Category Archives: Creative Writing

Worst Fall Fair Ever, and a Toilet on a Bus

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I’m either at an event, like a fall fair or exhibition, or I’m in a small town that has a lot of activity, I’m not quite sure. What I am sure of is that I’m not having a very good time. People keep shooting me, and it’s getting really irritating. Every direction I go a new bullet pierces through me. It’s not particularly painful, just a burning sensation, and although it doesn’t hinder me in moving around, it’s quite maddening.

As I walk out of the exhibition hall, I feel another bullet pierce my left thigh and I decide I have had enough. I walk through town, taking more bullets as I go, and eventually leave the town behind me.

I walk back to town, I have the idea that if I just stay in the upper level of buildings people will stop shooting me. I am in what seems to be a hayloft in a stable, the only access is a ladder. There is a young girl grooming her horse. I tell her the horse shouldn’t be here, it can’t climb the ladder. She looks at me and carries on grooming her horse.  With nowhere else to go, I climb down the ladder, and immediately feel a bullet pierce my stomach.

I’m leaving town again, this time on a city bus with my friend Nora. We have dozens of bags and packs piled on the seat just in front of us. I sense we are nearing the stop where we need to disembark and I’m worrying about how we will collect up all our things in time to exit the bus. As I reach to press the “stop” button, Nora says she needs to go to the washroom. I look back and see only seats. She gets up, moves to the back of the bus and disappears through a door marked “Washroom” that is in the side of the bus.

I’m not sure if I should press the stop button, will she be back in time? I can’t get off the bus if she isn’t back, and if we don’t get off here we might not be able to get off at all. If I go back and knock on the door, I won’t have time to ring the “stop” buzzer.

Before I decide on a course of action, the bus makes a sharp left turn and starts on a completely new route.

I wake up.

Insta-ducks and Flying in Church

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Last night’s dreams were very disjointed, but there were a few vignettes that stood out.

I’m on vacation, I have my camera and we are on a rugged coastline. As more detail comes into view I see a path winding down to the shoreline.  I follow it and come to the water’s edge. It is a rocky shoreline, and there is a large rocky island just out from the shore. There are the ruins of a castle on the island. The path that has brought me to the water disappears into the water and appears to emerge out of the water on the island. It looks like a person could walk to the island at low tide. A family of ducks paddles toward me and I consider taking a photo of them. As they get closer, I notice they already have an instagram filter applied to them. They are grainy with features that merge into brushstrokes. I spend some time trying to correct them back to their natural form through the settings of my camera. Someone calls me away and I turn back up the path.

I’m in a crowded church basement. It is a vast space with a vaulted ceiling, which strikes me as odd for a basement. I need to find the washroom, I’m advised it’s at the other end of the building, past of the crowd of people. I push upwards and find myself summersaulting through the air. I am moving much faster and floating much higher than I intended, I’m a bit concerned about the landing. The people look small below me and it’s very peaceful, other than the idle concern about sticking a landing with a full bladder. I’m in the air for a long time. I’m not in control of my speed or direction of travel, but I’m moving in the right direction. As I near the washroom I right myself so my feet are the first thing to land, and I gently set down at the washroom door.

I don’t clearly remember what else happened before I woke up.

Snap Decisions and Dressing for the Weather

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I’m walking with my partner up a grassy tractor trail on the property I grew up on. There are several other people walking in both directions. Everyone is chatting and the atmosphere is light.

We crest a small rise and see a somewhat dilapidated out building. It’s cheerfully decorated with strings of lights, banners and signs. As we get closer we see a bustling farmer’s market in progress.

Inside the building is lit with more strings of lights and we slowly work our way though the building looking at the produce, crafts and curiosities. In the far corner of the building there is large room with a counter on the back wall and a large old wood burning stove near the center of the room.  There appears to be a cooking class or product demonstration underway.

The woman leading the activity looks vaguely familiar, like maybe I have seen her profile on Linkedin or somewhere. She is working at the stove, slicing something and talking. A closer look reveals she is using a neat little gadget that attaches a cutting board to a surface, in this case the edge of the stove top, and lets you swivel it out to increase your work space. I’m impressed and approach to ask her more questions. I ask a question about the device, she responds with a description of a small island off Croatia. From her description I know the island, I have been there, and my partner and I decide on the spot that we will move there.

We are back outside, many people are now lining up to get inside. The liveliness of the crowd becomes hushed, and our attention is drawn to a couple who have joined the line. The first thing I notice is their feet. They are so pale, the girl has her very white feet clad in a little mule slippers with white soles and fluffy white faux fur trim. The man has his pearly white feet clad also in mule slippers with white soles, but instead of white faux fur, he has gold trim. His legs are pasty white as well, with a halo of of golden hair sticking out from each leg. It occurs to me that his leg hair is sticking out because he’s freezing, the couple is standing in snow, as is everyone else. Everyone else is wearing long pants, boots, and long sleeved shirts. The couple is dressed all in white, with bare legs and arms. They look incredibly out of place. I’m so curious about where they came from, and why they have chosen this place to be.

I wake up.

Work Exchange in Japan

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I arrive in Japan on a work exchange. I’m accompanied by a coworker, but it’s unclear who it is. We are taken to the apartment where we will be staying. I know I am in Japan, but nothing is as I know things to be in Japan. The journey to the apartment is unclear, but the apartment building itself is massive.

The elevator doors open, and we are opposite a bank of white doors set in a wall. The wall is uneven, with some doorways inset, and others jutting out. It reminds me of a massive row of bad teeth.

We move toward one of the doors, and I’m intently trying to notice the number on the wall beside the door. The number seems to be in gold paint, but it never quite comes into focus.  I struggle to read the number, I want to know what floor we are on, if not what apartment. I’m unable to see it accurately before we are led into the apartment.

Walking through the door I’m face to face with a wall. There are several suit bags hanging on the wall.  We squeeze into the apartment and sidle along the wall toward our left. The space opens up to a massive kitchen with a large center island. We move through it into the sleeping quarters. There are modest sized rooms with a twin bed in each. I enter the room I’m assigned and put down my bag.

I sit on the bed and consider why I’m here. I’m not sure what work I do. I’m not sure who I’m here with. I don’t know the number of the apartment I’m in.

I’m alerted to the fact that it’s time for a tour of the rest of the building. So far no one has spoken, and I have not seen anyone’s face. I’m not clear if I’m with one other person or ten. As we leave the apartment I try again to read the numbers by the doors. Again I’m not able to bring the numbers into focus.

We re-enter the elevator and I sense we go down a few floors. We exit the elevator and again I search for any clue as to what floor we might be on. The floor we are on is much more open, I can see windows to the outside opposite the elevator doors. I move toward the window. Through the window I see a large, round disc of a building. Its a deep blue color and seems to be suspended in the air. It has windows like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. I can’t see anyone in it, and I can’t gauge how high up off the ground it is. I scan the area for more windows, and see a small one on the far wall. I cross the space and look out to a vast city scape. Again, it’s distorted and I can’t tell how high we are.

We are left to find our way back to the apartment. I don’t know what floor the apartment is on, or what floor I am on now.

We re-enter the apartment. There is a new woman with us, a blonde woman, with heavy tattoos. We squeeze through the narrow entrance way and move into the kitchen space. As we do she stops stops and removes her clothes. She has tattoos, large black bands all over her body. One of her butt cheeks is a cube, and the other juts out as triangle. She starts working in the kitchen. I move to the back of the apartment.

The hallway opens up into a large storage area lined with rows of shelving that extend up to the ceiling. The shelves are loaded with craft supplies, small toys and dolls, and little origami designs. I’m exploring the shelves when I’m alerted it’s time to get ready for work. I wonder what “work” will be.

I go back to the doorway to collect my suit bag.  I open it and survey the contents. There is a navy blue dress uniform that is void of crests, insignia, epaulettes or anything else that would yield a clue as to what might be ahead. More curiously, there is a rather elaborate set of head gear that includes a set of safety glasses that are connected to a earpiece and microphone. I wake up.

Talking Cats and Climbing the Walls

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I’m standing in my kitchen putting groceries away. It’s not a kitchen I have seen in my waking life. I’m searching for places to put the non-perishable groceries. I open cupboards and find them to be extremely ineffectively designed. Each cupboard has an inset that looks like the mailroom cubby holes at work. The inset takes up about 3/4 of the space in the cupboard, and the cubby holes are too small to put anything into. There is only a small band of space at the front of the cupboard to store anything.

As I’m puzzling over this situation, Merlin the cat walks by. I ask her if she wants to go out, and she responds “I don’t think so,” and walks toward the door. I ask again, “Are you sure?”. She says “Maybe, since I’m here already.” I open the door and she goes out. I watch her go, and she turns right and walks under the deck of the adjacent place. I hear a hissing and a shriek, and she comes running back. I step aside so she can come back in, and I take a better look at what distressed her. The grey fluffy cat from the neighbourhood emerges and struts toward the door, as usual. I tell him “not today” and close the door. I hear scratching and turn to see a massive grey paw groping around the floor, having reached through a large, jagged hole in the bottom of the door. The paw is huge, way out of proportion to the grey cat I left outside.

I arrive at work and go to my locker. The lockers are free standing towers, about 4′ tall and 8″ square, far to small to put anything in. I notice all the lockers are standing nicely, but mine is tipped over and some distance from it’s place, like it’s been thrown. I ask the guy who looks after the lockers why mine is in disarray while I move it back to it’s proper place. He says a young man comes and sits in it, and sometimes he gets angry and throws it. I ask how that is possible, and the locker is too narrow to hold my backpack, let alone a person, the guy shrugs.

I leave the area and start work. A signal sounds that indicates it’s time for staff to leave what they are doing and go climb the wall. I make my way with all the other staff back to the locker area. The locker guy stops me as I approach my locker and says, “He’s in there now.”.  Again, I can’t imagine how that is possible, as the locker is only about 8″ square, but sure enough, the door opens and a young fellow I used to play hockey with squeezes out. I say hello, and he just looks at me and walks away.

I gather my things for the wall, and start walking with my colleagues. I feel like something is making it very difficult to walk. I look down and there is a fellow from a past G Adventure tour hanging on my legs, and I am effectively dragging him along. For some reason I feel compelled to make small talk, so I ask if they have been on any other trips recently, knowing that he has, as we are friends on Facebook.

We arrive at our destination, and people set their belongings down and begin to get ready. Women are applying heavy make up, men are getting dressed in togas, kurtas, anything loose and flowing. I decide to just get the climb over with, so I approach the wall.  It’s wooden panelling, varnished with a glossy finish. I begin climbing, easily gripping the wooden panels and pulling myself up. I’m about 20′ from the ground when someone calls up to inform me I am climbing the wrong wall. I lower myself back to the ground and return to my colleagues. I wake up.

Sharks, Trolls, and Ugly Mermaids

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I’m at the hair salon. Its a small space, there are only 2 chairs, but the atmosphere is chaotic. People are bustling about, the place is a network of pipes, vents, gears, and the odd burst of steam escaping from the floor and walls. There is a youngish stylist getting ready to put some highlights in my hair. She is mixing the dye in the little black pots with brushes. I remind her I only one one purple highlight, as she is mixing several pots of dye, and they are all white. She ignores me and keeps mixing. Once she is happy with her work, she tells me I have to move to the other chair, and someone else will apply the color. I do as I’m bid.

As I’m adjusting myself in the chair, a very large woman appears in front of me. I look closer, and I’m not entirely sure she is a woman at all. She is short, and very wide. She is wearing a dress, or maybe something wrapped around her, that’s not what catches my attention. Her legs that are visible below whatever she is wearing are connected together by an enormous roll of fatty flesh, right down to the ankles. Her feet stick out below the roll, splayed out to the sides with no toes. My first thought is “I guess this is what happens when you have a job that requires many hours of standing”, my second thought is “how the hell does she move?”.

It’s an idle question, as I’m now in an inflatable life raft on the open ocean. It’s night time, the water is calm, and the moon is bright. There are several people in the raft, I can hear them, though I don’t see them. I am looking out at the water and am amazed to see thousands of shark fins visible on the surface of the water. There are small ones, large ones, ones that look more like little spires than fins, thousands of them and they are mesmerizing to watch.  As I’m gazing out at the movement and the way the wet fins catch the moonlight, I hear a voice behind me in the raft complain that we paid all this money and we haven’t seen any sharks. I hear another voice contradict him, pointing out how the water seems to be teeming with sharks.

It becomes very important that we get in the water, and it’s my turn to do so. I lay on the side of the raft, then roll into the water, still holding on to the raft. I wait until I feel something bump into my legs, then I roll back onto the raft.

It’s still night time and we are still on the ocean, but now my family and I are in a large stone turret that is rising up out of the water. Some of the walls of the turret have crumbled, and there is a secondary wall around the most exposed half of it. My brother and I are at a control panel, and we are watching the secondary wall intently. Suddenly, one by one, big, clumsy, armoured trolls start climbing over the secondary wall and into the dark watery space between the wall and the turret we are in.  My brother and I start working the control panel, launching large foam boulders at the incoming trolls. They seem to like it.  My dad is standing nearby and asks in a exasperated way if we really need to be wasting our time on this.  I wake up.

Compliant Bears, LPs and Xylophones

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A female coworker an I have been dropped off at the bottom of a gravel driveway in a rural area. The driveway is narrow and about 150 meters long, fairly steep, and veers off to the right at the top so we can’t quite see the house it leads to.

We are nearing the top when my colleague notices a large bear heading our direction. The bear is closing in on us, and there is nowhere to go, there is a bank and dense trees on either side of the driveway. We press ourselves against the bank and hope the bear will just pass. That’s when we notice there are actually several bears, many of them look like cubs and juveniles.

I step away from the bank and start directing the bears past us, starting with the mother bear. I’m waving them down the driveway as though I’m a deckhand on a ferry, or at least a traffic control person. The bears one by one pass us by and amble down the driveway. We carry on to the house.

I never arrive at the house, instead I arrive at a little shed. Inside I find my parents and my uncle sitting around a large old looking device. I ask what they are doing, and without looking up from their task they tell me they are recording jazz.

I inspect the machine they are working on more closely. It is cream coloured, sort of resembling a really large, old amplifier. On top is a record player of sorts, and there are slots for two cassettes on the front. There are records lying around everywhere, they are all different sizes and shapes, ranging from small and round to larger and more oval. Everything on the machine seems to be moving, but no sound is coming out. I watch for a while.

We are all around a large “L” shaped dinner table.  There is a small toy xylophone at each end of the table and several people, including myself, have small mallets. We randomly reach out and strike the xylophones with the mallets. As I watch, the xylophone nearest me changes from it’s rectangular shape, and the colorful keys shrink and warp into the shape of potato chips, freeing themselves from the body of the xylophone. People begin molding the newly shaped keys into the piles of silly putty that are on the table, and wondering aloud why the keys no longer make music.

Employment Confusion

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I’m sitting in the passenger seat of an ambulance that is travelling down a dark road. There are strong winds and rain, and the road is winding along a lake. I’m not sure who is driving, and I’m a bit puzzled as to why I’m there as I haven’t worked as a paramedic in many years, and no longer hold a license. This becomes secondary as a figure appears in our headlights ahead. It is a man standing in our lane on the road. He stands motionless despite the storm around him. As we draw nearer, I realize I know the man. He is a well liked colleague from my current job.

I ask my partner to stop to see why my colleague is standing there, as he seemed to be staring intently at nothing. We pull up beside him. At first he doesn’t seem to notice we are there, I begin to roll the window down to call out to him. He slowly turns to look at me, and as he does his face morphs from his usually soft friendly expression, into an angry, contorted face. His usually shaved hair starts growing wildly, and by the time he crashes against my window (the one that that I’m now frantically trying to roll back up) he is unrecognizable. My partner accelerates away, and we leave him standing on the road.

We arrive back at the ambulance station. It’s a bit confusing, as it is laid out in densely packed cubicles rather than the ambulance bays and dayroom I was accustomed to in the past.  As we make our way down the narrow hallway between cubicles,  people congratulate me on rejoining the crew. This puzzles me as I have no license, and I can’t really recall why I was in the ambulance to begin with. Everytime I think about this, I’m reminded that I should probably tell someone about my colleague who we left standing on the road in a somewhat altered state.

As I pull my thoughts together about that, someone else approaches and congratulates me on my new managerial job. I try to ascertain from them what the new job entails, and can it be performed without an active license. I learn nothing new. This persists, encounter after encounter, until I finally wake up.

Fitful Sleep, Abbreviated Dreams

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I had a restless sleep, frequently waking up. I had a series of short, seemingly unrelated dreams in between waking up. These are the vignettes I can remember.

I’m in a poorly lit small apartment. It is cluttered with things that are either from the 70’s or it IS the 70’s. I’m there for work, I’m with someone else. We move through the apartment and come to focus on the area around the small TV that is on a low table in front of an old dirty chair. Also on the table is a bundle of new, clean plastic tubes, like drinking straws but heavier and longer. I pick them up and start fitting them into the various bullet holes in the table, the nearby wall, and the chair. There are a lot of them, and they are all leaning the same direction out of their respective holes, like quills on a porcupine. I wake up.

I’m in a large crowd of people. Everyone is wearing subdued colors, navy blue, grey, lots of golf shirts and cargo pants, male and female alike. We are waiting for something. Soon the crowd starts moving, first being corralled toward a ramp then into a large building. As I approach the ramp, like those before me, I’m handed a bulky navy blue life vest and told to keep it on at all times.  There is no water in sight.

Even if I wished to comply with the instruction, there was no space in the jostling of the crowd to figure out the straps and adjustments, or even to pull the bulky device over my head. The narrow passage empties into an auditorium like space, I find myself about 3rd row back on the balcony. As I survey the scene, I notice most people have abandoned their life vests entirely, some are still holding them, and only a few have actually put them on.

As I look further, past the seating, I see a large deck or stage. On one side is a wave pool of sorts. It looks like swim lanes, but it is running water moving down a slope. There are people snowboarding down it. On the other side is a forest scene, with a sharp drop off the side of what would be stage left from where I stand. Suspended over the drop are two barrel, that have bars allowing us to see inside. The barrels are facing each other. I leave my seat and make my way up the walkway to the space between these two scenes.

As I get to the front of the stage, there are a few people standing around watching what is going on. In the wave pool there are folks learning to snowboard, and others who seem quite proficient at it. On the other side, there are two women who have been put into the barrels and are suspended above the drop facing each other. They don’t seem to be distressed to be there. One of them is someone I know well, and I’m puzzled as to why she would possibly be present, let alone suspended where she is.

As the crowd gathers, an announcer indicates it’s time to get them into the spirit of things, and two nozzles lower down and take aim at the face level of each barrel. Again, the women don’t seem concerned. The nozzles open and spray large quantities of what is announced to be beer, directly into the faces of the women. They laugh and drink what they can from the geysers aimed at them.

As this occurs, the announcer comes back on saying we are now going to hear how these lucky ladies got selected for this honour. A scene appears in the forested area of the stage, it almost seems like we are watching on a screen, it’s a bit fuzzy, and has a sepia tone to it. The woman I know is the subject, she is in a clearing with some other people, they all have long board skateboards. They are laughing and talking, then start boarding between the trees. In a voiceover with someone who nominated her for this, a male voice describes how she is the light of his life, and such a gentle soul. There is music, and lots of slo-motion footage of them boarding through the forest. I wake up.

I have a handful of tiny figurines of people. I’m walking around with a kid and we are discussing where they should go. We walk to a play area outside, and try to glue the figurines to the playground equipment, but they won’t stay, it just isn’t right.

We go indoors and find a matchbox car mat that has roads printed on it. We glue the little figurines in standing positions hand to hand along the edge of the road. One of the figurines is missing her foot and won’t stand up properly. I wake up.

 

 

 

 

Confusing Department Stores and Ineffective Drug Busts

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I’m shopping for a mattress. I’m in a poorly lit, crowded area of a department store that has a stock of mattresses. I’m looking for a particular mattress called “Olivia”. As I walk through the cluttered aisles, I’m reluctant to look too closely at any of the mattresses, as they seem dingy and dirty. I finally see one the looks crisp and new, it’s even set up on a boxspring. I sit on the edge of the mattress to test wether it is firm or soft, and am surprised to sink down several inches. The boxspring is actually a waterbed, and the mattress is floating on top. I continue on, noticing now that all the mattresses are branded “Olivia”, and that any that are set up for display are floating on a water mattress, making assessment of the firmness of the mattress impossible.

I leave the area to find some assistance and come across an assortment of people, some I know and some I don’t. I tell them I’m looking for an “Olivia” mattress, and they tell me to follow them, they know just where they are.

We return to the same area of the store, it is filled with racks of high waisted jeans and skirts. I look at one rack and see that they are in fact “Olivia” jeans. It is now lighter in the store, and I can see that one wall is large windows to the outside. The store is on a residential street, there are large suburban houses with wide driveways directly across the street.

I decide I’m in the wrong place, and once again leave to find a mattress. After walking around for a short while, I return to the area and the mattresses are back. I still can’t find a sales person, and the mattresses are still irritatingly difficult to assess. I again leave the area and encounter a crowd of shoppers, who again lead me back to the same area, now filled with jeans.

As I am inspecting a gaudy high-waisted pink and grey skirt with another shopper, our attention is drawn to a commotion outside the window, across the street in one of the driveways. There is a large truck in the driveway, doors open, with two men in the truck. Police, a lot of police have surrounded the truck, at least 30 of them all dressed in black SWAT style uniforms, complete with helmets. As we watch, the police look all over and under the truck, before moving to the cab and pulling the men out, one from each side.

They haul the men around to the back of the truck, where we can see them both. The man from the drivers side has something in his fist, which, despite the incredible number of police, is not restrained. He throws it toward the other man, who is also not adequately restrained. The second man grabs the round package, about the size of a  baseball, off the driveway and stuffs it in his mouth.

Inside the store, the shoppers are pointing and commenting on the ineffectiveness of the takedown, “He’s just put the evidence in his mouth!”, and “There’s still time, you idiots, it’s too big for him to swallow!”. The second man is almost comically trying to chew and swallow whatever he put in his mouth.

I wake up.