Strange Dreams

I've recently started dreaming again.

I stopped in my junior year of high school. It was just another fall night, with another dream, but it'd be the last one I would have for a little while.

I am walking with my two brothers in an open strip mall. The air is crisp- the sky, clear save a couple of cotton-ball clouds. We are heading towards a Starbucks. As we approached, a blinding flash fills the sky ahead of us. I can feel a breeze pick up and rustle my shirt. I fight the polka-dots to try and see. The breeze becomes a wind. I look up and I watch a dark pillar rise up and encroaching the blue sky. Those cotton-ball clouds quickly fled away. The wind is physically blowing me over. I see the ripples of a shock wave emanating out from the dark pillar of fire. I turn and grab my brothers' heads, tuck them them into my chest, and huddle against the concrete foundation of the Starbucks. I feel the ground beginning to shake. The windows break, raining little beads of glass upon us. A deafening roar fill my ears. The wind is becoming hot. I can't open my eyes. I can't breathe, my throat is dry. It burns. I feel blisters rising, my skin is boiling. I feel dizzy. The pillar of fire overtakes me. I see nothing.

I wake up. The pulse in my temple is pounding, my breathing is short and quick, I'm covered in beads of cold sweat. I died in my dream.

In retrospect the dream was strange because in my waking life, I rarely went to Starbucks in the first place. I also thought it was strange that I died in my dream- knowing the urban legend I thought I should be dead. Clearly I wasn't, so that was good. What wasn't good was that I wouldn't dream again until the summer of my junior year in college- a full 4 years and not one single remembered dream.

I can't remember exactly what my first dream back was about. I know I've been dreaming because as I awoke, I fell out of my bed confused and startled to actually be waking up. The dream escaped me in disorientation.

Familiar faces, fuzzy words, fragments of a porcelain jar, a flight through midtown, amorphous settings that change unnoticed, a sense of urgency, a sense of calm. It's great to dream again.