bomb-skipping, like rocks in a pond
Colby just called at oh three forty five and woke me up, and I'm thrilled he did, because what the hell is with my brain? I was having this wiggy dream.
It starts out with Bayshore, which I guess is the defining bit of Tampa - it seemed bigger, like the sidewalks were wider and the buildings were taller. I think it was, but it could be that in my dream I was on foot instead of in a car, and when you're on foot places you usually drive through seem bigger, because you're surrounded by them and not the car. Anyway. Lots of people out there - lots of things in the water too, weird concrete structures you could tie boats to or hang out on. It had to be bigger. The water was deeper out there, deep enough for boats and for people to congregate by the stairs leading down from seawall to water and go swimming. That's when the first bomb appeared.
It looked like a WWII bomb of some kind, greyish-whitish-metallic on the front and then shiny pyrite golden on the tail. Where it touched things blew up and collapsed, but it didn't land - it skipped across the buildings like a rock on water, then flew off into the sky leaving a thick grey-white trail of smoke in its wake. More came after that, and they traveled in rows. I must have been somewhere high because I could see the trail they left through the city - lines of fire and rubble and blackened structures. I'd gotten into some kind of building for shelter - an office block, I want to say, although on the southerly side of Bayshore there are only condos and houses. The news was on televisions and I could see loads of different camera angles. (I don't know if some of what I remember seeing on the televisions is stuff I'm only now remembering from previous dreams like this or if it was really in the dream. I think the first, but I am not sure.) I know that at some point I acquired a child - a little girl, seven or eight years old, who like me was alone and scared out of her mind; I remember taking her by the hand, leading her through hallways and into an elevator where I told her to leave the doors alone but she put a hand out and got it caught in them. I freed her hand, then stood in the doorway with my hand on the door, and while I was saying girl you don't do that ever my hand went and got caught in it. So I freed me. These hallways were paneled with dark wood, like mahogany, and dark tile which could have been grey or mahogany-brown, and brown no-skid carpets with rubber around the edges, a sort of yellowy coffee-with-milk brown and also darker. All the metal was brass or chrome. The inside of the elevator was the same, and may have been mirrored in places, and the numbers telling you what floor you were on were red LCD lights, like those in a giant alarm clock. So I freed me, and we got back downstairs, and outside.
Once we were outside we went back to the seawall, because by then it was already gone and I thought the skipping bombs wouldn't hit there twice. When I say it was gone I mean gone -- no rubble, no bodies, like I usually get from dreams like this -- nothing was there at all but black dirt and shredded grass (black dirt? ours is really grey from the sand) and water and mud and yellowed sand filtering in from the bay, and the street was either completely gone or the northbound side was. We started traveling north, towards downtown which was bigger than reality and also pretty well demolished. I remember telling the kid that things had gone back to nature now, because a hundred or so years ago this all was a beach and then they sucked the water out and built the seawall and threw in a bunch of dirt so they could add the roads. I remember something about people hanging out at it like a normal beach, with the ruined houses and buildings in the background, but I don't know if this was something the kid asked me or something I imagined on my own.
Here's where it gets confusing, because here's where the dream stopped having me in it: next thing I remember is that it's about some scientist lady who likely worked in the building where I found the kid. (Mirrored glass window walls, seafoam-green metal miniblinds, mahogany wood walls in between, and I can't remember the floor but the decor was sort of industrial sciencey - lots of white, lots of battleship-grey filing cabinets and desks, lots of beige computers.) What she didn't know was that it was her brother -- who was blind, and had eyes made of tin, which looked like real eyes but were a creepy goldy-yellow color, and red lights shone from inside the pupils. He was missing a hand too. There's lots of business about the two of them - the woman sort of reminds me of Delia Surridge from V for Vendetta and the man was ten or fifteen years younger than her - but I don't remember it.
Then, I'm back to being me in the dream, and I'm at Amber's house, in her living room (the one where she currently lives, which I don't think I've dreamed before, but all the details were correct as far as I can remember), and we're watching this previous business on her television. A screen comes up saying something about how this might be disturbing to watch, and then we see this giant fucked-up face coming up from deep water, surfacing, and eating a boat. Because it's the creepy dude with the tin eyes with lights in 'em, he's eating the city, he's possessed by a demon he either conjured up or got stuck with, and the bombs are all his. It cuts back to a scene of tin-eyes in his sister's office, and he's gnawing on these horrendously fake rubber things that are supposed to resemble the land, and Amber and I are throwing popcorn or something at the television and howling about how we can't believe how bad this is.
Some bits that I remember that I'm not sure how they fit in: after the city is demolished I'm still on bayshore, and I'm watching people with boats try to get out. I'm on the north side by now, I must have made it downtown, and I don't know where that kid has gone. I'm watching people leave in boats, through a blue deep-water harbor (but calm water, because it's narrow and surrounded by land) and I'm thinking, yo, they're not going to make it. I must be with some people, because when I see a craft made out of sheets of subfloor with random stuff stuck to it I point that out and laugh and say, those people aren't going to get far. That one had weird metal structures on it, like aluminum piping, and a big metal trash can full of those red-white-and-blue Budweiser beer cans, and a dark blue recliner, and two people and a dog on it. I think they passed from my view okay, but another boat full of people (small, whitish, metal, ordinary little close-to-shore boat with a motor in the back and a good six or seven people on it) got eaten by the thing underwater.
Anyway. From the bad movie I don't know how I get here next, but I'm back where I started, south side of bayshore, and I'm with Amber and now Katie too, and there's some kind of arts and crafts festival going on. The place is totally back to normal, like the beginning of the dream: bigger, cleaner, very bright, structures in the water, and no damage at all from anything. Katie wants to buy a dog statue like the one I have of a Boxer which my mom had since she was a little kid, and I think about Luke, and I suggest maybe she get a German Shepherd one instead. Amber mistakes the Shepherd one for a Sheltie, and I find a Sheltie statue on a shelf and point it out.
Then we've moved on to another stand and I'm playing with tuning forks and the girls are too, and the combined noise is hurting my ears. I'm trying to hum the pitch these things make - which is silly, because these are HUGE, easily the size of my forearm, and yet they're making really high-pitched sounds. Some gauzy hippy-dippy Professor Trelawney type, who owns the tuning forks, tells me I can match the sound. She shows me how to hold it, and I notice that there are notes printed next to little lines on the handle of the thing, DEFGABC. I hold it at B, strike it, and start humming.
That's when Colby called. I scrambled out of bed, nearly fell onto my computer desk, answered the phone.
"Did I wake you?" he asked.
"Yeah. God. Thanks. I had this nightmare. The city got bombed and I was trying to tune to B."
"You.. what?"
"I had this huge dream," I say, and explain it briefly.
"My professor said some people have dreams like that, and when they wake up they're tired from it."
"Welcome to my world."
"I'm gonna write a thesis about you. I'm not sure how but I will. You're gonna be my THESIS."
"Nkay."
It starts out with Bayshore, which I guess is the defining bit of Tampa - it seemed bigger, like the sidewalks were wider and the buildings were taller. I think it was, but it could be that in my dream I was on foot instead of in a car, and when you're on foot places you usually drive through seem bigger, because you're surrounded by them and not the car. Anyway. Lots of people out there - lots of things in the water too, weird concrete structures you could tie boats to or hang out on. It had to be bigger. The water was deeper out there, deep enough for boats and for people to congregate by the stairs leading down from seawall to water and go swimming. That's when the first bomb appeared.
It looked like a WWII bomb of some kind, greyish-whitish-metallic on the front and then shiny pyrite golden on the tail. Where it touched things blew up and collapsed, but it didn't land - it skipped across the buildings like a rock on water, then flew off into the sky leaving a thick grey-white trail of smoke in its wake. More came after that, and they traveled in rows. I must have been somewhere high because I could see the trail they left through the city - lines of fire and rubble and blackened structures. I'd gotten into some kind of building for shelter - an office block, I want to say, although on the southerly side of Bayshore there are only condos and houses. The news was on televisions and I could see loads of different camera angles. (I don't know if some of what I remember seeing on the televisions is stuff I'm only now remembering from previous dreams like this or if it was really in the dream. I think the first, but I am not sure.) I know that at some point I acquired a child - a little girl, seven or eight years old, who like me was alone and scared out of her mind; I remember taking her by the hand, leading her through hallways and into an elevator where I told her to leave the doors alone but she put a hand out and got it caught in them. I freed her hand, then stood in the doorway with my hand on the door, and while I was saying girl you don't do that ever my hand went and got caught in it. So I freed me. These hallways were paneled with dark wood, like mahogany, and dark tile which could have been grey or mahogany-brown, and brown no-skid carpets with rubber around the edges, a sort of yellowy coffee-with-milk brown and also darker. All the metal was brass or chrome. The inside of the elevator was the same, and may have been mirrored in places, and the numbers telling you what floor you were on were red LCD lights, like those in a giant alarm clock. So I freed me, and we got back downstairs, and outside.
Once we were outside we went back to the seawall, because by then it was already gone and I thought the skipping bombs wouldn't hit there twice. When I say it was gone I mean gone -- no rubble, no bodies, like I usually get from dreams like this -- nothing was there at all but black dirt and shredded grass (black dirt? ours is really grey from the sand) and water and mud and yellowed sand filtering in from the bay, and the street was either completely gone or the northbound side was. We started traveling north, towards downtown which was bigger than reality and also pretty well demolished. I remember telling the kid that things had gone back to nature now, because a hundred or so years ago this all was a beach and then they sucked the water out and built the seawall and threw in a bunch of dirt so they could add the roads. I remember something about people hanging out at it like a normal beach, with the ruined houses and buildings in the background, but I don't know if this was something the kid asked me or something I imagined on my own.
Here's where it gets confusing, because here's where the dream stopped having me in it: next thing I remember is that it's about some scientist lady who likely worked in the building where I found the kid. (Mirrored glass window walls, seafoam-green metal miniblinds, mahogany wood walls in between, and I can't remember the floor but the decor was sort of industrial sciencey - lots of white, lots of battleship-grey filing cabinets and desks, lots of beige computers.) What she didn't know was that it was her brother -- who was blind, and had eyes made of tin, which looked like real eyes but were a creepy goldy-yellow color, and red lights shone from inside the pupils. He was missing a hand too. There's lots of business about the two of them - the woman sort of reminds me of Delia Surridge from V for Vendetta and the man was ten or fifteen years younger than her - but I don't remember it.
Then, I'm back to being me in the dream, and I'm at Amber's house, in her living room (the one where she currently lives, which I don't think I've dreamed before, but all the details were correct as far as I can remember), and we're watching this previous business on her television. A screen comes up saying something about how this might be disturbing to watch, and then we see this giant fucked-up face coming up from deep water, surfacing, and eating a boat. Because it's the creepy dude with the tin eyes with lights in 'em, he's eating the city, he's possessed by a demon he either conjured up or got stuck with, and the bombs are all his. It cuts back to a scene of tin-eyes in his sister's office, and he's gnawing on these horrendously fake rubber things that are supposed to resemble the land, and Amber and I are throwing popcorn or something at the television and howling about how we can't believe how bad this is.
Some bits that I remember that I'm not sure how they fit in: after the city is demolished I'm still on bayshore, and I'm watching people with boats try to get out. I'm on the north side by now, I must have made it downtown, and I don't know where that kid has gone. I'm watching people leave in boats, through a blue deep-water harbor (but calm water, because it's narrow and surrounded by land) and I'm thinking, yo, they're not going to make it. I must be with some people, because when I see a craft made out of sheets of subfloor with random stuff stuck to it I point that out and laugh and say, those people aren't going to get far. That one had weird metal structures on it, like aluminum piping, and a big metal trash can full of those red-white-and-blue Budweiser beer cans, and a dark blue recliner, and two people and a dog on it. I think they passed from my view okay, but another boat full of people (small, whitish, metal, ordinary little close-to-shore boat with a motor in the back and a good six or seven people on it) got eaten by the thing underwater.
Anyway. From the bad movie I don't know how I get here next, but I'm back where I started, south side of bayshore, and I'm with Amber and now Katie too, and there's some kind of arts and crafts festival going on. The place is totally back to normal, like the beginning of the dream: bigger, cleaner, very bright, structures in the water, and no damage at all from anything. Katie wants to buy a dog statue like the one I have of a Boxer which my mom had since she was a little kid, and I think about Luke, and I suggest maybe she get a German Shepherd one instead. Amber mistakes the Shepherd one for a Sheltie, and I find a Sheltie statue on a shelf and point it out.
Then we've moved on to another stand and I'm playing with tuning forks and the girls are too, and the combined noise is hurting my ears. I'm trying to hum the pitch these things make - which is silly, because these are HUGE, easily the size of my forearm, and yet they're making really high-pitched sounds. Some gauzy hippy-dippy Professor Trelawney type, who owns the tuning forks, tells me I can match the sound. She shows me how to hold it, and I notice that there are notes printed next to little lines on the handle of the thing, DEFGABC. I hold it at B, strike it, and start humming.
That's when Colby called. I scrambled out of bed, nearly fell onto my computer desk, answered the phone.
"Did I wake you?" he asked.
"Yeah. God. Thanks. I had this nightmare. The city got bombed and I was trying to tune to B."
"You.. what?"
"I had this huge dream," I say, and explain it briefly.
"My professor said some people have dreams like that, and when they wake up they're tired from it."
"Welcome to my world."
"I'm gonna write a thesis about you. I'm not sure how but I will. You're gonna be my THESIS."
"Nkay."