The story below is a work of fiction.
The morning back at work, to the office. All maskless. My state just said to hell with everything and do what you want, and what we wanted, it seems, is to go back to how it was. Mass normalcy bias hypnosis to replace the other fearful hypnosis. No one is saying anything about the situation openly right now to avoid a jinx. We feel each others’ breaths, even though they’re not there. Warm winds issuing forth like divinity, except instead of granting life it grants it. In our imagination.
Off the bus. At the crosswalk. A woman walks the opposite way. I briefly make eye contact and I feel my amygdala reactivate from seeing a full human face in this context. She is expressionless but I imprint a personality profile onto her. She’s thinking of the text she just got and it’s annoying that the conversation didn’t go as she predicted. It’s something petty. Her eyebrow twitches and she’s onto the next thought pattern. Another twitch. She’s cycling through all her Cluster B disorders before we walk past each other. It will take a few weeks before she figures out how to stretch the cycles out so that she’ll come across as normal.
There’s a guy walking behind her, going to his own work but I’m imagining he’s following her for a bit, not in a fully creepy way but not quite normal. Also expressionless but I also dictate what his face is doing. Discreetly stares at her swaying ass in front of him. He can’t ignore it or be an honest man about it and just openly gawk. A middle of the road loser, safely indecisive, can’t commit but will defer to the strongest opinion, which is the opinion of anyone else within reach. He constantly called his last girlfriend “dear” or “babe.” Held out on the vaccine but he got it because she mocked him, said he’d never get laid again. He thought she meant just with her but she meant any woman. No wonder women can’t stand him.
It’s like a bad dream. Not a nightmare, a bad dream. Why does every movie never have a character having a good dream. Always the dream is something decent but either the guy wakes up before the really good part happens, or it turns into a horror apocalypse blood splatter eaten alive scene. Hell, make it weird, go crazy with it, but keep it a good, complete, dream. Where’s the subtlety, the nuance, with movies. Come on guys, try something before I get really pissed about it. It tells you a lot about these Hollywood idiots with endless budgets and interdimensional technology that they refuse to be a little different.
Too late; I’m already too pissed. It makes me want to put my mask back on so I don’t scare everyone with my scowling muttering and awesome ideas for movie scenes. I’m imagining that guy’s name is borderline too dorky, like Albert (not Al), and he likes all those bad movies. I honestly hope he finds love. The woman, too. And me, why not. Flatten that curve. We’re all in this together.
4 Comments
My dreams never escalate to anything interesting. They always degrade into something that becomes increasingly troubling for me, and often totally inexplicable. Not really nightmares, as you say, just no fun at all.
Same here, nowadays, but I rarely have them anymore. It’s a little disappointing, since they can be good fodder for stories. Whenever I have a dream/nightmare I feel obligated to use it, which I do.
Did you dream more when you were younger? I certainly did.
Of course I dreamed more as a child. As I age, the only thing memorable about dreams is certain recurring themes. I’m often finding myself working as a substitute teacher again, and the situation always comes apart. There is a certain terrain image that keeps haunting me, and it’s a place I’ve never been. But there are no stories like there were in my youth, which is good and bad. Too often I had terrifying nightmares.
Interesting.
Looking quickly online at some study abstracts, children are able to recall dreams more than adults, especially adults after 40 (it looks like the frequency of dreams remains the same). It might mean something if you and I remember a dream with our older man status.