Well, that was…creepy.

I’ve had a series of dreams over the last couple of years since recovering from an illness that led to a hospital stay and necessarily taking some time out to get better.  Their common theme is that I’m putting my life back together by going back to college to do a new course.  Sometimes the dreams are about finding a new place to live while I’m there.  Or going to the college library for the first time.  Or realising that I’m near the end of the first year and in no way ready for the forthcoming exams.  That kind of thing.

This time round, the dream took me further back.  In the dream, I was aware that a guitarist noted for having an enviable Telecaster collection (believe me, not something that would interest me in real life) would be playing at the secondary school I’d attended.  And my feelings about that ignoble institution can be found here.  So, I turn up for the gig, dressed in school uniform since this is a closed gig.  The fact that I’m older goes unnoticed, but I realise when I see the guitarist that he’s backed by a band of teachers.  A slap bass playing woodwork teacher.  A middle-aged woman playing saxophone.  And so on, standing in a line and reeking of wrongness.  It’s all a bit too awkward to watch, so I leave the audience and wander the school.

Coming to the cloakroom, I find it empty and see an admirable bag, the sort I can’t afford for myself but which someone with rich parents has bought for them.  I pick it up, and make my way out of the school grounds, where I realise that it’s Sports Day.  And I’m one of the sports.  This isn’t a place for me, and I leave the boundaries of the school and find a wrinkled pack of Golden Virginia in one of the bag’s sidepockets.  At which point, I’m struck with guilt, and realise I should return the bag.

Heading back to the school, I wander round the periphery of the audience watching the Sports Day events.  I manage to put the bag down, but a prefect spots me, and comes over.  He’s curious about what I’m doing, not satisfied by my explanations, and I head away from the school.  He follows me, and we end up in town, presumably having taken a bus there.

I’m still dressed in school uniform and want to change, and the prefect is following me.  He finally catches up, and I assure him I mean no harm: I went back just to catch the gig.  He’s not convinced, and I can sense the line of his thinking.  I assure him that, despite having just spent time in hospital and being vulnerable, I’m no kind of danger to the school or its pupils.  He doesn’t buy it.

Looking for somewhere to lose him, I head into a big discount book store that’s crawling with customers.  I make my way to the graphic novels section, and it’s there that I finally manage to break free of my pursuer, amid a tangle of prams on the way out from the store and back into the hurlyburly of the city centre.

The prefect heads back to the graphic novel section, wondering if he’s going to find my story in there somewhere.  He looks through all the covers, asks the staff if the story sounds like one they’ve read, and finds no resolution to his questions: he’s less sure now that the guy he was following was any kind of predator, and is starting to wonder if he may have even been a ghost…

Like I said, creepy.  And pretty much perfectly structured just as it is.  Does the mind dream in story structures then, or is that the result of having a committee of dreamcrafting elves who’ve absorbed lessons while I’ve been reading McKee, Truby, and the like, and know what form I want them in?  Anyway, I can’t help feeling that one day I’ll be telling a longer version of essentially the same tale in the form of a script…