Yesterday's nightmare...

[illusionofjoy]

It was a bitch for me trying to get to sleep yesterday. After wandering around downtown Pittsburgh for no particular reason, I thought that I'd be ready to just lie down and crash once I got home. As fate would have it, I ended up tossing and turning, sprawled out in all sorts of unnatural positions in an attempt to knock myself unconscious. In the end, once I did fall asleep...

I was standing in a room with my family. I knew right then and there that I was back in Potsdam and I wanted to die. This isn't the first time my inner sanctum has dragged me back to Potsdam; nor is it the first time in a dream that the realisation that I am in that town has left me in utter despair.

The room is dark, save two bare light bulbs hanging by lamp cord from the ceiling. These bulbs cast an ugly orange glow over the room, which is dominated by an ugly dollar-store metal table. Behind this table stands my family: my mother is to the left, my younger and youngest brothers stand to the right of her.

Upon the table is a model rocket assembly. The model is near completion, but a few essential parts still lie scattered about, most notably the electric starter and fuel-propulsion assembly. This doesn't look like an average model rocket set though. The engines are too large. Furthermore, these models are only supposed to have one engine, not several. In an ever more bizarre and frightening observation, I see that the usual battery-powered starter packs have been replaced with little boxes with 120-volt power cords hanging from them. There are dozens of these cords strewn about, all collecting in socket receptacle splitter upon socket receptacle splitters plugged into the outlets to the sides of each of the aforementioned light bulbs. My mouth is agape as I realise what a serious fire hazard truly looks like.

I try to force out some words. "This set-up is dangerous..." I say, interupted by my younger brother's enthusiasm for what is obviously his new toy and my mother telling me that I should mind my own business.

My younger brother completes the final connections. I am frozen to the spot as he activates the starters, sending two model rockets straight into the ceiling. Smoke fills the air, joined by shattered drywall and then a sudden shower of sparks. Every overloaded outlet in the room has started short-circuiting. The smell of smouldering plastic fills the air.

With anger and disappointment in her eyes, my mother looks at me, not my younger brother, and says, "look what you did!" I try to lodge a protest in the form of a sarcastic, "look what I did" but nothing issues forth as the sparks only become more violent and the room more chaotic...

At this point, my phone began ringing. I was happy to be waken up and even happier to hear the news that the individual on the other end of the line had to tell.

More on that later...