The bedroom was filled with daylight as I started to wake up. On the bed next to me was a German Sheppard. This was unexpected, because my husband and I do not have a dog.
The German Sheppard was lying on his side, facing away from me. The dog was resting its head on a pillow, and was fast asleep. He was radiating happiness and security.
Not wanting to wake this mysterious dog, but needing to know if he was real, I reached my hand out toward him. He was warm, and his fur was soft. This German Sheppard even smelled like a dog – but an extremely clean one. He certainly seemed real.
“Ok dog,” I thought to myself. “You’re obviously happy sleeping here – so let’s take a nap.” I turned onto my side, rearranged my blankets, and scooted closer to the dog. He snuggled up to me, and seemed to smile a bit more, when I put my arm around him.
It wasn’t until after I put my head back on my pillow that I heard a voice.
“He needs a blanket,” the voice explained. The voice sounded male, and I did not recognize it. Whoever was speaking wasn’t in the bedroom with me and the dog.
I looked down at the foot of the bed. A bright orange, heavy, blanket was sitting there, neatly folded into a square. I unfurled the blanket and gently placed it over the German Sheppard. He snuggled into the blanket, still fast asleep.
The scene I have just described did not actually happen. I woke up shortly after it ended and realized it was nothing more than a dream. It was one of the most vivid dreams I’ve had in a long time. It was in full color, and included sound, texture, and even scent.
The best part of this dream was the powerful sense that everything was going to be okay. That feeling was incredibly attractive. It was disappointing to have it dissolve after I woke up – for real this time – in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I’m not the only one having strange, extraordinarily vivid, dreams right now. A quick internet search brought up plenty of articles in which other people shared what they have been dreaming about.
One of the articles noted that, shortly after 9/11, people mentioned that they were having dreams that involved plane crashes. Today, our minds are serving up dreams about an invisible virus. That’s hard to visualize, so people are dreaming up images that range from creepy to terrifying.
My husband and I were sitting at a small table on the patio of a cafe. The table was made of decorative, metal, swirls, as were the chairs we sat on. There was a tall, colorful, drink on the table in front of me, and a smaller drink in front of my husband.
It was mid afternoon. and the sun was glinting off the awnings of the various restaurants that lined this street. The weather was nice and warm, the outdoor patios were full, and people were walking in the street together. I assumed we were at some place that was designed for tourists and pedestrians. There were no cars in sight.
As I listened to my husband talking to me, I noticed that some of the people in the street had stopped walking. They looked up and pointed at the sky.
Glancing up, I saw several soap-bubble “balloons” slowly floating across the sky. They came from somewhere behind the street of restaurants my husband and I were sitting at, moved across the sky and beyond the opposite street.
I pointed out the soap-bubble “balloons” to my husband, and we watched them for a little while. The sun was behind us, so everyone was facing the other way to watch the “balloons”. It was relaxing. Some of the balloons were shaped like cats, and others were heart shaped.
Suddenly, I had a strange feeling. Something was wrong. I turned my head and looked down the street, a direction no one else was looking. There were things in the sky I could hardly make out. As they got closer, I realized that they were planes. The “balloons” were a distraction.
“We need to leave now!”, I said, grabbing my husband’s hand. We ran down the street, away from the planes, as I explained to him what I had seen.
The planes were old, and had propellers like the ones used in WWII. They were silent, which seemed impossible. It wasn’t until we made it down the street and around the corner that the screaming started.
There was a university not too far away, and we ran to it. One of the buildings was made of stone, and designed to look like part of a castle. The door was closed, but opened the instant I raised my hand to knock on it.
A woman opened the door, and waved us inside. She slammed the door behind us and locked it. The woman had short hair, and glasses, and looked like she was someone who worked in this building. She ushered us to a wall, put a key into a lock we did not see, and opened a passageway.
We followed her to what looked like a thick, metal, wall. A door opened, and another woman held it for us. The first woman was the last inside, and she slammed the door.
There were about fifteen to twenty people in here with us, and everyone looked terrified. There were some couples, a few families with small children, and people who got here by themselves.
The woman we met first put her finger to her lips in a “shhh” gesture.
“We are safe in here,” she explained, “but we should stay quiet. They cannot get in. They cannot find us. We must wait this out.”
When I woke up, I found myself feeling very anxious. In the dream, the virus took the form of old planes, that no one saw coming until it was too late. My husband and I ran for a safe place to shelter and wait it out. It is obvious that this dream was about my concerns about coronavirus.
I was wandering through my apartment, searching for something that I was unable to find. It would help if I could remember what it was that I was looking for. I must have walked from the front door, to the back bedroom, dozens of times.
There was a noise of movement behind the couch. I found this confusing, since I knew there was no one here but me.
Behind the couch, there was a woman who was lying on the floor. I had no idea who she was or how she got there.
“Oh good, you’re here!” she said, standing up and brushing herself off. The woman wore a black shirt made from material that was both sturdy and stretchy at the same time. She wore gray cargo pants with plenty of pockets.
“I was sent here to find you,” she said. “Come with me!”.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Oh… right. You don’t know that yet. I’m you,” she replied. I must have given her a look of disbelief. “I mean, not you you. I’m you from another timeline.”
I gave this woman a closer look. She was younger than me, possibly in her late 20s or early 30s. She had long, straight, red hair, pulled back in a low ponytail just the way I used to wear my hair when I was younger. She wasn’t wearing glasses. Either she had contact lenses, or her vision was much better than mine.
She stood still, waiting for me to recognize myself. The “me from another timeline” started to look familiar. I take after one side of my family. She looked like what I may have if I had taken after the other side. Her bone structure was somewhat smaller than mine. Freckles dotted her face, and she didn’t have the “family nose.”
The “other me” nodded her head, smiled, and reached out her hand. A bright, oval-shaped, portal opened behind her.
“Come on, we need to hurry!” she said. “It’s extremely important that we go right now, before its too late.”
I took her hand, and followed her into the portal.
After I woke up, I tried to figure out what this dream meant. My best guess is that it is about escaping this chaotic, scary, dangerous world. It is too bad that I woke up before finding out where that portal went, or why I was important enough to be brought there.
Pandemic Dreams is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites.
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