la_belle_laide | Restaurants, sewers, civet superheros. And also school.

School first, crack dream second.

First day back at school was boring. I'm not wild about either class. But, four more months then it's over. Friday is my first day of ClinicII. A little nervous about that, but mostly in the "Holy crap, my school is almost two hours away and I have to drive during a hurricane" sort of way.

To greet me this morning, my first day of getting up mad stupid early after two weeks off, the memory of this cracked out dream:

An Olive Garden restaurant opens up in town out here and I decide to go eat there. As I pull up, I realize that it's weird of me to go out to eat alone. I always go to the movies alone, but going to a restaurant – that's different, isn't it? But the outside of it looks beautiful, gothic almost. So I go in and ask for a table, party of one. Everyone turns to look at me. I ignore them and request a table with a view out the window.

The waiter obliges me as much as possible, since the building has levels, and lots of brick walls, almost like a maze. I get a tiny, stone table in a corner, next to a wall. I can just see over the top to the outside.

The view is to an aqueduct in town that leads to the sewer. But it's somehow beautiful to look at, and exciting. Kind of looks like the sewer in Final Fantasy VIII, only it's got these cogs and wheels that open and close the doors.

I order a salad and it comes right away. There's a packet of seasoning that comes with it, and I have to add water to turn it into dressing. As I'm doing this, a tall man with short dark hair walks past my table, muttering something. A second later, he walks by again, muttering louder. I catch the words "explosives" and "die." And I realize, HOLY CRAP, this guy is a murderer and he's going to kill everyone in the restaurant.

I turn to the family beside me and the man says, "Before you even ask, I heard it too. We have to evacuate. Oh my god, why are you sitting alone?"

"Can we just ignore that for a second?" I ask him. "We've got bigger fish to fry."

I signal the waiter and ask him to get the manager, because I think that the manager should know there's a crazy person waiting to kill us all. It doesn't occur to me to call the cops, or to leave.

The manager comes out, and it's Cillian Murphy. Yeah, I dreamed about him a few weeks ago and no, don't know why. Anyway, he's a kind of mad hatter / Willie Wonka sort of character. Tall and pale, eyes creepy blue, pinstripes and a black fedora. Everything amuses him, even this character who is going to blow up his restaurant.

The crazy person says, "The bombs are in the sewer; you'll never get to them and you won't get out in time!"

And then everyone disappears except for me and Crazy Man. Crazy Man pulls a lever, and a trapdoor opens beneath me. I go plummeting down, thinking I'll end up in the sewers, right? But a plastic hand juts out from the stone wall and I grab onto it. The hand is fake, but it sort of feels real. It starts to slide down the wall and I start to slide with it.

Crazy Man yells out, "It's a bottomless pit by the way! And you won't get out until you stop crying over your father."

I'm like "But that's hardly fair! What the hell!" And the hand keeps sliding down.

Then I see more bricks beneath my feet. I let go of the hand and put my feet down. The pit isn't bottomless after all, and I think that I might be able to climb out myself. So I grab onto the bricks and start to pull myself up. After a long time, I reach the top and get out of the pit.

Crazy Man is nowhere, and all the patrons are back. This time they're all dressed up, and I'm underdressed, in jeans and a t shirt.

Cillian Murphy / restaurant manager comes back out and says, "You don't need to worry; I vanquished the killer."

"What are you?" I ask him. "Like a super hero or something, with the weird look?"

"That's exactly what I am," he says. "And my name is Civet, from the McPolecat clan."

"Polecat," I ask him, "isn't that like a skunk or something?"

"I've got to go fight more crime," he says. Then he whirls around and disappears.

Crystals of all different colors scatter to the floor where he stood. I start to pick them up, thinking that maybe he'll need them later. I pick up two blue ones and pocket them.

The guy who sat next to me early in the dream leans down and says, "I hope you know those are his eyes. You're touching someone else's eyes."

"It's not like they're wet or anything," I tell him.

I go off in search of Civet McPolecat's office so I can leave his crystals there. In the back of the restaurant, I find a small zoo with tiny mammals. A lynx jumps up into my arms and I pet it.

And then my dogs woke me up.

I felt like it must have been hours later, probably pretty close to when my alarm would go off, but when I checked the clock I'd only been asleep an hour. And I promised myself that I would remember this stupid dream for the rest of the day, until I was able to write it out.

Civet McPolecat? WTF?