I'm a decaying piece of organic matter, but you can call me Claire. I'm a bookworm, isolated in the depths of non-reality, I live in splotches of color and orangey sunsets-- sometimes even in the absence of color at all, like a boring newspaper spread on Sunday mornings. I breath and long, intricate sentences come out, weaved neatly of beautiful adjectives and solemn metaphors. I whisper activism in my deepest sleep. I am alive in the most ways possible, I have an eye for beauty and an ear for music. I sit alone sometimes and ask the world why I'm here, and I still haven't got much of an answer. I will never give up on asking. I will never stop thinking, and I like that about myself.
I had a dream last night.
I was with an old friend when we discovered that by taking an Advil, we could become babies again and live like two year olds. When we got tired of it, we could simply take another and wake up back as teenagers. We did this and ended up at a birthday party for a young child, and the father was leading us in a sing and dance parties for toddlers. But when we were toddlers, we still had the mindset of adults. Eventually we tired of pretending we were babies and took our advils, to wake up on a dark dirt road we’d never seen in our lives. Then the wife of the man having the babies party followed us and asked us if we’d like a cigarette. We accepted. But they were fake cigarettes. After this, we dyed my friend’s (normally dark brown) hair bright yellow. And left the woman to go in search of some normality. But what I found was an airplane that I boarded. I was sitting on the airplane on a flight to wherever when we were informed over the speakers that we should all stay calm and hold onto our seats tightly, and possibly kiss our loved ones behind because we were approaching a black hole. As we neared it, I frantically tried to think my way out of it, and at the point in which we were closest to it, the entire airplane began to shake and everything inside was expanding and shrinking and changing all at once. I was calm and ready to approach the black hole. I’m not sure if that was the point we entered it, or if we even got sucked up at all. But after that, there was smooth sailing until we approached another black hole. At this time, I tried to find it outside of the window, but the thing we were all trying to avoid was not a black hole. It was a drain, for a sink. Water was draining into it. We were not in outer space, we were in the ocean. We kept approaching these drains until we landed near a mall. We got off the airplane and into the mall under the sea and began walking. There were cafes, clothing stores, bars, everything! All populated with people. Normal people. No gills, no scooba diving outfits. The only difference between the people on land that you’d find in a mall and these people was that the water people were much more friendly. They acted as if they were enlightened. The mall had no cash registers, and nobody buying things. It was as if these rooms with all the merchandise was merely for decoration. In the stores, instead of shopping, the people sat in fold out chairs around something or someone. Talking or performing and demonstrating in each room was a person or group of people just surrounded by the polite and captured ears of each person. As I was in one particular room, a big wave of water came rushing through the mall as if a drain was pulling it. I attempted to hold the door closed so the wave wouldn’t enter and disturb the people I was watching. But the wave was too big and it pushed me from the door and the wave only hit three asian women who looked at me with grave faces then began to laugh and thanked me for trying. Everyone was so friendly. I tried to observe the races of the people here, and i noticed ever possible race was here, but there was a lot more of asians than any other one race. As I attemped to ask those around me how people got into this mall, they’d look away and pretend they didn’t hear me. As hard as I tried, nobody would answer. Finally I asked my father, and he replied with a hushed tone that maybe the people here didn’t even know they were. Maybe they just thought they were living a normal life. Or maybe they just thought they were under water… I was so confused. I saw someone I recognized sleeping on a bench in the mall. It was a man I’d talked to on a couple of occasions. He was homeless when I met him. And crazy. But he had a sweet heart. I stopped seeing him, I think when they arrested him and institutionalized him. I tried to wake him up so I could ask him how he got here, but he wouldn’t wake up. It was very hushed. That’s when I woke up.
