Category: Fragments of My Dreams

Author’s note: Classifying this entry as Fragments of My Dreams is not entirely legitimate.  Unlike other entries of this category, the element that is derived from my dream is minimal.  Having said that, I have this story stuck inside my head for a long time.  One recent dream of mine has inspired on how to wrap it up with a hook that may work better than my original plot.  For that, I don’t mind relaxing the rule of the classification a little bit.

Like photography, in this story, I intend to create a ‘depth of field’ whereby the most recent story in focus is described in accurate details while the events that happened in the past get more vague, broken, and abstract as we traverse down the timeline.  Memory plays trick on us at times.  This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to people alive or dead is purely coincidental.

1. Prologue

Claire Anna Walker.  Whenever I think of her name, I feel as though I could hear a dull bang inside my heart.  Time has washed down memory, deconstructed the familiarity.  New routines overwrite the old ones, slowly and surely wear away the little that has left behind.  Distorted and made abstract.  Gaps are fused with imagination, yearning, and dreams that make the tracing of the true flow of events almost impossible.  Only a dull bang remains.  My heart does not feel anything nowadays like it used to, which is depressing.  I do not want to forget.  But having a choice seems like a luxury I cannot afford in a time like this.

Claire Anna Walker.  Sometimes when I think of her name, I wonder where she is, what she is doing.  Does she still walk the streets and the countryside with her easel and her oil painting toolbox looking for her next inspiration?  Her next vintage point?  Or her next muse?  Not knowing is like having an itch that I cannot scratch.  Worse still, this itch resides inside my head, which I cannot reach.

2. The Bitter Cry of Heartache and of Emotions of Other Sorts

September

Though Claire and I have recently reconciled, things were never quite the same as it was.  Courtesy masked away our eccentricity but what was left behind seemed bland and less interesting.  We seldom met.  Nor could we find a compelling reason to.  Our reformed friendship did not quite work the way we have intended.  Or the way I had wished.  It was like having a virtual policeman lurking in the shadow only to appear when the boundary of physical and emotional intimacy was challenged.  Things that we would have talked about but did not.  Things that we would have done but did not.  I bit my tongue so many times.  And I knew that she did too.  I was surprised when Claire suddenly wanted to meet up.

It must have been a month or two since we last met.  I still remember this scene vividly.  From across the street, Claire was dressed in pastel walking towards me.  A lacy long dress that flowed well onto her tall slender body.  In the past, I have always tried to tell her that she looked good in a long dress.  But her preference was T-shirt and jeans.  “In all practicality”, she used to say to me, “oil painting is my hobby”.

“But writing is mine!  And I need a muse.  A muse in long dress,” I would jokingly reply.

She would laugh, roll her eyes, and say, “That is your problem.  Go find someone else as your muse!”

That day, there was no smile on Claire’s face.  As she was walking towards me, her body gesture showed awkward signs of hesitation.  Her face was paler than usual, without makeup as usual.  Her lips – which in any other given days looked full and kissable – now squeezed into a quivering thin line.  Those eyes of despair they slowly swelled up as she stood two steps in front of me.  Stopped right there she held her distance.  At that moment, as though she was the Gaia and I was the moon.  My gravitational pull might have triggered the free flow of her tears, which was only a matter of time before she dived into my embrace, collapsed into a long bitter cry.

I was not sure how to react, except to give her a warm albeit friendly hug.  A little squeeze as I breathed in the moment.  The invisible policeman was watching.  I was certain of it.  I could smell the shampoo of her long hair, feel the shaking of her body, hear the erratic beating of her heart – and mine – and the faint sobbing sound of her almost silence bitter cry.  Something must have gone wrong but I did not know what.  Relationship problem with men, or women?  Her oil paining hit a road block like my novel writing?  Her parents got a divorce?  Her cat died?  She ran out of money?  Someone bullied her?  She only had a few months to live?  Or weeks?

Everything leading up to this moment was clear and vivid.  And then, my memory suffered an involuntary lapse.  It went blank, almost like a self defense.  I was confused by the whole scene, of course.  I was unable to accept what was to come.  There was this touch of gratitude and the surrendering of logic and reasoning.  I had a strong hunch that someone must have broken her heart.  Someone else.  It had to be, for this was a bitter cry of a heartache, in an enormous scale.

After what appeared as an eternity, Claire looked up.  Her lips broke into a soft smile and she said, “Thank you.  And goodbye.”  She then turned and disappeared into an alley.  I was immobilized.

That was the last time I saw Claire.

3. A Courteous Reconciliation

Early August

A month or so before our final encounter, Claire and I had a fight.  We seldom argued.  But we did.  I was not sure if I should call her after the act.  But she did not call me either.  The past one week of not seeing each other had been a torture.  I found myself missing her.  Should I be expecting a call?  Was she expecting my call?  Would she want to be left alone?  I did not action.  Neither did she.  Nothing was happening.  The days went by dully.  On the other end of my routine spectrum, my work-in-progress novel was going nowhere.  Last night I had a dream.  But that did not inspire.  Something was missing.  Where was Claire?

Where?

One fine morning, I woke up with bright sunlight flooding into my apartment on the ground floor.  My windows were closed but I could hear the birds chirping outside.  I saw one.  And then two.  I took it as a sign, got out of the bed, picked up my phone, and dialed Claire’s number.

I was about to give up on the third ring when someone answered.

“Good morning,” I said.

There was a short pause and then Claire’s voice came through the line, “Good morning.”

“How are you?”  Almost sounded like a whisper as I was holding my breath not knowing what to expect.

“I am okay,” replied Claire.

“Did I wake you up?”

“No you did not.  The birds did.”

Ah, the birds.

“Would you like to catch up for breakfast at our usual cafe?”  I wasn’t too sure what to say and I muttered the first thing that came to my mind.  My stomach was growling.

“Hmm.”

“It’ll be pancake.  On me,” I offered.

“Sure.”

“Great.  Be there in half an hour?”

“Sure.”

Over our pancake breakfast, we stayed out of the landmine territories and instead, talked about what we were up to in the past one week.  There was nothing spectacular to report, or talk about.  The magic had disappeared.  I wanted to talk about my writer’s block.  But that sounded impotence.  She did not talk about her painting progress either.  I did not ask.  At some point though, I thought she was studying me like how she studied her painting subjects.  The way her eyes traced my profile sent shivers down my spine.   I felt as though the creases on my face – and on my clothing – were being analyzed, drawn onto her – or my – imaginary easel.  Her eyes lingered in areas that needed more details, decomposing the whole of me into dabs of wet paint, layered on top of each other.  I was going crazy.  She was driving me crazy.

That breakfast encounter left me with a weird aftertaste.

 4. The Great Fight

Late July

“You suck as a friend!” yelled Claire.

“I what?” retorted I.

It went on and on.  I was more annoyed than furious.  Sure I had missed her call a few times.  But I was busy with my novel.  Writing is a lonely journey.  Inspiration comes and goes.  Like any argument between two individuals, the topic is often trivial but at times fundamental.  Claire’s brain was governed by logic and discipline.  She painted in realism.  Perspective had to be faithfully replicated onto a painting.  So were the different shades of colors.  My brain, on the other hand, was not governed by any universal laws.  It thrived on being abstract.  Lines were meant to be bent.  Shapes were meant to be morphed.  Ideas were meant to be spontaneous.

The truth was, I was unable to define our relationship.  She was as hot-and-cold to me as I was to her.  We walked out from that fighting scene feeling bruised and hurt.  Words that should not have spoken but we did.  Feelings that should not have bared but we did.  Both of us lost something deep inside that day.  In retrospect, I felt I was at the losing end.  As though I was being dumped.  How the wind of change had descended upon us.  A couple of days ago, inside a pub, under a more friendly environment, we were reminiscing on how we first met.  A bizarre event that we had encountered around half a year ago.  Those are happy moments.

5. A Bizarre Recollection

Mid July

“Remember that day we first met?” asked Claire.

“How could I forget?  That was half a year ago,” I laughed.

“Me neither.  The thing is, I can never quite figure out what has happened.”

“Or what we saw.”

She nodded and continued, “Do you think the driver survive those falls?”

“It’s hard to say.  I thought I saw a little girl sitting inside the car.  Maybe another adult too.”

“Come on.  Logically speaking, no one can survive something like that.”

“True.  But history also tells us that extraordinary events do happen.”

“So you are saying that there could be a miracle?” she quizzed.

I paused, took another sip of the beer, and said, “Quite honestly, I don’t remember having seen the whole scene.  Nor do I remember all the details that come out from it”

“Like half of the scene was being blacked out.”

“Like half of the scene was being blacked out,” I repeated; “Or edited.  Censored.”

Claire took a big gulp of beer and asked, “By who?  For what purpose?”

“I don’t know.  We went downstairs from the rooftop as soon as the car went out of sight, didn’t we?  We ran as far as the main junction down the road.  The air was hazy.  Dusk was upon us.  To our left and our right were the main streets dotted with numerous shops.  Ahead of us was a street that led to a shopping mall.  There was no abnormality in proximity.”

Claire frowned and asked, “Why didn’t we return to the yellow field in front of your apartment?”

“Because the car disappeared from the yellow field and not into?  Perhaps that was why?”

“Hey, that is logic!  Logic is my department.  Thou shalt not pass!”

I laughed, “Jokes aside.  Maybe we will never find out why.  Unless you could speak with the ghosts from the past.”

We fell into silence and drank our beers.

“We shouldn’t drink so much tonight,” Claire whispered into her glass of beer without looking at me.

“And why not?”

“Remember the last time we got totally wasted?”

“Oh.  That.”

“Ya.  That.”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” I said, pressing my fingers hard onto my temples trying to recall when.

“No it wasn’t,” said Claire.

“How does that masterpiece of your go?”  I changed the topic.

“My painting?”

“Yes, the one you titled as ‘By My Sofa You Slept With A Peaceful Smile’?”

“Oh.  That.”

“Ya.  That.”

“I am still working on it.  Pretty much like the progress of your novel.”

“I hope your painting is doing much better than my novel,” I laughed.

“And why’s that?” asked Claire.

I shrugged, “Because it is going nowhere.”

6 Did We or Did We Not?

Early July

One morning I woke up at Claire’s sofa looking stupefied.  How in the world did I end up in Claire’s apartment, sleeping on a sofa right next to her bed?  Claire was too awakened roughly at the same time as me.  Rubbing her face with her hands, the first thing she said was: Uh oh.

I scanned the surrounding and found empty beer bottles everywhere.  This looked bad.  We were totally wasted last night.  Smashed beyond recognition.

“Uh oh.  Did we?” asked I.

“No we didn’t.  You must be dreaming,” replied Claire quickly.

“You sure?”

“Not really.”

Claire collapsed back onto her bed, pulled a blanket partially covering her body.  I thought she had gone back to sleep but out of nowhere, she spoke, “Do you want pancakes?”

Reluctantly, I got out of the sofa and said, “Great idea.  Let’s go.”  I needed some strong coffee to beat my hangover, badly.

7. On the Topic of Art

May

When Claire and I first became friends, I was drawn to her skill painting in realism while she was drawn to my talent of writing in an abstract style.  Our common topic was art.  Museums and libraries were our sacred playgrounds.

We had debates too.  Ironically on the very things that drawn us together.

“Have you tried writing in realism?”  Out of the blue, Claire posted this question to me as we were touring inside a museum.

“As in describing each table and mug in detail?  The shape of the house, the cracks on the wall, the fabric of the clothing, and the quality of light?  Knowing the name of different shades of colors by heart, like you do?”

Claire paused and replied, “Something like that.”

“That doesn’t excite me.”

“Why’s that?  Is it because of your lack of vocabulary in describing your subjects in details?”

Unsure if I should take offense on her last remark, I continued, “Perhaps.  Or more so, when I am not passionate on that something, I don’t feel the need to expand my repository for the sake of it.”

“But it’s a good skill, don’t you think?”

“How about this.  Let me turn around and ask you this instead: Have you tried painting abstract art?”

“Nope.”

“And why not?”

“It is a whole new technique and discipline.  And it is not my forte.”

“Is it because of your lack of imagination?  Or you are afraid to distort reality and to deviate from it?”

Claire let out a reluctant laughter and said slowly, “So what are you trying to say?”

My eye dashed around just a little searching for a cafe nearby before answering, “What I am trying to say, is that I am tired and hungry and thirsty, and I am sure you are too.  So why not rest our feet over at the cafe … there?”

Over the counter, Claire picked her choice of refreshment, and so did I.  At the table, she persisted on our previous topic and asked, “Don’t you think every artist should start from working with realism, master the basic technique, and then branch out to other disciplines of art?”

“I don’t see why that has to be the path every artist must take.”

“Take Picasso as an example.  His works from his early life are not as abstract as his later works.”

“True.  I can see the progression.”

“Uh huh.”

“But think on it.  Does it mean that being able to create art in abstract style is the pinnacle of the pursuit of art?”

“Hey!” Claire mockingly protested with a smile.

“Exactly,” I smiled.

“So what are you trying to say?”

“Just be ourselves.  Follow our passions.  And not necessarily the footsteps of others.”

7. Ghosts of the Carnival

March

Claire had a special ability.  Not only could she see ghosts, but also interact with them.  I was baffled initially.  This went beyond faith and belief.  Looking back, maybe Claire was a hypnotist who was capable to bend reality making people to see what she wanted them to see.  I was a believer.  And we have barely known each other.  Merely for a couple of months.

One day, she said she wanted to visit a carnival in the evening.  Asked if I wanted to join, I said why not?  The last time I have visited a carnival was eons ago.  Maybe she planned to paint a Ferris Wheel.  Maybe she needed a companion to relive her childhood memory.  I was free that evening, still suffered from my writer’s block.  Some fresh air under the moonlight might do me good.

There was a tent.  Underneath lied a couple of benches.  No one was there except Claire and I.

“Do you see her?”

Dumbfounded by her question, I asked, “See what?”

“Her,” and she pointed at an arbitrary direction.  Claire told me in the past that she could see ghosts.  I did not believe in paranormal activities so I often bypassed the topic with another topic of my favorite: food.  That evening at the carnival, Claire looked serious.  I could see the sparkles in her eyes.  An invitation.  A challenge.  The air was sweet.  Some sorts of circus music was playing from another tent not too far away from ours.  I was truly enjoying the evening, enjoying Claire’s company.  Until this moment when she pointed at some random directions and asked, “Do you see her, now?”

It was as though the word ‘now’ was the final ingredient of this magic, or voodoo.  All of a sudden, the air was thicken with mystery.  The music appeared to have fainted away. Not too far from me where Claire had pointed, I began to see  the dancing of a yellow neon light source rapidly swirling around forming a figure of a little girl.

I gasped and said softly, “Yes”.

Sitting across from the opposite benches, I was seeing another figure in a red neon light.  And another one in a green neon light.

“Are these …”

“Yes,” spoke Claire softly.

8. Bouncing Car Across a Yellow Field

January

The first time I met Claire went something like this.

I was taking a walk near my apartment that day.  It was not hard to spot Claire.  Carrying her easel and a toolbox, she dressed in T-shirt and jeans.  And she seemed lost.  So I walked up to her and asked, “Hi.  You look lost.  Looking for something?”

“Hi!  I am looking for a vintage point.”

“A vintage point?  For your painting?”

“Yes, for my painting.”

I looked around searching for a vintage point.  “What about the rooftop of my apartment over there?  You can see the skyline of the town from there,” I suggested as I pointed skyward.

The young girl whom I did not know the name brightened up with a thankful smile and said, “That would do!”

At the rooftop of my 14-story apartment, she set her easel up started to paint while I took a seat nearby and read a book.  She looked serious when she was working on her painting.  We chatted a bit.  But most of the time, I left her alone.  She looked young and charming.  She had this meticulous painting style.  Her work of art looked like something coming straight from a photograph.  While I was equally intrigued by her beauty and talent, this oil painting of the town’s skyline looked promising.  As she progressed through her painting using wet-on-wet technique, I was drawn to the ever changing landscape created under her skillful hands.

I was in love, with her painting.

“It’s done!” exclaimed she.

“Wow.  This is pretty!  How do you know when it is finished?” I asked.

“You’d know.  Just like how you know a story is finished.”

While both of us were admiring the painting on the rooftop of my apartment, we heard a loud engine sound coming from the front of my building.  Two cars were racing down a wide yellow field in a great speed, leaving behind a long trail of dust and cloud.  The terrain was not even.  As the two cars sped down a slope, the car behind lost control, overturned, and bounced across the yellow field.  Each time the car bounced, it reached a greater height.  Until it bounced to seven stories high, hit the side of my apartment hard, and fell back onto the yellow field.

I was shocked.  So was the painter.  This bizarre incident was tragic, in a comical way.

As the car hit the yellow field, it bounced back even higher, flew across our building, and vanished out of our sight.

“Where did it go?” I screamed.

“I don’t know!  Let’s go down!”

“Go, go, go!”

This was how I remember meeting Claire under the most extraordinary circumstances of my life.

9. Epilogue

We build walls around us to protect our feeling.  We hide inside a fortress in order to feel safe.  Because we have convinced ourselves that there are demons lurking outside.  For years, my subconsciousness must have been blanking out the details, distorting the facts.  Through this lens of abstraction, I can no long infer what has happened, what has not.

I can never be sure how my final encounter with Claire went.  What I have tried to forget in the day, my recurring dreams at night tried to undo my effort, reinstate and reassemble the fragments of reality using the debris resulting from the destruction by my subconsciousness.  One of my recent dreams goes something like this.

In our final encounter, Claire was crying and she fell into my embrace.  When her emotion subsided, she pulled her head away from my shoulder, and looked into my eyes.  I was confused.  She was in such a mess.  There was tears all over her face.  Her nose was wet.  I did not know what I was thinking.  So we kissed.

It was salty and sweet, bitter and sad.  When we finally broke away, Claire said, “It’s time for us to move on.”

I bit my lower lip, not entirely shocked by her request.  I only managed to ask, “So soon?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve finished your masterpiece?”

“Which one?”

“By My Sofa You Slept With A Peaceful Smile.”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

Claire shook her head and said, “It’s not like that.”

A sense of bitterness clouded my mind.  And I asked, “What have I got from this then?”

Claire stopped, looked away.  When we reestablished our eye contact, she said, “A story.  You now have a story.”

“A story?”

“Yes.  A cure to your writer’s block.”

I was stunned, not sure what to say.

“Promise you won’t look for me?  So that we can both move on?” Claire asked.

In utter bitterness, I nodded.  She patted my lips with hers and said, “Thank you.  And goodbye.”  She then turned and disappeared into an alley.  I was immobilized by that one promise I have made.

I have not seen Claire since then.  Only in my dreams.

“In fire I burn, and what keeps me going is the distant memory of Alicia whom I love and miss so much.”

Alicia and I had chosen Forrestville to settle down, temporarily, because this small town was well embraced by nature’s beauty – a forest decorated with colorful flowers and endless streams of river, animals docile in nature not afraid to mingle with the few inhabitants who lived in our small town.  At times, rain drizzled in mid afternoon that in turn called upon the arrival of the rainbows.  Almost every evening, a large blanket adorned with a sky full of stars would gently cover our town.  It was spring throughout the year and there were dreams of nectar bestowed upon our dreamless nights.  In this heaven of serenity secluded from the rest of the civilization, Alicia and I lived in a humble cottage that we called home.

In front of our cottage was a generous garden where many tea parties were held.  The villagers thought that we were sisters.  Both of us had long blonde hair, fair skin resemblance of porcelain, and in a ripe age of twenty four, we drew attention, inevitably so.  In this world of interlaced dimensions and possibilities, we belonged to a reality whereby witches not only survived the Inquisition but also thrived.  Alicia and I could well be sisters, bounded by our vows to the craft of art and spirit.  We had stayed that age for far too long so much so that we could no longer remember our real age.  Mother Nature has the secret remedy of life renewal.  Many shamans and witches and poets and storytellers had spoken of it.  Only few had grasped the true path to immortality.

Not long ago, a new family had moved into Forrestville.  That was when our trouble began.  We seldom met the middle aged woman with red curly hair.  We however often played with her little girl in our garden and sometimes, in the little girl’s.  The little girl was never introduced as the woman’s daughter.  We simply assumed so, as the villagers had identified Alicia and I as sisters.  It did not take long for us to spot something odd about this little girl.  She seemed eerie.  It was like she was there but not quite there.  There was nothing visually incoherent per se.  She seemed well-mannered and friendly, intelligent for her age.  She seemed docile, almost too docile for someone of her age who should be screaming and dashing about, throwing tantrums and asking endless number of questions.  Or simply put – making noises.  None at all.  She seemed to enjoy our companionship in her calm and docile manner.  Always being polite, always being considerate.  When we were not interacting, she would fall into a dreamy state.  Was she here?  Was she not?  This little girl was eerie, adorably so.  We grew fond of her.

One day, the little girl asked, “Would you like to see where I live?”  Alicia and I were surprised because we had never been invited inside her cottage before.  We looked at each other and Alicia smiled, “Sure sweetie.  We would love to.”  Her mother was not at home.  In fact, we seldom see her mother in Forrestville.

It was a typical cottage filled with wooden furniture that combined practicality with aestheticism.  In the living room, while the little girl was showing me some of her drawings, I heard Alicia gasped next door.  She shouted, “You better take a look at this.”

I joined her in the study room.  I too gasped at the rows and rows of photos displayed on the wall.  The photos were ancient, from a different era.  There were photos of the little girl and there were photos of Alicia and me.  What were these?  The little girl appeared at the doorway looking gloomy.  And the little girl said, “She has been looking for both of you.”  I asked, “Who is she?”  The little girl replied, “She who found me.”

Alicia and I exchanged a cautious look and Alicia jumped in, “What do you mean by ‘she who found me’?”

A tint of emotion seemed to have wavered in the little girl’s eyes and the little girl continued, “She who is a Witch Collector; she who reanimated me; and she who will reanimate you two.  My soul has left my body long time ago.  I yearn for what it was like to be living again.  Through your companionship, I feel alive.  I remember what it was like to breath and to smile.  But I am afraid your time is running out.  She is on the way home sooner than I have anticipated.  I can feel her presence.”

Her words sent a chill down our spines.  Witch Collectors were witches who enjoyed collecting witches of exceptional quality and beauty.  To take ownership of a witch’s physical body was to expel the witch’s soul from her body and to continuously reanimate her empty shell via the dark energy channeled from within the Collector.

Alicia and I could sense that the Witch Collector was fast approaching.  There was nowhere to run or hide, little time to waste.  We needed to buy some time.  Alicia prompted me to think fast.  I conjured a mental picture of I flipping through our Book of Witchcraft.  Immediately, the spell “Curse of Ten Thousand Years of Hideousness” had crossed my mind.  Alicia read me and she cringed, “Must it be ten thousand years?”  No, I mentally replied her.  We could modify the spell as long as it rhymed.  So we invoked “Curse of Ten Bloody Hours of Hideousness” just before the soon to be furious Witch Collector stepped into her home.

We were ugly, really ugly.  Our faces were ugly like a tree bark.  Hundreds of small spores like mushrooms that emerged after a morning shower hang loose on our faces.  We did not need a mirror to confirm our ugliness.  We simply looked at each other’s face.  The Witch Collector spotted us and screamed, “What have you done?!  What have you done?!”

Her fury had no end.  Soon, a mist of swirling grey particles conjured around her as she chanted, “Wolves of the Ancient hear my call. Shred these witches to the core!”

Alicia reacted quickly and invoked a spell.  A portal that led to our safe haven was opened and we promptly stepped into it.  So did the little girl seconds before the portal was closed.

“Why do you follow us?” Alicia gasped.

“I do not want to live as a living corpse no more.  And I don’t care where you are taking me,” cried the little girl.

“But we have no clue where we will go next, or do next,” I said.

“And we are really ugly,” Alicia added.

“For ten hours,” the little girl interjected.

She too read us.  Perhaps deep inside this soulless body of hers, the gift of witchcraft remained.  But the urgency of the matter prevented us from any more debates.

“How much time do we have?” asked Alicia.

The little girl pondered a little and replied, “You have till midnight until the moon rises.  That is when the Wolves of the Ancient become most ferocious.”

I could see Alicia frowning, drown in deep thoughts.  I could sense that she was thinking of that Ritual of the Black Portal.  A portal that was powerful enough to suck every being within its proximity and dispose them into a different realm.  Would the two of us be sufficient to open such ancient portal?  There was no time to think.  We needed to gather the materials quick.

Alicia turned to the little girl and said, “Listen.  This is very important.  We will attempt to obliterate the Witch Collector and her Wolves of the Ancient.  It is a dangerous ritual.  We want you to run as far away from us as you can.  If we succeed, there is a hope that your body may be able to reunite with your soul.  We don’t know how this ritual will turn out.  But we want you to stay away.  Do you understand?”

“No, I want to stay!” screamed the little girl.  She was human enough to throw a tantrum after all.

“Please.  We need to focus on this ritual.  We will not be able to protect you,” added I.

I did not pay attention on how the little girl eventually departed.  She vanished when I was not looking.  Alicia and I were busy gathering idols and dried animal parts, precious liquid of rare plant extracts, exotic dried insects, and rare incense.  We gathered the materials inside a hut not too far away from our cottage.  We prepared candles and enough dye to draw an ancient mysterious pattern on the ground in order to start the ritual.  It was almost midnight and there was one essential ingredient that we were still working on – two pieces of rope coated in ox blood mixed with tears of dawn dried slowly by the smoke of the earth.  Ox for its strength to hold us onto our current realm and the tears as love, hope, and compassion.  When the rope was ready, we tied one end around a tree and another end on our wrists.  It was close to midnight.  Ten hours have passed and almost instantly, we returned to our former beauty.  Not too far away, we heard the howling of the wolves.  We looked into each other’s eyes and nodded.  There was no need for words, no time for words.

Alicia and I joined our hands and we started the Ritual of the Black Portal.  Our breathing intensified.  The cracking of the candle wicks around us slowly counting down to our midnight doom.  Nothing happened.  I looked around mentally checking all the ingredients.  Nothing was missing.  Everything was in order.  No matter how hard we focused, the portal did not appear.  The Witch Collector appeared on the other side of the river, and soon, her Wolves of the Ancient.

“My children.  Look at you two.  Such fine beauty.  It would be a pity to tear your hearts out,” screeched the Witch Collector in her mad laughter, “Yield now!  Release your soul and let me grant you my version of immortality!”

Alicia and I were determined.  We would rather die fighting till the end than being reanimated as living corpses.  Although we were powerful witches in our own rights, the ritual somehow could not be completed.  We were perplexed and desperate as the Wolves of the Ancient drew near.  It was once said that the way to kill a witch is to eat her heart and burn her body.  It looked as though our end was fast approaching, as the moon rose from the horizon.  Did I have any last regret?  I had no regret and I had plenty of regrets.  I regretted not being able to spend more time with my beloved Alicia.  I looked at my beautiful Alicia.  And there and then, I sensed the feeling of mutual reciprocation.  Tears were running down our faces.

As the pack of wolves crossed the river, we felt a third pair of hands joining ours.  Power ran through our veins.  Just like that, the Black Portal was opened.  A grand translucent egg as tall as a tree emerged, pulsating with dark energy ready to devour all that were not secured to this realm.  The sky was blackened, roared with thunders.  The portal grew stronger and there was only a small window of opportunity before it collapsed.  The little girl – a former witch – has returned for us and helped us to complete the ritual.  Alicia screamed, “Why do you come back?”  The little girl fought back her tears and did not say a word.  “You will be sucked into the same realm that this Witch Collector and these wolves are heading!  Is that what you want?” I shouted.  The little girl was shivering, but did not utter a single word.  Her lips were tightly closed and her eyes were widely opened.  In one quick movement, Alicia untied her rope, put it around the little girl’s wrist and smiled, “Live well.  You deserved it.  Thank you for completing our ritual.”  The little girl screamed, “No!  Please let me go!”

There was no time to think, no need to think.  I untied my rope, wrapped it around Alicia and said, “I love you.  And see you in another life.”  I turned to the little girl and said, “Take care of Alicia for me.”  Before they could react, I jumped into the Black Portal.  Soon, the Witch Collector and the rest of her wolves followed.  As magical as how the Black Portal appeared, it vanished suddenly leaving behind a veil of silence that embraced what was lost and what was gained.

On the other side the portal was the realm of Nebula Inferno.  I had no recollection thereafter.  In this fire I burned.  In this fire we burned.

For close to a year, I have had dreamless sleep, which is unusual if you know me.  The night before, out of nowhere, Cynthia was conversing to me in purely Bahasa Indonesia.  I suppose once in a while, we have this innate desire to feel closer to our mother tongue.  I tried to hold a decent conversation with my limited knowledge of the language but soon, sleepiness hit us.  And I fell asleep.

It may not seem to be that coincidental when Cynthia’s brother Eric appeared in my dream, outside a hut or a hideout, under a hot sun, conversing with me in Bahasa Indonesia.  In this play, he whom I had not met before wanted to deliver an important message.  How could I, in my sleep, create dialogs of a foreign language convincing enough for me to recognize it as Bahasa Indonesia, I do not know.  The story goes something like this.  Cynthia and I were in some undisclosed locations ranging from a hut to a small urban city to a futuristic spaceship and what have you.  And one of the many bizarre things I did besides plotting to overthrow the incumbent militia was to gamble (!!).  In fact, I don’t even remember the act of gambling.  What I remember though was that this character Eric appeared and delivered a long speech in Bahasa Indonesia.  I referred Eric to Cynthia and later on, in a spaceship filled with blue light, he needed to borrow some cash from me.  For some strange reasons, in order to exchange my winning chips back to cash, I need to pay a commission in cash – a percentage of my winnings.  But I had no cash because I gave it to Eric.  I asked around and no one had spare cash to lend me.  Feeling helplessly frustrated at the chips worthed of $320,000 that could have been mine, I heard a song.

If you have watched Nana, the Japanese animation series, you may be able to better appreciate this part of the story.  I heard a song, a beautiful song.  My guitarist J in real life was playing in my dream, together with a friend of mine from my Spanish class (let’s call her B), on a stage, in front of an audience.  The guitar riff was minimalistic, the drum pattern was simple.  He was on the microphone and instead, that should have been me!  Cynthia – my real life bassist – and I were on our feet mesmerized by the performance – a scene tantamount to Nana and Nana watching Trapnest on stage.  At the same time, I felt as though my pride was hurt as I was not part of the performance, not part of the song creation process.

Maybe the song was not much of a song, no more than the meaningless dialog recited by Eric in my dream.  But I reckon if I was to grab my guitar in the middle of the night, I would be able to compose a song based on the fragments of a tune that lingered in my head.  Instead, I spent the whole day feeling melancholy, unable to get that tuneless song out of my head.

This is my first field trip and our mission is clear: To secure the underground area next to the university.  There has been disturbance inside the dungeon of tunnels made of steel, as reported.  The robots do not normally venture so close into our civilization.  We wonder what prompts the encroachment.  Low in resource within the robot colonies?  The evolution of robots that finally breach the take no interest in human activity vow as programmed, sealed, and agreed upon after the Third War?  Or robots that have gone rogue?

I have to admit that I am born of a younger generation, owe it to our forefathers for the establishment of peace, a form of peace that is not perfect – as coexisting with your century long enemies is never easy – but necessary.  Towards the end of the Third War, both sides acknowledged that we human beings cannot outpace the evolution of robots aided by technology rapidly discovered, experimented, and advanced minutes by minutes, seconds by seconds; and robots cannot precede the wisdom of mankind granted by the gods of heaven.  Our bones may be fragile, our flesh may be mortal, but there is no survival like a human survival.

At least that is how we are taught in school; my textbook understanding on the robots, on the history before I was born.  I have not seen a robot in my life, least terminating one.  The word ‘kill’ has been banned and eliminated from our dictionary as part of the agreement of the Third War Treaty.  As the robots have acutely observed, the root of our evilness lies in the word “kill”.  Kill: Such a word full of hatred, of superiority, and of no responsibility, no respect.  Terminate, on the other hand, has a clinical approach to address a certain dire situation, through sound logic and rationalization.

As I have said, this is my first field trip, in a squad of soldiers who seem to know what they are doing.  “You!” says the squad leader pointing at my direction.  “Sir?” I straighten my back in response.  “Stay close and shoot at the damn robots, not us.  Got it?  We’re going to kill all those damn motherfookers!” shouts the leader in his hoarse commanding voice.

Kill?!  Guess I have to toss the textbooks away for now, side-by-side with this troop of dozen.

“Here.  Take these,” one soldier beside me hands me some ammunition.  “These are rockets.  Launch them from a distance.  You don’t wanna see them explode in front of our faces.  Got that, kiddo?” he continues.  “Yes Sir!” I replies as I strapped the little red rockets onto my belt, with my trembling hands.  “And these are regular bullets.  For close range shooting.  You have learned how to fire at the training center, haven’t you?”  I nod, weakly.  He puts his strong hand onto my left shoulder and says, “Look kiddo, this is real war.  I don’t know your background.  But since you are here, you must have done damn good in your training.  Don’t let us down, OK?”

Such a fatherly voice, I reply with renewed conviction, “Sir!  Yes Sir!”

“Something is moving ahead Sir!” one squad member shouts.  The squad leader turns to me and says, “You kiddo.  Do the announcement now!”

In my state of nervousness, I have gone stiffed, my mind has gone blank.  The soldier next to me shouts, “Do it now kiddo!  We can’t attack those motherfookers before we make the announcement!”

I slap into action, grab the microphone, clear my throat and say, “Attention.  This is a human designated area.  You are in violation of the Third War Treaty that says no robots are allowed to encroach into human designated areas, physically or in any capacity that may interact or harm the human species …”

“They are fast approach, Sir!” one soldier screams.  “Get ready to fire!” shouts the squad leader.

And my mechanical voice continues, echoes in these long steel tunnels, “We hereby inform you to immediately leave this area.  Failing to do so may grant us, the humans, the right to terminate you …”

I hear gunfire.  So loud that I have to cover my ears.  I see two dead robots right in front of us as I continue, “We come in peace and wish you robots no harm.”

How ironic.

“These robots come in pairs, kiddo.  If you kill one, you have to kill the other,” said one soldier.  “What if we don’t?” ask I.  “Well, these robots are programmed to live and die in pairs.  Think kamikaze, kiddo.  Not pretty,” he shakes his head engaged in what appears as a deep thought.  I make a mental note to inquire the story after our mission.

“There are a lot more coming!” says the same soldier who warned us the incoming of robots.  “Shoot ’em all!” shouts the squad leader, “And you kiddo!”  He turns to me, “Make yourself useful and use that damn gun of yours, would you?”

Indeed, a lot more targets are coming our way.  Relentless, waves and waves of robots come upon us.  The sound of the gunfire is deafening; the sparkle of the explosion hurts my eyes.  One target is marked for my taking.  From a distance, I launch rocket #1.  Missed.  Rocket #2.  Missed!  Such tremendous speed these robots have!  As  my target gets closer to me, I attempt to launch rocket #3.  My gun screams in a mechanical voice, “Warning!  Warning!  Incoming target too close!”  I fire nonetheless.  Big explosion, the ground shakes.  The rocket has punched a big hole onto the steel tunnel just meters away from us.  The squad leader shouts, “Dammit kiddo!  Wanna get us all killed?!”

My target slows down, by the up close explosion of the rocket.  I switch to pistol, attempt to shoot the robot.  Futile.  For I am merely putting dents onto his thick armor.  There is something peculiar about this robot.  In my state of desperation, thinking of not wanting to get my squad killed, I do the unthinkable: I charge towards the robot!

My squad seems shocked.  The robot seems shocked.  Every one stops what they are doing and watch what could have been the most lunatic scene of the century as recorded.

Adrenalized, with heighten alert.  As I am approaching an arm’s length away from my target, I toss my pistol away, and the puzzlement has deepened.  “What are you thinking?!” the robot must have pondered.  As it too stays still, a step or two away from the huge hole that my rocket #3 has created not so long ago.

With all my remaining strength, I run up to the robot – what enormous figure! – and give it a big push, into the hole.  The hole is no ordinary hole.  It is a lift shaft.  I pull the level  nearby to call a lift to come down.  Almost like a slow motion, the lift crushes onto the fallen robot and renders it inactive.  All of a sudden, it is silence.  The heavy breathing of the human squad and the electrostatic sparkles of the fallen robot fills the silence bestows upon the aftermath of the last wave of attack.

“Just what the ‘uck are you thinking, kiddo?” our squad leader mutters the words slowly while staring at the fallen robot.  My face has gone red and I reply, “Erm, Sir.  I did what I have to do.  I have disengaged the robot.”

“Ah, disengaged,” he looks up at the ceiling disengaged from the current scene and continues, “So this robot is neither alive nor dead.  What the ‘uck are we supposed to do with a robot in coma?”

“Sir,” one soldier steps up and offers an answer, “We are not allowed to harm or interact or harvest any such robot.  In fact, we must retreat from this perimeter immediately and notify the Federation.”

“Good.  And how are we supposed to secure this perimeter, as part of our mission?”

“The Law says, no mission supersede this situation of ours as it is a grave threat to humanity, unless humanity is in threat,” the soldier continues.  Another soldier steps up, clenching his fists in anger and says, “Sir.  I say we blow this motherfooker apart and continue with our mission.”  Some of the soldiers join force, fists in the air, and yell, “Let’s blow this motherfooker apart!”

“NO!” the squad leader quiet the crowd with his calm voice.  “There are certain values in life we must not compromise.  This robot in coma is not to be harmed.  Mission abort!”

“But what would happen to this robot in coma?” I ask, in all ignorance.  The squad leader shrugs and says, “Maybe its another half will claim it for mutual voluntary termination.  Maybe the robots will use it to claim ownership to this underground structure.  How the ‘uck would I know?  I don’t study robots for a living.  I kill ’em to pay my bills, kiddo.”

The squad leader’s long sigh meets with a faint drumming sound from a distance.  The noise amplifies as we standstill, trying to figure out what is next.  “Sir!  Take a look at the radar,” shouts one soldier in disbelief.  “They are in great number, a scale I have never seen before!”

“Move, move!  Retreat!  Now!  You and you, hold the line with me.  The rest of you.  Run like hell!” commands the squad leader.

We run like mad, fueled by the great number of robots chasing after us.  Have I started the Fourth War?  I dare not even think about it.  As I emerge from the underground compound, greeted by dusk, the siren has been sounded.  For how long?  I do not know.  I see shadow of some students from the university dashing in the dark.  I look back at the exit, half expecting to see robots making an entry into our human dwelling, a formal invasion.  Instead, I see animals and birds, coming out from the same exit we emerged.  And they too are engulfed by the dusk, disappeared into the dark.

*     *     *     *     *

Author’s Note: I am always thrilled when it comes to writing the “Fragments of my Dreams” series.  I love being able to let my imagination runs wild, guided only by the [real] dreams I have.  Sunday morning (Nov 8, 2009), I woke up early, vividly remembered I had a dream.  But the content was vague.  I fell back to sleep and revisited my dreamland again, willing the dream to be repeated.  And incredible as it sounds, the dream did repeat again, like a movie.  In fact, it ended inside a movie theater.  I picked the most coherent part of my dream to be the inspiration of this episode.

There are different shades of gray, from the floor to the walls to the ceiling overhung with bright spotlights.  Well polished and wide open space, the kind of prestigious corporate working environment that is so commonly seen in almost every movie, in almost all our dreams – be it as a real dream like mine or as a concept people have in mind.  I am in black suit, so is my assistant, and my boss too is in black and she asks, “What’s your career aspiration?”  I give a straight answer without thinking too much.  Then comes a moment of silence.  My boss cocks her head sideway and says, “So, here is what you want to be in mid term: to support the business”.  An image of me conjured not too far away from me, straight ahead of me.  “And here is what you want to be in long term: to make business,” she continues as another image of me appeared pretty far down the hall, kind of way off tangent.  “You see, there is no direct line.  It’s hard.  But here is a better alternative.”  A third image of me is conjured directly ahead of the first one – the mid term me – and she says, “A much bigger role in supporting the business”.

I give it some thought, inside a sauna room full of business men.  There must be a way to fulfill my own aspiration.  Life sucks in supporting the business.  Inside the hot steamy room, with men in black suits, and I think of a MBA program.  The more I think about it, I feel as though I have already enrolled into a MBA program.  I begin to feel the stress of a MBA program.  The anxiety associated with examination after examination suddenly hits me.  I so dread examinations.  And as I ponder upon my future …

*   *   *

I am a bodyguard.  And I have two co-workers.  My boss is in his fifties or sixties, silver hair, crumpled face, but still very alert.  We live in a pleasant Western neighborhood of the colors green and brown, sunshine and tranquility, the kind of pleasant upper class living environment that is so commonly seen in almost every movie, in almost all our dreams.  As we stroll along the street of our neighborhood, what happens next is hard to describe.  It is illogical, it defies physics.  Imagine you are viewing us from above, out of nowhere, in slow motion: two cars appear from our sides, getting closer and closer to each other and bam!  They smash onto one another, side-by-side, with our boss stuck in the middle.  The car on the left, my boss, the car on the right, all collapse into a singularity – one straight line.  It is a daylight murder!  I commanded my two co-workers to yank open the wrecks and recover our boss.  Our boss is in coma.

*   *   *

I know who did that monstrous act: A man in black suit with his bodyguard and a dog in black.  Someone in the neighborhood moved in not long ago.  Inside a posh hotel, one that appears in every other movie and dream, my plan of distracting the bodyguard and then poison him does not take off.  I have an alternative plan: to take down the black dog with the same plan.  As I sneak pass the hotel restaurant, heading towards the lift lobby, the lift door opens and the black dog emerges.  How fierce it is!  Monstrous!  It barks; I try to shut it up; and it bits onto my right fist.  I am expecting pain but all I feel is the wetness and the warmth, inside the mouth of a dog that has no teeth!  I see a crowd coming to my direction.  What the heck am I suppose to do with this dog?

PS. My dream over the weekend.

I should have known that my girlfriend would leave me one day (who?!).  And she has, leaving me with an empty apartment in this University campus.  I open the door and the apartment looks grim. There is a note on the wall saying: keep those paintings of yours and the curtains too.  I take down the curtains and stare at those paintings I drew for her.  Those paintings … sigh.  She does not want to keep.  Not even for memory’s sake.

I take those paintings of mine one after another and I take down the curtains too.  There are still random belongings of hers scattered inside the apartment and I wish to keep them all.

I look out of the window, feeling melancholy.  The street is dark outside.  From a distance, I see a vehicle emitting enough fumes to cover the sky!  I rush down and chase after that vehicle (but why?).  I see a street full of cars of the 50’s and before I know it …

… I am “demoleculerized” … being decomposed into molecules and resembled back somewhere far far away.  And I see my mother, my father, and my sister …

We are walking in a somewhat fast pace.  My mother says to me: I want to travel via demoleculerization too!

Good Lord … what a way to travel.

I love being at my home town.  And I am in an intimate relationship with a girl with fair skin.  I took her with my motorbike and with our digital giggles, we are racing in between the high-rise housings that look like buildings from a video game.  The streets are deserted and I am lost.  We sit at a bench looking at the darkness around us wondering where our motel is.

I ask her to take a seat at the bench while I drive around to see if I can find our destination.  When I return, I see a guy standing right beside this girl of mine and she looks unhappy, with me.  Fine, she is yours.  Just take her with you.  The girl looks at me in disdain and returns the shopping bags to me (who is this dude?!).

After they are long gone, I look into my shopping bags in horror: Where are my keys?

I head back to my apartment thinking of calling a locksmith to open the gate and the door.  Silly me, they now have access to my apartment.  I need to change the locks!

Call the locksmith I should.  Change the locks I should.  I am running out of time.  I need another dose of demoleculerization, like now.

~ May, 2008, A Dream

It has been raining heavily for days, somewhere in the future.  It has to be somewhere in the future because I don’t recognize some of the locations.  I do however recognize one location, the usual walk to the bus station that reminds me of my school days back in Hong Kong.  This time is for work.

It is an early morning but yet the overcast is so overwhelming that the rain has removed most of the colors around us, leaving scenes of black and white.  I was running to the bus stop.  But why?  I don’t know.  Since young I have been running to that bus stop almost every day.

Along comes Francis, my old friend.  And he is walking while I was running (but how?).  We exchange a smile and he asks, “Which bus are you taking?”  “23B.  You?” I reply.  The freshness of the cool air fills my lung as I speak.  “Me too,” he said.  There is something about his smile that seems to radiate in yet another rainy morning.  “But why 23B?” I ask (apparently, even in my dream I remember there are bus 23 and bus 23A too).  Before Francis can answer, one bus zooms pass us and we run (or at least I run).  The bus driver at the last moment sees us approaching the bus stop and he brakes hard.  No, it is 23A.  His look of haggardness I manage to get a glimpse of and the bus jerks forward as the driver steps onto the gas pedal.

“It is raining so I prefer a shorter ride,” Francis replies.  That’s true.  23, 23A, and 23B with a similar set of destinations all take a slight different route.

*     *     *     *     *

I work in a radio station, apparently.  By the time I arrive, my colleague has already been on air talking about the unsung heroes behind the fire inspection work within our city.  Shelves and shelves of archived materials packaged in DVD casing, you wouldn’t expect a radio station that looks like this, would you?  “Too many news on the financial world these days.  It is gloomy, just like our rain,” my colleague once said to me.  I agree with her.  How often do we report on what and who sustains our city?  On how this city works?  How few of us are there to inspect the buildings one after another, day after day, month after month?  And when we reach the end, the cycle begins again?

I am curious on when the fire inspector will next visit my home in Singapore and as I search through the entire digital database of inspection schedule, I hear my colleague continues on air, “Due to the heavy rain this morning, the bus companies are dispatching buses from the terminals in a shorter interval.  The rain however seems to have stopped.  Have a nice day.”

*     *     *     *     *

2008.10.26 – My dream ended with I fighting a flying cockroach triple its usual size with a can of insecticide much smaller than what you see on the street.  And I do not know how to link that ending to my entire dream.

I was innocent.  At least I think I was.  Apparently, in this dream, I was a girl.

It is a bright and sunny day.  I met this guy the other day and this new friend of mine referred me to this job opportunity.  It is not hard to find the office.  A wide open reception area with sunlight flooded into the interior of a modern design office space.  A few gentlemen in ties and formal dress code approach me at the front door area and ask if I know what this job is about.

“A classical vocalist,” I reply.

They exchange a few looks that I can hardly decipher and one of them ask me to sing a few lines.

The fact is, I don’t think I am qualified as a professional classical vocalist.  I told my new friend that I wish to be a classical vocalist.  There is a whole world of difference.  Nevertheless, he passed me a name card and asked me to turn up.

Maybe I am shy, maybe I am lacking of that confidence, my brief audition is a total disaster.  My voice is scratchy and thin.  I am about to leave this super massive embarrassment of mine when one of them says in  a casual tone, “Can you start now?  Our boss wants you to be in the job.”

*     *     *     *     *

For the past few months, my new friend – my boss – and I have infiltrated this new organization in separate capacity.  I hardly have the chance to see the sun and I hardly have the chance to see him.  I have a gigantic office for myself equipped with futuristic high tech gadgets blended perfectly with the minimalistic design that spells out the word “emptiness” so loudly, so in my face.  There is no life in this space.  I have no life in this place not of my own.

I have no problem working my way into this new organization either.  My apparent limit in my vocal skill seems to have been compensated by perhaps my earnestness?  Perhaps my …

So far, there is no direction, no instruction from the organization that I truly work for.  What am I suppose to do?  How am I suppose to infiltrate?  As I am leaving my office, a few men come up to me.  One of them say, “We want you to come us”.

Ushered through a myriad of hard to recognize lifts and corridors and rooms, we arrive at a room with blinking lights, no sound, and in the middle lies a huge mechanical cocoon.  What’s inside the cocoon?  I don’t need to wait long before I get the answer.

My boss is trapped inside this cocoon and he is wrapped with a mechanical suit and helmet that cover his entire body.  I gasp and take a moment to steady myself.  One of the men casts me a look of suspicion and says, “He is a spy and in no time we can extract all the information from his brain.”

*     *     *     *     *

Time is 7.42pm and I am staring through the large window inside my office as I strum my fingers on my desk.  It’s time to exit, I say to myself.  I pack my bag and leave.

Mission Abort.

2008.07.13

Our enemy has driven us from the surface and many of us hide underneath the ground.  Soon we build home and community underground.  We don’t drive like our ancestors once did on the surface of Earth.  Some of us ride on a robot that is five times our size.  That is how we travel. At least some of us do.

After a rather long ride, I land onto one of our settlements.  I park my robot and walk to my favorite music store – HMV.  It is crowded.  Full of people as usual.  There are not many places like where I am no more.  Damn those enemies of ours.

Suddenly, an alarm rings.  Everyone flee in panic, in all directions.  I run to my robot knowing that once again, our enemy has found our base. I need to run for I am carrying something of huge importance known to me and a few other scientists.  Our enemy is not coming after our settlement.  They are coming after me.

I mount my robot and shoot up to the sky.  Pass the surface – the forbidden place for human being – and into the galaxy.  Trailing behind me are the troop of our enemy – all ride in robots.

I pass one star after another.  I go as fast and far as I can but soon, I am surrounded.  I see hundreds of our enemy surrounding me.  Indeed, I am trapped.  Indeed, I have nowhere else to flee.

I take out my precious – an atomic bomb that has enough power to destroy myself together with our enemy.  This is the moment that I live for … I detonate my precious and …

I find myself in a town I am unfamiliar of.  Somewhere that looks like Japan.  And I meet my friend there.  We are looking at a construction site, or rather a demolition site.  We see a roll of workers all dancing and singing, at the rims of different levels within a building that is hollow from the inside.  All of a sudden, a worker drops from what seems like a five or six stories high.  Everyone gasp and there is a police car right outside as though the policemen have anticipated such a freak accident.  They take the victim into the car and presumably, they are heading towards the hospital.  I see a hole in his head.  Meanwhile, the workers are now back to dancing and singing.  How strange.

My friend and I continue the walk and at one junction, right beside the market, I see a showroom.  I say to my friend: One day I am going to own one of those vehicles.

I love to drive; I love to fly.

PS. I had this dream way before I watched the movie “Iron Man”.  Observant readers may realize that the episodes of the category “Fragments of My Dreams” are not in running number.  Well, I always try my best to space out blog entries that are not time sensitive.  Some do get stuck inside my ‘dusty shelf’ for a long time.

Why today?  Believe it or not, my blogging pipeline has been chocked by a few massively time consuming entries – or rather personal projects – that take a lot longer than my plan.  And it is my desire to update my site at least once in two days’ time, if not everyday.  Stay tuned!