As I recall from my college days, if there's a fire drill (or an actual emergency), you're supposed to head for the nearest fire stairway and proceed downstairs in an orderly fashion. Recently, I had a crazy dream that basically threw out all these rules.
I guess this is more like a tale of a dead mall. This dream takes place in an office space that I work at (not sure what kind job I have). It seems that the management figured out there must be a room behind a wall without any kind of access to it. So, a contractor is hired to knock out a hole in the wall, so we can see what's behind it.
I was sitting at my desk, doing my thing with the computer, when I heard the contractor call out, "Hey, everyone -- check this out!"
My co-workers and I gathered around the newly made hole, and we saw what had amazed the contractor. It wasn't a room at all, but space above a floor at least 2 stories down, which meant it was underground. But what we saw wasn't a basement but part of a dark shopping mall. An empty water fountain, and a dark store entrance with a sign reading "FLORSHEIM" in a mid-century-style font above it.
Someone said, "Wow, I had no idea there used to be a mall here!"
Someone else said, "Let's go down there and chec it out."
Unfortunately, the dream ended there, so I don't know if we made it down.
"
Here's one ab a mall that could be considered a midnight mall. But befoe i continue, I need to give quick background about one actual mall north of Denver, Colorado, called Northglenn Mall. It was just one of these middle-sized malls built in late 1960's, basically an one-level place that ran a straight line from one anchor store to another. It was torn down in 1990's to make way for a non-descript area of big box stores. Anyway, I had dramed that Northglenn Mall hadn't been destroyed -- instead, it went underground literally. During daytime, the mall would be hidden, but in the middle of the night, the mall would come alive, and you would go downstairs to the mall (not sure how you accessed it from outside) and there it was, a long corridor of stores on both sides. But there's a twist -- the mall has also gone Goth. So, instead of family-friendly stores, you would have shops selling music, incenses, Goth / punk clothing, optical illusion posters and the like. And yes, you would see mostly high school and college kids, punks, people in period customes and so on. And maybe vampires, too. anyhow, it sounds like an awesome place to visit, ifyou don't mind getting up in the middle of night to go there.
This is probably the earliest dream that I remember, the one that I had as a little kid. If the description of the dream sounds kind of gay, please remember that I wasn't even in first grade yet.
In the dream, my family and I were staying at a fancy ressort, built to look like a medieval village, soemthing that Disney would have designed. But it had one weird rule. You couldn't get up in the morning (even if you wake up) until a magic butterfly flies into your room, landing on each of you, waking you up or givingyou permission to get. Then it would fly out of the room, presumably to other rooms to do the same. You were able to get out of bed, get dressed and go out for breakfast or whatever.
Hmm...how did the butterfly get into the room? Perhaps it just phased through walls -- it's a magic butterfly, after all.
Last night I had this interesting dream which began with a thirty-something woman named Lydia who browsed a dollar store. She was perusing a display of ViewMaster toys (do they still make them these days, and surely they would cost more than a dollar each? But I digress...) when a man suddenly appeared by her side. He was wearing a white button-up shirt and gray flannel dress pants, both a tad on the baggy side and a pair of boxy brown lace-up leather shoes. And his hairstyle was curious; though his wavy auburn hair wasn't long, it was parted in the middle. He looked like a gangster from the Depression era. He was panting like he'd been running.
It took Lydia a few seconds to recognize him -- he was her boyfriend, Harry, who had vanished mysteriously weeks before.
The other night, I dreamed that I was a contestant in a reality show for gift-wrapping. This show seemed to have low production values -- it probably was for YouTube or the like. Anyway, this particular episodee took part in an unfinished basemenet of someone's house. It was filthy and musty, crammed with decades worth of junk, and i think the sump pump had malfunctioned at sone point.
In this dream, I was strolling through a little shop that sold artisan tableware like handmade plates and hand-blown wine glasses. What made this shop so interesting was that one whole wall was a huge aquarium filled with salt-water tropical fishes, coral reef, sea plants and so on. While I gazed at vibrant-colored fish milling around, I noticed a pair of smaller fishes, one black and one red, darting around near the bottom. It looked like the black fish was being chased playfully by the red fish. Finally, they ducked into a spot under a leafy plant in a dark corner of the aquarium. Though I didn't have a clear view, I got the impression they were doing the "birds and bees" thing. After a moment, the red fish swam away, and then the black fish emerged into view, looking straight at me with her cartoon eyes and a lopsided smile (somehow I got the sense it was a female fish.) At first, she seemed happy, but in a few seconds, the smile faded and the eyes took on a "deer in headlights" look, as if she had suddenly realized the full impact of motherhood. I think she does want to be a mother but got overwhelmed. Perhaps a fishy version of the book "What to Expect When You're Expting" would be helpful to her. May life bring you happiness and good luck, little fish.
In this endearing dream, my husband and I were driving down a busy boulevard in some unspecified town late at night when we spotted a friend chicken restaurant. It looked interesting, so we pulled it. It was a little Depression-era art deco building with white tles gleaming bright in the night and long windows with half-circle ends. We went inside, and there was a long row of backlit photos of various friend chicken dishes on the overhead menu above the cashier stations. What made these photos interesting was that above each photo was a video of a closeup of The Hulk from Marvel Comics, In each video, he described the dish in American Sign Language with a serious brow, as if reciting the names of fast food dishes was a solemn business. However, kids would have loved this place, especially deaf kids. And in case you're asking, nope, I didn't see the green-skinned dude anywhere at the place, only these video clips.
As mentioned in other posts, my dreams take place in all kinds of places such as amusement parks, houses, touristy towns, and lastly but not least, shopping malls. In fact, I seem to have so many dreams involving shopping malls. Fell free to analyze why that might be -- it could be just a symposom of American super-consumer culture. Anyway, here's my first post of "Tales of the Midnight Mall", that involves a really bad male stripper club in a mall.
