black.

I stood in that quiet place alone. No sounds from the sales floor reached back here. This small corner of the world stood separated from it. It produced its own odd kind of melancholy. There was an emptiness to the atmosphere, but it wasn't lonely. Crouching down, I began my task.

Author's Note

I attempted to take a relatively odd and slightly mundane dream and make it as interesting to read as it was to view, in the odd, amorphous and impressioned way that dreams have.