EPTDo you ever have recurring dreams? Or maybe a dream that lasted two nights in a row, the second night picking up right where the first night left off. Last week I dreamed a dream I knew I had dreamed before.
I sit alone on a faded yellow plastic bench... the bench is sometimes too small for me and sometimes I am small enough for it. It sits on hot concrete that forms a small patio area on the side of a house. Nearby grows an orange tree whose foliage just barely fails to shade the place where I sit. I sit there and I wait... and I wait... and I wait. I do not know what I am waiting for. Only that there is someone who I used to have so much fun with on this spot and surely they will come soon and we can have fun again. Sometimes I play with what was once soft malleable clay but is now a dried lump. My dad puts his head out the sliding glass door asking if I am alright and I say yes. I am alright aren't I? Why would I be not alright? I'm just... waiting. He closes the door and does not come back. A good while after someone comes to get me. Most often it is my older sister but there have been times when it was my grandmother or brother. When they come and pull me up off the bench I am filled with a feeling of sorrow. They are not who I was waiting for...
During the weekly get together I have with my brother, younger sister, older sister(who was in town to visit my ailing grandmother) and biological mother I recounted this dream to them while we were playing cards. My family recognized it as the house we lived in when my father and mother divorced. My older sister said that after they split I would often sit on that patio where my mother used to paint, make sculptures and draw with us. It crashed home to me then. Somewhere deep in my mind I was still waiting for my mother to come back home and draw with me. Seventeen years had erased it from my conscious memory and yet in dreams I remembered. (This kind of memory, btw, is a guaranteed way to make your mother cry =/ )
There is another dream however that shows up far more often. It is not always the same, but it always contains one key element... Fire. As some may remember my brother caused a small kitchen fire a good many months back now. Although the event happened near 7 months ago now, it will not leave me. Somewhere around 70%(this number has gradually been decreasing) of nights I dream of fire. Every day before I leave for work and before I go to bed I assiduously check that the toaster is unplugged, the oven is off, the burners are off, and that nothing was left ON the burners. This has caused me to be late to work on several occasions. Why can't I get it out of my head...
Just before the incident I had been in a lesson from Ninazerg who had kindly offered to help me win the tournament I was in(I believe it was Crimson Starleague 2 iirc). Maybe an hour after the lesson I was playing a match, practicing, with the door shut, when the fire alarm went off... At first I ignored it. I knew my brother was home and I knew he had been cooking his meal for the next few days(he often cooks a big portion of something and then refrigerates it in tupperware for microwaving later). I only ignored it for maybe a minute total(leaving my game going) before flinging open my door to a room filled a third of the way down with acrid smoke. It's a small apartment and bacon grease burns fast. I screamed "(Brother's Name), WHAT THE FUCK!?" It was then that the power went out as the fire had shorted a wire behind the stove wall and cut power to the whole apartment by tripping the fuse box (or something, I'm no electrician).
I slammed the door shut again, dashed in the dark to my desk, pulled out a flashlight, tugged on a shirt and grabbed my keys, wallet and cell phone. Whirring through my head were thoughts: WTF do I do? Where is the fire source? Could I put it out? It was hard to tell through the smoke but it looked to be in the kitchen area... Do I try to smother it? Or would my bed blanket just add more fuel? Probably add more fuel... No access to a bucket to throw water on... ABANDON SHIP! .... but wait... What if my brother is knocked out on the kitchen floor maybe or in his room? Where was the dog? Where was my cat???
Flashlight now in hand I grab a shirt from the dirty laundry on my way out of the room and get low with the shirt over my mouth. All the while the blaring of the fire alarm drills into my skull. I get close to the fire to see it is maybe four feet tall reaching up to lick the ceiling and consuming the wall behind it... My brother is not on the floor of the kitchen. I hurry into his room and he is not there either. Gone too is the dog and his cell phone. Only one thing left: my cat. But where is she? Frantically I check under my brother's bed, in the bathroom and under his computer desk. A quick dash back into my room. There she is under the bed! She bolts as I lift up the mattress and try to grab her. Sobbing now with frustration I dash back out and follow her to my brother's room(why the fuck didn't I close the door behind me?). This time I do not make that mistake. Winded I forget to duck low out of the smoke and inhale some before dropping to the floor to retrieve her from beneath the bed, again having to lift the mattress to get back far enough to reach her.
Finally, cat in hand I dash out onto the landing where 2 of our neighbors ask if everything is okay. At this point I should have remembered the fire extinguisher on the wall between apartments but I'm too stupid and panic stricken. They ask if they should call the fire department and I stupidly say yes(NO DUMMY TELL THEM TO GRAB THAT FUCKING EXTUINGUISHER AND JUST PUT THE DAMN THING OUT!) while I dash out to my car(only a minute's walk away) to stash my cat. Running back I call my brother but as it rings I hear the echo just ahead of me. My brother is returning from walking the dog. Panting, I say "Fire. In the kitchen... I got the cat out..." He hands me the dog leash and hurls up the steps, punches the glass to get the fire extinguisher and runs in. A minute later he is back. The fire is out... The fire department arrives, shenanigans ensue while they realize that the hose can just BARELY reach if they had needed it, statements, fire marshal, I cough a lot from the smoke I inhaled, etc. (I now know how to operate a fire extinguisher btw)
My brother probably still facepalms at least a little when he thinks back on it now(who leaves a pan full of grease on the burner, even if you turned the burner off, honestly...) but I still kick myself over it often. All I needed to do was not ignore the bloody alarm and l2use a fire extinguisher. They aren't even hard to use! You just pull the bloody pin and squeeze the two things at the top. HERP DERP DERP! I panicked, like I always do in high pressure situations, fell apart and acted like a brain dead fool. Sigh.
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Well, don't ask why I'm sharing all of this. I don't really know, only that it is my blog and I felt like getting it out. GG GL HF.
