Lately my dreams have been getting the better of me, and I've often woke up either dissappointed or extremely glad that I find myself lying in bed in my University halls. Last night, I dreamt that I was playing in the FA Cup Final, in a match between Spurs and Arsenal - yet the match had to be played at Chelsea. Skip a few scenes, a frantic car journey to Stamford Bridge, finding seats in the Arsenal section because they didn't have space for me on the players bench, and the last ten minutes somehow being played by just four men including me, and we'd won the cup. Last night, I was dissappointed.
The night before? Not so much...
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For some reason, I’d nailed some work experience at my dad’s company for a couple of weeks, but got put in front of a computer with no guidance and was told to write up some reports. After about five minutes, me and this other work experience guy didn’t know what to do, so ended up just playing around on the computers.
Skip a day or two, and I find myself talking to Naomi from 90210 (yeah, yeah, a girl’s programme) and another pretty hot girl, and were walking down my road back home. I should give some back story before going into more detail...
At the time, it seemed like a prime time for office workers to pick up either hookers, gold-diggers and the sort, bring them back to their apartment, and make love ‘til the sun came up. Skip back to the petrol station, and I’d somehow arranged the same plan with these two girls. Upon reaching this petrol station, on the way back to my flat (which I just happened to own), Naomi stopped and told me there were police at the petrol station looking at us and maybe we should leave it for another day. Just as she said this, they approached us, told us they knew our plan and, ignoring our protests, took us to a police station (which also happened to be a school...) and questioned us.
During questioning, we got split up. I was in an interrogation room staring at a long-term prison sentence, and as one of the police officers questioning me left, I glanced out of the window to see the clouds forming pretty big spiral shapes, before muttering to myself “holy shit” at the speed they were forming. Before I knew it, they’d formed into one huge spiral, with part of the cloud reaching the floor before forming a tornado. Only, it wasn’t a normal tornado – once it’d formed, it had somehow turned to sand.
So there we were, in this random police station/school, staring a sand volcano that, I was told, was currently in York. I’m not too sure where York is on the map, or how fast a tornado goes, or indeed where the hell I was (I later found out it was London), but was told we had four hours until it reached us.
I ran straight out the door to find safety, and ran into a science lecturer who was screaming that to get safe, we’d have to reach the 9th floor of this building. Joining the mass of bodies, I raced up the stairs to the top, yet – as dreams have a tendency to do – the top was only the 6th floor. I walked through some double doors at the top of the stairs and appeared back in my dad’s office.
Without thinking, I sat down at my desk and started pattering away on the keyboard writing up another mystery report for my dad. Que the two girls from earlier come in, furious at me, and for some reason a mate from my old college. He was drunk, and they didn’t look a shade on their earlier selves. Scantily-clad from head to foot, these girls looked incredibly rough, and seemingly up for anything – the reason my friend was there I suppose. They stood around me, and spoke together in a small circle about some irrelevant subject or another. So loud they were that my co-workers kept telling them to be quiet, and take it some place else. After a few minutes, I turned to one of the girls and whispered for them to keep it down – it was making my co-workers uncomfortable and that their line of work was appropriate on a street corner. The guy went crazy, and defended the girls sternly, stating they weren’t hookers and I was just jealous I didn’t have them, before I myself was forced to storm out of the building to get some fresh air.
It was night-time by the time I left, and this is where I found out my location. Tucked away behind a lake and a golf course was my old college. This office I had just left was taking up the space the lake is in real-life, and so I instantly felt at home with my surroundings. I walked in the direction of this row of shops we always used to go after college, and bumped into another mate from back in the day. We ended up sharing a bag of chips, before walking in the direction of the office again – not really sure where we were intending on going though.
After passing the office, we walked for perhaps another hundred metres, and were approaching a car park when we head bass booming out of a car stereo and people laughing, loudly.
Guys being guys, we went to check it out, and stood behind a tall brick wall, half-hidden, checking out these strangers’ cars. One, a 1960’s Camaro, with a sleek red finish, had been restored to its original condition, with a rather embarrassing, half-restored Volkswagen Beetle in its shadow. Across the car park however we found life. There was a circle of six guys formed around a white, brand-new Cadillac Escalade, in a white metallic finish to off-set the 28” spinning wheels this wannabe American’s car was sporting.
However, they hadn’t grouped together to listen to music. The bass was booming for a different reason – to cover up the screams of the man tied to the back seats of the car with his hands, his mouth gagged rather badly, and his feet dangling out from the boot of the car. One of the bigger-built men held his legs tight, and before we knew it, things had turned nasty. The built man was viciously pulling the stranger’s legs out of the boot, to the sound of crushing bone and the ever-present thump of the music. The men’s laughter got louder and louder as the whimpers softer as the stranger’s body turned limp. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing, and instantly thought of getting help, yet as we turned to run away on the gravel path we were on, our footfalls were heard by one of the men, who had approached the wall to do a piss. He called to his mates, whereupon the music stopped, car doors slammed shut, and before we knew it we had six pretty-built men chasing us, fast.
We reached the row of shops, and when we thought we were out of sight, dived into a dry cleaners and hid behind two machines. The men were no fools though, and checked every single open shop until they eventually found us hidden away in the dark. Being late at night, most people were by then on their way home from work, and didn’t detect our movements in the shop as we tried to wriggle away from these men. Just like at the car park, they formed a circle around us, now backed into a corner, and one of the men who had positioned himself between us and the door. Crouching down, he threatened us. Pulling out a tiny pistol – we’re talking water pistol size here – he raised it in front of our faces, and told us that if we didn’t stop moving he’d shoot us. Thankfully, it worked, and he soon put the gun away.
However, the torture wasn’t over yet, as he then replaced the gun with a pair of pliers. As he pulled them out, I squirmed at the thought of what he was going to do with them. Of course, being the louder one, he began his process on me. Although seeming like nothing now, sitting cornered in a launderette, with six built criminals around you whilst one proceeds to cut your fingernails with a pair of pliers is extremely scary. It was to get worse though, as he began picking at tiny bits of skin and nail that were further down my finger. Specks of blood dripped on the floor as he ignored my protests to stop. Continuing with all ten fingers on my hands, he then positioned the pliers onto the middle of my thumb, and pushed down hard. I felt bone snap and blood gush out of open wounds as I begged for the man to stop, holding his arm with my free hand in effort to push him away. Once more, I pleaded for my life that I wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened and this time it didn’t fall on deaf ears. Satisfied, the man let us get up and sternly warned us that he could easily come and find us if anything about the night was revealed to anyone. We whimpered a soft agreement before (for some reason) shaking the hands of the men in gratitude and setting off at a frantic pace to find a hospital. Only a few minutes down the road we passed a bus stop with a police car outside, and thinking we’d be safe, told the officer sitting in the car what had happened. However, this policeman – and every other one in town – was corrupt, and belonged to the same group of peope that the earlier men did too. They radioed over to what we thought was a police station, with the muffled reply a distinct replica of the main man who had tortured us only minutes ago. Fearing the worst, we ran. My mate ran one way whilst I ran the other, as I heard him shout that I was free to drop by his if I needed a place to crash.
Being relatively fit, I regularly run around my neighbourhood, and often pass the section of road I was now on. I knew the road was only a ten minute run from my house – maybe five if I ran fast enough. I began jogging there, yet was disturbed by two girls from my university. They immediately tried to stop me yet I strongly protested that I needed to get away and told them I was running home. Hoping the girls wouldn’t follow me, they did. Being drunk probably worked in their favour, and they didn’t realise how far we were running. Several times they tried to slow me down, or remarked I was doing a lousy job at running fast enough to get away from them, but I continued. Five minutes into my run, I ran up a steep hill and started gaining ground on the girls, and by the time I reached the road I lived on I had lost them.
This is where I start to lose track of the dream. I reached my house, only my house wasn’t my house – it was my friends from the dry cleaners. For some reason my instincts told me to approach the house from the back, and although I had never been to this man’s house, I knew his bedroom was at the rear. Using bins as footholds, I pulled myself up to his first-floor bedroom, miraculously fast given that I had a broken thumb that didn’t seem to ever pull me back in the dream.
I scrambled inside, and to the comfort of my friend I was welcomed with open arms – thankful that the visitor was only me, and not a group of criminals vying for his head. Weirdly, the two hookers from the beginning of the dream were there, yet looked like they did when I originally saw them. They were joined by a distant girl-friend of mine, all lying down on a bed. Before I knew it, the guy had gone, and a little time later I was sitting in bed with just my boxers on, in the middle of these three girls.
With the broken thumb still not affecting me, and three beautiful girls satisfied, I thought for the first time the dream was actually worth having. This only lasted briefly however, as I put my trousers on to walk outside and find my mate. Walking into the hallway, I heard voices from below. I looked down the stairwell and found my friend gagged, tied to a chair, at the bottom of the stairs, surrounded once more by the same six guys from the dry cleaners. Scared for my life, with my friend already lifeless on the chair, I turned and slammed the bedroom door shut. Amateur error – in reflection, slamming a door whilst trying to stealthily get away from a situation was stupid, and within seconds the men had heard, ran up the stairs, and were thumping on the door to get me. Once more weirdly, the window I had used to get into the house only minutes ago had gone, and I found myself in a room with no doors, no windows, and no means of escape other than the door currently being kicked in. I hid like a five-year-old under the duvet, ignoring the girls’ questioning of what the hell was going on, and stayed there. Seconds later, the door gave way and a stampede of feet approached the bed.
The duvet was ripped off me, as I was dragged away from the bedroom by two of the men. Only now did the thumb decide to give up on me, and as my hand hit the floor I let out a huge scream of pain. My mind began to confuse itself, and as I let out another deafening squeal, my body momentarily stopped moving. One of the men looked at what I could only guess was his boss, and with a nod of approval raised his right foot upon my head. The foot fell, and as the soles of his shoes darkened my vision, I passed out. I don’t want to know what happened after, and glad I didn’t.
Exams aside of course, I've been feeling like I'm five again lately. Waking up every morning early to the sight of the sun streaking through my window just off-set from Bournemouth beach is something everyone no doubt cherishes. Being able to get up, leave the house, and be sunbathing in the space of around 10 minutes also has it's perks.
