There had been a previous dream, in which I was somehow pitted against Anonymous Evil Megalocorp X. I guess it must have been doing bad stuff like abducting people and killing people off and stuff. That dream led into this one, and some elements leaked over.

There was an earthquake. At first I thought it was AEMX that was behind it, but turns out it was just an earthquake. A pretty bad one, though; lots of structural damage to homes. I found one such that looked like it had just kind of tilted, breaking seams and jamming the door shut. I went inside and found the house’s only resident, a woman I didn’t know, in bad shape. There was a wide crack in the wall along the floor where the walls had shifted. At first I thought her foot was caught in the crack, but then I saw that foot, along with her other foot and one of her hands, was missing. They had apparently been amputated, and were neatly bound with white bandages.

Again, I thought that AEMX had cut off this poor woman’s hand and feet. She assured me they hadn’t. Shortly after the earthquake (a few days ago now) a truck had driven by, loudspeakers blaring a message saying:

Many of you are trapped in your houses. Water mains have ruptured and so your tap water is toxic. To escape alive you must follow the following steps:
1. Find a mason jar.
2. Put your hand in the jar.
3. Leave your hand in the jar so that over the next few days it melts off.
4. [...]

The instructions went on to explain how to remove one’s feet. I’m not sure if they ever explained how this was supposed to help trapped residents escape.

So apparently my friend Anja has this creepy roommate. He’s constantly mentioning some intersection, and insinuating that she go there, he follows her around sometimes, and he’s kind of a crazy-talker otherwise. Somehow I wind up hanging out at their apartment, and Anja is out. The roommate mentions the intersection, and I ask him what’s at that intersection. He says the name of a psych hospital. I ask him why Anja is supposed to go there, and he says because she’s crazy. I call him a madman, and he gets annoyed. I do it a couple more times and he takes a swing at me. He misses, but I almost fall down a flight of stairs. I keep egging him on, inciting him to keep attacking. I keep dodging, but quickly realize that he’s strong, and if he connects with one solid hit I’m going down.

There’s no end to the story. After that I woke up.

Thing is, I sometimes have difficulty deciding what is imagined and what is real. Especially when I’ve just woken up. So I had to convince myself that I had just had a dream, that it was not a bank holiday, and that I had to get up and go to work. What finally convinced me was that in my dream it was Monday, and I felt sure it was actually at least Tuesday.

My brain really likes to sleep. This is just one of the tactics it has used to try to get me to sleep more instead of going to my job so I can buy food and beer for it. Other tactics include incorporating the sound of my alarm clock into dreams, or making up elabourate reasons for ignoring the alarm.

My brain is crafty, but it hasn’t been able to outwit me yet. I say yet, because one of these days it may well get the best of me. I must remain vigilant.