2 lopsided dreambits

The first one was so vivid and detailed that I grabbed a piece of paper to jot down the details before they faded. Here goes:

There were three of us: myself, Pat (who was not really him but it was in my dream, you know?) and a third character, an older lady, who for the sake of conciseness we shall refer to as my aunt, because she reminded me a lot of my aunt Lise, even though it wasn't her exactly.

We are on a tour bus in a city said to be very dangerous for tourists, with an elevated violent crime rate. I can't say which city we're in, but it feels old and Mediterranean. I'd like to say Venice because I know we were headed for the "ponte vecchio", except the city had this dry, dusty, sun-baked feel. Another coach is either parked or stopped in mid U-turn right across the street, blocking the way. That's when we decide to exit the bus and continue on foot.

We are soon accosted by two thieves: one male, unseen, and a young, headstrong female accomplice. She’s pretty and blonde, with a rounded face and pretty curls, but she’s hard as nails. She blatantly plunges her hand in my aunt’s handbag, pulling out a fistful of jewellery - pearls, silver and gold chains - and calmly returns to her table at a little sidewalk café with a terrace elevated a few steps above street level.

I look over at my aunt, who is rooted on the spot I stride over to the thief’s table and grab for the jewellery she is still holding in her clenched fist. Some is dropped, some is broken, and I manage to pry some away from her, although there isn’t much left. I notice her earrings: a silver wing extending along the outline of her ear, over a teal-coloured hemispheric button that hides the clip. I return my aunt’s possessions to her, and I notice that she was wearing similar wing-shaped earrings, except she has lost one in the scuffle. In sheer retaliation, I stride back to the thief and yank off one of her earrings, a clip-on that does no damage. With a heavy and improvised Southern drawl, I sneer, “What, did you think we were dumbass Americans?”

The three of us reunite and walk past the café. The male accomplice stands at the edge and tells us to look to our left. There’s a pack of mangy-looking, obviously stray dogs, scruffy, emaciated mutts, one of which may have resembled a Golden Retriever in different circumstances. There are maybe six in all, looking wild but exhausted. We come to understand that they plan on throwing them off a cliff as revenge for our acts. We doubt that they will, that they could even catch them, and that even so, it might almost be doing those poor creatures a favour.

We keep walking up the narrow street and reach a crosswalk. Ahead, we can glimpse a section of elevated highway with gridlocked traffic. “Shall we go right?” we ask. “Yes, let’s.” So we do, even though I’d swear our hotel is somewhere off to the left.

---

That night, when I settled into bed, I remembered that I had also dreamed of a fridgeful of Mason jars, filled with all kinds of jams, preserves, ketchups and curries. And every single one I picked up had moths and larvae growing between the surface of the preserves and the lid - I could see them crawling and even flying in the tight space. I didn’t open a single one, returning them all to their fridge.

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