Gunman at the motel
Robert E. Lewis
Monday-Tuesday, March 07-08, 2005
I was in a small strip-shopping center just inside the West Loop in Houston,
near Meyerland. It was a run-down 1950s center, in a bad neighborhood.
I encountered a black man in the parking lot, and he said something to me,
trying to frighten and intimidate me, just showing how tough he was by
scaring a white man in front of his friends. But I twisted what he said in
reply, making him look like a fool, and his friends laughed at him. He
glared at me and I walked away.
I walked around the corner to a motel. Again, circa-1950s or early '60s, a
single-story motel of an orangish-color brick. I've got a room there I'm
sharing with two friends from RL, P and R; there seems to be a connecting
door to another room next door. P and R are sitting on a bed, watching
television; I am standing at a table nearby, doing something unclear.
There's a knock at the door, and I go to answer it.
I open the door just slightly and see it's the black man I made a fool of
earlier. He glares at me; I tell him to go away, upset that he obviously
followed me here after the incident. He reaches into his jacket and I
realize he's reaching for a gun. I shout, "No!" and yell for my friends to
help me. I throw my weight against the door to close it; the guy outside
shoves back,gets his hand with the pistol in it through the opening. My
friends arrive and we all throw ourselves against the door, slamming the
man's hand in the door. We let up enough for him to pull his hand back,
then push the door shut and lock it.
I seem much more upset than my friends about this. I pace around in the
motel room, afraid to go outside, certain that if the man was upset enough
to track me here and bring a gun to get revenge, he's probably lying in wait
outside to shoot me the minute I leave. Eventually, we do leave, though my
friends walk around to a nearby restaurant to eat, while I go out to my car
and sit in it in the parking lot, looking for any sign that the man is
watching the motel.
Eventually, I leave the car and go looking for my friends, but they've
already left the restaurant. I walk back around toward the shopping center
where the first incident happened, and on the way I encounter some kids with
water balloons. They are unusual water balloons, in that they were made
with strangely shaped balloons. The kids give me two or three balloons and
go on their way and I on mine.
Back in the same place the incident with the black man occurred, I see one
of my friends, R, standing on the sidewalk in front of a store with his back
to me. He is talking to another group of kids similar to the group from
whom I got my water balloons. I decide to surprise R by pelting him with
the balloons, and do. But to my surprise, he's done the same thing --
gotten water balloons from the kids, and he turns and throws a couple of
them back at me. We laugh about this.
=END OF DREAM=
Notes: I *think* that out shopping somewhere yesterday, I saw on a shelf at
the checkout line a big plastic jar filled with balloons specifically
intended for water balloon fights, and thought that looked like a lot of fun
for kids. But I can't remember where I saw this (there are only a couple of
places it could be, and neither seems very likely to have that); it's
possible seeing the big jar of water balloons was just a dream, too.
The incident with the man turning up at my door with a gun was really
terrifying; I was uncomfortable even after I woke, despite the dream ending
on a happy/fun note.
Comments and interpretations welcome.
--
Robert