Night of 12/17/00 - 12/18/00
Dream 1
I was shopping at a clothing store with a friend of mine, but I’m not sure who she was. I couldn’t decide which sweater to buy, and she told me that one of the ones I was thinking of getting looked really good on me, and exhorted me to buy that one. I remember it being gray with multicolored strands woven into the fabric. I was annoyed at her for rushing me along the way she was, since I wanted to take my time, and I was hoping to shop for shoes as well, but she was trying to hurry me out of the store.
When we got outside, there were criminals, probably robbers, shooting up the parking lot. I dove down flat on the pavement and stayed there for a few seconds. When I looked up, one of them had a gun aimed at me. I felt a bullet whiz past me, narrowly missing me, and I rolled behind a car and crouched there for cover. At this point, I remember thinking that I ought to be terrified, but the whole situation didn’t seem quite real. I tried to force myself to realize the gravity of what was happening, but I couldn’t seem to make myself fear for my life.
The next thing I remember is being captured by the robbers and taken inside the store, where they barricaded us all in. I don’t recall that sequence of events very clearly, however. They must not have been taking me as a hostage, because one of them told me that since I had seen them and knew who they were now, they had to kill me. He pointed a gun at me, and I spread my arms out to my sides and told him in a definat voice to go ahead and shoot me. A second later, I started to worry that he might actually shoot me, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted that to happen. However, he didn’t shoot, I think because something distracted him.
While he was distracted and had his back turned to me, I stole his gun. As soon as I had it, though, it wasn’t a gun anymore. It looked more like a lighter. The robbers didn’t seem too concerned that I had it, wither. However, I didn’t notice the change, and I still acted as though it was a gun. I don’t think I knew that it wasn’t, but it didn’t occur to me to use my advantageous positiong as leverage to try to escape. I just remember being determined that if I was going to be shot, it wasn’t going to be by the robbers. I’m not sure if I voiced this sentiment aloud, but I remember pointing the “gun” at myself and the robbers asking very sarcastically if I was going to shoot myself and laughing at me. I got annoyed at them and stalked away.
My memory is rather cloudy regarding exactly what this sequence of events entailed. I think that I didn’t want to escape and actually wanted to be shot, but I just didn’t want the robbers to have the satisfaction of shooting me. I don’t think they were being very serious about it anyway, judging from their behavior, but apparently I was.
The next thing I remember might have been right after this or a little later. I lay down on a couch and pointed the gun at my head again. I was determined to shoot myself this time, and the robbers didn’t make fun of me. For a few seconds I got very nervous and was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to do it and would have to let the robbers shoot me after all. But my nervousness passed, and I pulled the trigger, or whatever was akin to a trigger on this strange contraption. Instead of firing a bullet, it felt like it injected me with something, reminiscent of the way a hypospray works on Star Trek. The sensation I experienced might also have been an electric shock, as from a taser, but I think the former description is more accurate. I became very relaxed and sleepy, as though I were being anesthetized. One of the robbers seemed concerned and sat down beside me, but didn’t say anything. After a few moments, I started trying to think of something meaningful to say as my last words. However, I began remembering things I wanted to do but had left unfinished, especially me website, which in real life I am redesigning. In the dream, I was almost finished with my work on it, and I aksed the robbers to finish it for me, trying to explain to them how to do it. I was afraid that it was too complicated and that I wasn’t explaining it well enough for them to do it correctly, the way I wanted it. I got depressed, because I had been hoping that the completion of my website would be a grand gesture, an expression of myself and my life to the world which would live on after me.
The confusing aspect of the dream is that I think the symptoms I experienced after “shooting” myself were psychosomatic. Either that, or the next part of the dream happened through a force of will. Some time after I was talking about the website, I stopped feeling tired and I got up from the couch. I may have realized because of the website that I still had more to do and couldn’t let myself die, but I think really that I just forgot that I was supposed to be dying, which makes me think that I wasn’t really dying. In any case, I started talking to the robbers and making conversation with them, and they turned out to be very personable. That’s the last I remember of my dream.
