The subconscious is a pretty weird thing. After a sleepless night, I fell into a very bizarre sleeping-in (one perk, I suppose, of unemployment) dream-fest.
The beginning of it is a bit hazy, but it involved attending some sort of event, at which I was dependent on a ride home. No one showed up, so I fell asleep (not sure where) and woke up at 1:30 in the morning to find my ride raking garbage out of her car. She still wouldn’t take me home because she was participating in a skipping race, with another person, down Merivale Road. Both of these people I knew back in high school, but have not seen them for any significant amount of time since then. So that was weird.
Once the race was over, it dawned on me that I was supposed to move that day. The friend had a tiny car but an odd trailer that unfolded into quite the storage wardrobe on wheels. I called my parents and told them I’d start with her help but we couldn’t fit the big stuff in. We had to run up and down round hotel staircases to get to my stuff on the third floor. I took great pleasure in the fact that we were moving, that the woman below me disliked me intensely. I knew she would be annoyed by the noise. That woman, incidentally, popped up through every aspect of my dreams, insulting me, harassing me, and repeating “But I bought you a Christmas present last year”. I know her in real life, and I can assure you, she did not.
Most of my stuff, however, was in a warehouse on big, shiny, silver shelves like you see in stores. There were many people to help me move, all people I have encountered in my life, but it made no sense that they were there. The warehouse was also part of a store. My stuff was mixed in with what they were selling, and some of it still had to be packed. It was very annoying, and I couldn’t keep customers from trying to buy my stuff before I could pack it. I guess this is why you should always pack well before moving day.
While attempting to do all of that, and organize my helpers, I got an urgent message that I was needed back at my house (which was no longer in a hotel) because things had turned nasty. When I got there, it was mostly underground, because I lived in some sort of pit dwelling. The biggest problem, it would seem, was the bathroom. Pretty much everything in it had rotted and there was a family of rather angry black and white foxes living there. Once I crawled along the entrance way, on my belly, I entered the room to confirm their reports. The foxes weren’t exactly friendly, but they didn’t attack. I didn’t salvage much. Things weren’t much better in the bedroom. Every time I picked something up, there were puddles of black swamp underneath, and they burst occasionally into low flames. It wasn’t a Princess Bride Fire Swamp kinda thing, just a lot of ooze that would flare up when broken things were tossed in.
What was salvaged from my strange, wild animal and swamp infested home, was eventually dragged to a dilapidated barn for packing. Every time I tried to grab a box, my aunt would yell “that one is for garbage!” and I’d have to put it back.
Throughout all of this, I kept having to run back and forth between the hotel and the place I was moving to. I’m still not sure where the pit was, or where it was that I was actually moving to… But I was running on foot. Well, actually, hand and foot. I was pretty quick too, despite it being rather awkward running on all fours. Once, while crossing an intersection, I came across a bunch of kids who used to live on the floor below me in an old house. They all yelled out “Oh my god, it’s YOU!”, to which I replied “See, you never knew just who lived upstairs, did you?”. They all stood, wide-eyed with their mouths hanging open, shaking their heads, as I flew by.
I never did see the place I was moving to.
As far as I know, I never actually moved.
The Witch of South Mountain 