Disturbing nightmare I had last night
Jacob Haller
break is coming none too soon.
The background to the dream (stuff that I knew somehow, but I don't
remember actually witnissing in the dream) was this:
A guy lived in and owned a building which included a bunch of
apartments. (It was laid out a little oddly--the building was one story
tall, with the apartments all connected but sort of spread out over a
relatively large area.) As a service to his tenants, he had set up a
local-area network which they could use to share files, printers, play
networked games, etc. Recently, he had been violently murdered and the
murderer had not yet been found.
I, or at least the character I was most strongly connected to, was a
mailman who serviced that particular building. I had only started
delivering mail there recently.
While I was delivering mail to one of the apartments, the tenant came
home. We chatted for a little while in a friendly enough manner (though
he seemed a little creepy), and then he asked me if I knew anything
about computers. I admitted I did, and he asked me if I could help him
with the LAN--apparently it hadn't worked properly since the landlord
was killed. He'd like it if either the LAN was fixed or he was
disconnected from it and could just print to his own printer, which he
could not currently do.
Well, I was nervous about going into his apartment since he /was/ acting
a little creepy. Plus I still had some mail to deliver. So I told him
that I wasn't able to help him, that I really needed to get on with my
mailing route.
At this point a tenant of one of the other apartments passed by. The
guy I was talking to greeted him, introduced me, and said something like
"I was hoping he could help us with the LAN, but I guess not..." The
second guy gave me a hostile look.
At this point the dream shifted locale completely, or some things
happened that I've forgotten already.
At any rate, suddenly I was on a bus with a bunch of people, including
the two tenants of the building that I had talked to above. They were
becoming more and more insistant that I help them with their local-area
network problems, and I was becoming convinced that they had helped kill
their landlord. Suddenly, it became clear to me that most, if not all,
of the people on the bus were tenents of that apartment building. Now
totally freaked out, I worked my way to the front of the bus and
demanded that the bus driver let me off right there. This he did.
It was now night, and it was in winter and cold. I still had my
mailbag. I started running up the road, hoping to see a car passing the
other way that I could get a lift from. One passed but didn't stop.
Then I worried that someone else would get off the bus and follow me.
To make that more difficult I ran off the side of the road into the
woods. There was some snow on the ground. After running awkwardly away
from the road for a little while, I realized the hopelessness of it all:
anyone who wanted to find me could just follow my footprints. A feeling
of despair enveloped me. It was about here that I ran into the first
guy I had been talking to. He said some things but I don't remember
what; I think he made some sarcastic references to my unwillingness to
help. I attacked him awkwardly with him egging me on ('Oh, you can do
better than that', etc.) but wasn't able to hurt him.
It was about here that I woke up.
-jwgh