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My Dream from 5/16/00

It all started when I was in the library. I was looking for a book but I couldn't recall its title. I wanted to look for it though but the library's computer system had a partial shutdown. Our cards now contained magnetic strips, unlike the simple bar codes I thought I remembered from before. Having found the unknown book, I proceeded to take it to the checkout desk. Outside, the light was shrinking and the room was increasingly black with the exception of the inside lights. Mrs. Clark was the librarian at the desk but she wouldn't talk to me. She talked to another patron who was standing at the desk instead. She ran my card through the scanner but it wouldn't read the magnetic strip. Mrs. Clark kept disregarding what her task was- checking out my books- but I was more intrigued by her conversation with the other patron anyway. The forecast was for massive lightning storms and rain for days. This would be the end of the world as we knew it.

I walk home and when I get in the door, Chris is sitting in one of the green chairs in my living room. "So I hear Carrie dumped you, too," he inquired. "Welcome to the 'I got dumped by Carrie' club." We started talking about the events in our lives with her and the breakups we both had when, into the house walks Andrew. "Guess what?" he asked us with a bitter sarcasm in his question. "You got dumped by Carrie too," Chris and I said in a unison monotone. He continued on with his story and the events that led to their breakup. We sat around the living room for a few hours drinking lemonade and catching up on each other when we decided to take a trip to the mall. The weather was still ominous and we wanted to pick up a few things before anything happened to the world.

We're at the mall walking into Dick's. For what purpose? I never knew. A lot of the events in my life had left me with gaps in my life; first the unknown book, all the breakups with Carrie, now the unknown objects we were shopping for. I ended up going downstairs to the baseball section of the store. For some reason, I needed to get a new athletic protector. I tried on a few sizes, some too big, some too small. We were talking about the upcoming events outside while trying on the clothing and picked out a vest and a muzzle before going to the cash register to checkout. I couldn't say why this was, but I was handing the cashier a bunch of cash and I was $20 under the price of everything. When I gave him back the vest, he re-rang everything and I was $20 over. I told him to forget it and I took the cup and the muzzle and we all left.

Somehow, I made my way home to an underground bunker on the foot of a giant ravine. The bunkers looked like a cross between the ones at Normandy beach and at the Golan Heights. A few other people were in the bunker but the only one I really recall seeing was my father. There was chatter abound and I heard comparisons between this and the flood, G-d was punishing the wicked once again. The clouds in the sky were looking extremely ominous and for some reason, there were hundreds of men on the crest of the towering cliff above. The men were chanting something and dancing up a nd down but it was indistinguishable what they were saying. No matter, it was the end of the world and you could only expect to see some crazy people performing apocalyptic rituals.

My dad and I were talking but I don't remember everything he said. What I do remember though, was he stripping out of his clothes as the men above continued to storm the earth. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," he remarked as he did this. Someone once said we enter into the world cold, naked, and alone and we leave the same way. As the world started to end, this was coming to be proven true. The clouds outside instantaneously grew even darker and we were no longer able to see outside. As soon as my father commented, enormous bolts of lightning tore through the sky, eventually striking the maniacs above. Some of them went flying off the cliff down to us, bleeding from their skulls from the raw energy that surged through their bodies before death. The power of G-d's wrath raged through our bodies in our final earth-being moments; like the river that carved the deep ravine we lay in. A giant flash tore open the darkness and momentarily blinded us in death...

"What we do in life echoes in eternity"
-Maximus, Gladiator

5/19/00