costumed dance & shop

I was working in a themed retail outlet in a busy shopping centre. It seemed to be a night shift although I couldn’t see natural light or the time to confirm this. Customers were coming in and out of the shop, all dressed in strange costumes complete with masks, headdresses and painted faces. They were not playing characters specific to a time period or a recognisable theme, and although each character was unique, once the characters were all assembled, they resembled a modernistic and colourful tribe. I was working with a young girl who had obviously been in the shop for some time. She was teaching me the various procedures and showed me where to hide my bag and, after I removed them, my shoes. I tidied shelves and did some paperwork. Toward the end of the shift, all of the characters who had gathered took position on the floor and began to dance. It was a fantastic dance: the whole group had mastered the choreographed routine and looked fabulous in their extreme costuming. I watched them dance for a time, feeling that I would like to be a part of it, but also feeling that they were a strange collection of people. Suddenly, I felt urgent about leaving. I realised that I didn’t want to work in retail and I wasn’t sure why I had accepted the position. I decided to tell the girl that I was going home and that I wouldn’t work another shift; I wanted her to pass on the message to the woman who owned the store. I found the girl at the back of the shop and explained that I was leaving and that the money I could earn working for myself was better, as well as the creative rewards. I told her that she was terrific at her job and wished her all the best. I went to collect my handbag and shoes from behind the counter at the front of the store. I opened cupboard doors and couldn’t see it anywhere, but then my mobile phone rang and I located it in a bottom cupboard. I then looked for my shoes: a pair of sparkling silver jiffies like dancing shoes. I couldn’t find them. Others, including the girl, helped me look, and eventually she found them by climbing up a ladder and unpacking the top shelf. She passed them down to me but they had melted; I had to reshape them somehow.

shooting stars

I was sitting in my car, but I was not moving. Rather, I was parked on a street at the top of a hill, overlooking a city. Even though I was in the city, the stars in the night sky were spectacularly bright. I looked out the window, ducking my head slightly so that I could see as much of the sky as possible, and gazed into the stars. I could see the yellowish crescent moon, thin against the deep charcoal blue, and hundreds of white and yellow stars, shining like diamonds. Suddenly, a star shot across the sky, arching over the moon and disappearing behind the silhouetted horizon, leaving behind a fading, luminous tail. I turned to tell my friend and then bent down again to see the sky. A second shooting star blazed a trail across the dark sky. I watched as it jetted off; a white light moving through space. Again, I turned to my friend in the driver’s seat and told her about the sight. A third time, I dipped my head and peered out the window, and yet another star fell from its position and burnt a brilliant path across the sky.

blue thing

I dived into a pool of crystal clear, icy water. The pool was exceptionally deep and its walls and floor were made of cement that had been painted bright sky blue. The paint was peeling in places. I felt the rush of cold water as I plunged under the surface, and then I stayed up the shallow end of the pool for a short time, waiting for a group of three boys to leave the deep end of the pool. I turned in a slow backward somersault through the water, arching backward and enjoying the stretch. As the boys climbed out of the pool, I swam, freestyle, up to the deep end. I was aware of my stroke, of moving smoothly and lightly, causing minimal splashing. Once up the deep end, I paused, holding onto the edge of the pool. Something stung my finger; I looked and there was a Daddy Long Legs spider clutching the end of my index finger on my right hand. I was reasonably confident that the spider was not poisonous but I wanted to remove it urgently. I tried flicking it off but it clung to me. I then pulled at a couple of its legs which broke off and instantly it grew others. It grew more and more until it had at least twenty brittle legs. Finally, I managed to shake it off but I could see that, where it had pierced my skin, there was now another creature hiding, just under my finger nail. Tiny curling tentacles hung out of the bite, so I grabbed them and pulled; an iridescent blue creature emerged, much like a blue bottle, complete with a long trailing tail. This tail seemed to be attached to an inner coiling mechanism so that the creature could twist it inside itself at will. I tried to throw it away but its body stuck to my fingers. I tried again, this time it flew through the air and landed on the grass but its tail end stuck to my hand so that the body was still attached and it whipped back again, winding the tail back up inside itself. I repeated this a couple more times and it returned to me each time. I was now sitting on grainy yellow sand and I thought I should bury the creature so as to suffocate it, but I felt too horrible and didn’t want to hurt it. A woman sitting with me told me that it was the only way to get rid of it so I quickly dug a hole with my left hand and buried the blue thing, piling sand on top of it as fast as possible. I then pressed down on the sand, keeping it under; I could feel it struggling to burrow up to the surface and then it stopped.

unfamiliar

I was travelling around America, a passenger in a car, sitting on the left as we do in Australia, not to the right. We were also driving on the left-hand side of the road. I consulted a hand-drawn map which looked nothing like the real thing: the land mass was an entirely different shape and the states were divided and named quite oddly. South America was almost in the middle of the continent. The map was rendered in lead pencil, drawn on an old sheet of white paper. We turned left off the main highway and looped around a narrow street so that we were driving back in the direction we had come from. The street was narrow and wound around a steep cliff. Cars passed us at terrific speeds, overtaking our car and shooting off ahead. Eventually, we stopped and found ourselves in a neighbourhood street. I went into a room that was my bedroom, and changed my clothes. I looked in a full-length mirror, slightly concerned by my appearance: my black pants hung low on my hips exposing white underwear; my black top was too short and my white bra was extremely ill-fitting. I wondered why I was wearing white under black. I left the bedroom which opened directly onto the street, and pulled a curtain across—the only thing separating my space from public space. I thought that I would rather a secure room and worried about who might enter at will.

tiny

I was lying in bed when someone came into the bedroom, offering me a banana sandwich. I could see the thick slices of banana, wedged between two slices of brown bread. (I haven’t had a banana sandwich in about twenty years.) I went into the living area and then returned to the bedroom to wake B, so she could have a sandwich too. She was still asleep but she had shrunk a lot; she was now only the size of a small kitten. She rolled over and was in danger of being suffocated by the soufflé into which she had rolled. I picked her up gently out of the egg white mixture, cradling her in my hands. I thought I should give her a wash before I took her out to have a sandwich, so I went into the bathroom and filled the sink with lukewarm water. I wondered how to not alarm her by waking her too suddenly and how she would feel, now that she was so tiny.

pelican

We were in our living space, preparing to go out, and I was looking out the window. I saw a huge bird, a pelican, circle past the window. I noticed how enormous it was, how wide its wing span. From inside, I could see its underbelly, the vast white and black feathered space of the bird’s wings and torso. I commented to B that a bird outside, flying past the window, looked like a dinosaur of sorts, and we went out onto the balcony to have a better look. The pelican flew down and landed on the balcony floor; its head reached up to my shoulders. The bird edged toward me and clasped my forearm in its beak. The bird’s grip was extraordinarily strong and I was trapped. I slowly walked in a tight circle, trying to gently wriggle my arm from its long beak. Somehow, I could hear the bird’s thoughts: it was considering the best way to attack and kill me. It was thinking of piercing my skull through the temporal lobe. B had gone back inside to find something with which to fend off the bird. As we circled, I took the opportunity to step back inside the glass door and slide it quickly closed, forcing the pelican to let go of my arm and shutting it outside.

riddle quest

I was on a trek with two other people; at times I was with my partner and my brother, but sometimes I was with my ex-partner and my sister. We were journeying together on foot, on a quest of some kind. It was dusk and we were at the edge of a vast forest. With the fading light, creatures of fanciful appearance began to emerge out of the dense foliage. Moose-like animals with soft grey dreadlocked fur ran about us; mammoth cows with dark grey wool-covered backs; and wild gorilla creatures, again with soft grey fur. A young gorilla came close to us and eventually I nursed him, stroking his soft fluffy head. With the threat of total darkness and other, more dangerous animals, waking in the night, we felt an urgency to move on. As we walked, we witnessed a strange sight: the mammoth cow creatures grew restless and affected by the moon. They stampeded madly about, whilst a dog barked uncontrollably, jumping in the air, fighting against his leash, which was tied to a hills hoist clothes line, over and over again, the leash cutting into his throat and mouth with each jump, until his blood splattered our faces and spotted the ground. The two others with whom I walked, became infected with the madness of the night, and began to leap about with the dog, howling at the moon. I urged them to stop and we walked on. We came to a building and intuitively we knew we were to enter the stone walled courtyard and find the right path in the maze therein. We selected, knowing that it was our path, and we climbed the fragile, narrow staircase that led somewhere important to us. As we climbed, one of the others practised her signature over and over and over again, knowing that she would need to write it perfectly at some point on our journey. Funnily though, when I looked at what she was writing, it was my name, written again and again across the page. Being the slowest climber up the rickety stairs, I went first, careful with each step as the climb was fraught with danger. The winding staircase, some flights made only of cardboard or rotten boards leaning against each other, whorled up and up perhaps a hundred levels. Nearing the top, we heard voices saying “Here they come. Are we ready?” When we reached them, there were about seven people dressed in a caterpillar suit; out of every hump of the caterpillar’s back, poked a head of each of the seven people. The person at the head of the caterpillar asked us “What do you want to know?” and we answered “The password.” The caterpillar people repeated “The password” over and over again. They agreed to tell us if we could produce our name written correctly – the moment for my companion to write her signature and my name. Just as she wrote it, the floor underneath the caterpillar gave way and the seven people plummeted down the stairwell cavity, disappearing from view. I was dragged by the pull of gravity toward the hole in the floor and I too fell through. Realising that I would drop to the bottom and die, I reached out and latched onto a crossbeam, swinging my body back onto the stairs. I had to climb up several flights again to rejoin the others. We continued on.