Dreams

I can have the wackiest dreams ever. Whenever I have an especially wacky one, I write it down. I've had dreams saved on my computer for months now without anyone seeing them, so I figured I might as well post one every now and then. Here's one of my favorites!

This was a dream where I didn't know that it was a dream, but I knew that somehow, everything was wrong. I wound up sneaking around a haunted house with my family. It was dark and gloomy and everything you'd expect a stereotypical haunted house to be. We each carried a big bag of laundry over our shoulders. We climbed the creaky, royal purple stairs up to a room that had a big laundry chute in one corner, where we dumped our laundry. Then we left. I wasn't aware of time passing or doing anything else when we left, but when we wound up there again, I knew it was the next day. We stepped up to the front porch, where the laundry we had dumped yesterday was lying clean, folded and smelling nice. Once everyone found out about the magical laundry chute, the haunted house was being swarmed. So what did the city do? What logical conclusion did the board come up with to fix this mess? Simple. They built onto it and turned it into a school, where I was enrolled.

When I got my lunch one day in the haunted schoolhouse, one lunch lady accidentally cut off her own hand with a can opener. Instead of calling an ambulance, the principal decided that the lunch lady was practicing witchcraft. So she was burned at the stake. It was wintertime and there wasn't any heating in the haunted schoolhouse, so the children enjoyed the heat. Then  the school board made the tough decision that if a lunch-lady could be a witch, anyone could. So our school held witch trials. There were ridiculous tests and horrible prices to pay. Then me and some girl singular to my dream ran away from the haunted schoolhouse with its witch trials.
I still remember the color of the sky. It was smoky, hazy orange, like a massive fire was burning just over the horizon. We climbed through some hedges to find a dismal open mine pit in a barren purple wasteland. We fell into the pit, where children clawed at the rocky soil with their bare hands. In the center of the pit stood my mother. She was barking orders to kids, threatening some, rewarding others. Her resounding cry was "IF YOU FILL YOUR CART WITH GOLD, YOU MAY PLAY IN THE MUD FOR ONE HOUR!!" which was answered by a high-pitched huzzah. Because we were now a part of my demonic mother's child labor, I was gifted a cart and began to scratch at the wall myself. I climbed up the wall to try and escape, and when I put my hand down on the surface of the dirt, I felt something cold, stiff and covered in a vinyl glove that the lunchladies wore. I still remember what it felt like to touch the severed hand. I slid back down to the wall, where my mother waited with murder in her eyes. Regarding the hand, I whispered "Must have been from the witch trials..." My mother responded "Probably. Get back to work or I'll kill you."

Soon enough, I filled my cart with cartoonishly large gold nuggets. Once I had given to gold to my mother, I woke up. The first thing I did was tell my mom my dream. She thought her role in it was funny, but whenever I dream something up where she plays a part in being evil, she assumes it's because of bad parenting. Then she told me that we had yard work to do. "Lots and lots of yard work. Get your brother." And she wasn't even joking.

Love, Tyler