As some people and I were traveling on a bus, I was talking with a woman. When the bus stopped at a small roadside store, I stepped out to buy some things. When I returned to the bus, I found it had left without me. I returned into the store and pleaded with a man named Doug to take me in his car to catch the bus. At first he didn't want to help. When I offered to pay him, however, he agreed to take me. We jumped into his car and took off.

The bus had reached a place where the people inside had had to get out and descend into a tunnel. Since the tunnel was filled with water, the people had to board a raft and float along through the tunnel. When we reached the tunnel, the man driving the car took out a rubber raft and he and I climbed into it. We began floating down the tunnel in pursuit of the people in the bus.

As we floated along the underground river, I thought about how I had left some of my things in the bus, and how I wanted to get them back.

At first the ride on the raft was wobbly as the swift current carried us over what appeared to be narrow rapids. Trees limbs hung over the water, and I feared one might poke a hole in the rubber raft. Finally the river widened and I asked Doug if it would be easier going now. He replied, ""Yes."

I heard some voices and saw a place where someone was living. We stopped the raft, climbed out and ascended some stairs. The person living here was an old woman. When she saw us she ran up the stairs away from us. I followed her into a messy dirty house with stuff spilled all over it. She ran into a kitchen and hid in a closet under some clothes. I stood outside the closet and asked her if she had seen the people in the raft go by. She wouldn't answer, but she handed out a small note.

The note basically said that the raft had passed by, and that we were about 10 minutes behind it.

As I looked at the note more closely, I realized that along with it were several papers which belonged to the woman with whom I had been talking on the bus. One paper had been written by the people on the bus: a death certificate for Steven Collier. The death certificate, scribbled in pencil on a piece of paper, made a disposition of my property which was given to the woman on the bus. The certificate said I had married the woman.

Doug said we needed to hurry before my property was disposed of and the woman got it. I answered, "No, don't worry about this. Don't hurry now."

I told him that even though the woman and I had never had a wedding ceremony, we actually had been married. He began thinking and said, "Well, if you've really been married, and this is a death certificate, what does that mean?"

He was implying I was dead. I felt quite strange. I said, "Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter."

I was no longer in any hurry to follow the people on the raft. Somehow I knew things had worked out the way they should have.

We got back into our raft and continued on. We took a different route from the people ahead of us and reached our final destination before them. I disembarked from the raft and climbed onto a small platform. I thought about how surprised the others would be when they arrived and saw me waiting for them.

As I waited, I had a vision in my mind of what looked liked the screen of a movie theater. It appeared a big-attraction movie was about to begin on the screen. On the screen I envisioned my wife stepping off her raft and seeing me standing there. It would be a happy surprise for everyone. She apparently thought I really had died. And here I would be, waiting for her.

Copyright 2007 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com