In Dream... #1

In dream..., 

my friend picks me up from work at the factory and drives me north to the university. Along the way, I spot that old corner grocery store where they sell comic books from the 60s and 70s for cover price, still brand new condition. 

I tell my friend to pull over. He tries making a left hand turn, but we encounter some street construction. A large miller clawing up black chunks of the asphalt. 

We U-turn and now head south, back through the factories and the smell of burning tar and smoldering wood. In a few more miles we will be at the beach. We've gone too far. I tell my friend to turn around, but he is gone. I am driving. I U-turn into that damn street construction. 

The asphalt miller has dug away most of the street save for a small thin strip that I carefully drive on. I fear the car will fall if I sway one inch too far left or right, so I stop and get out of the vehicle. I climb down the wall of that thin strip of street, using bits of asphalt as a ladder to the bottom. I look up and see the car balanced on the impossibly thin strip of street. 

I should be by the corner grocery store, so I climb up the west end of the ditch. The store is indeed there, but it is not the same inside. There is no comics section. The lights are too bright. I leave under the suspicious gaze of the owner and his wife, the cashier. 

The ditch is gone. The car is gone. The construction of the street a thing of the past. 

If I turn left, to the university, I may make it to class in time. If I turn right, to the factory, I could work a few extra hours. There is no west. And so I head east, into the glare of the sunrise.

I am blinded awake. My left eye still closed, my right eye glances at the clock. 6:00 a.m. sharp. 

A strange depression settles over me, as if the day were over, and it were time for bed. I get up, turn on the coffee machine, and hope that that first long sip of the hot morning brew will salvage this lost day. Though I know in my heart, it never will.