Part 3 The waitress - Glimpse II

She was being chased down dark tunnels again, and she could hear voices and footsteps, at times the light reached her, but she never lingered in it, always dogging and hiding. Blending into the wall and coming out in another tunnel.

The ladybug girl had taught her how change her dreams so that she could keep the box safe. But such a burden could not be carried for long, soon she would have to pass it along and hope that the she would be forgotten.

The tunnel was silent and pitch black now, so she touched the wall and tried to feel it. “Stone, cold, damp, rough, smell of old water and machine oil”, she thought to herself and usually she did not dream of her other senses, just sight. She wondered how blind people dreamed as she ran her hand on the wall until she felt a cable.

She wished for the lights to be turned on but only a little, she wished for faint red lights to shine her way and warm her up a bit. She didn’t like to be in complete darkness for long, lest she slip in a deeper sleep in her dream and dream within dream. This was very dangerous, you wouldn’t know if you are awake, not even after you awakened, and there were creatures in this place she didn’t want to run into again.

The darkness made her tired and she felt like sitting down, but didn’t allow herself, she pushed on, there had to be a way out she thought to herself.

She wished and willed as hard as she could for a little red door with black dots but none ever appeared. She wondered what she was doing wrong. Maybe it was the red lights? She didn’t dare wish for brighter light. So she tried to scale the wall, she figured going back up was better than going down, since going down scared her and fear brought stuff closer in dreams, stuff you didn’t want to be near.

In the end she figured she could try and fly, since the wall climbing didn’t seem to work very well, watching superhero movies and playing VR games didn’t seem to translate into life experience. Her palms just didn’t stick to the walls like she hoped.

Her flying was the most awkward flying in the world she concluded, it was more like frog style swimming, yet it yielded results, slowly but surely she was going up.

When she opened her eyes, her head was comfortably placed on her laundry basket. She had fallen asleep on the toilet again. She was not a morning person and today she got a early morning shift.

She cleaned herself and then got up to leave, only to realize she needed the toilet again, so she lifted the seat and lid, did her business, cleaned again and got out.

Some jasmine tea and omelette, then off to work again. It snowed lightly and the city looked like it was getting under a cozy blanket. She wished she was under her cozy blanket too.

As she was putting on her work costume a colleague entered the dressing room.

- Morning! The colleague said.

- Oh! Hi! Oh wow, you’re back, how are you? How are you feeling?

- I’m good, thanks for asking, how are you guys?

- Good, good, we’re getting a bus of elderly people later today. You came to work already, I didn’t expect.

- Yeah I heard that, it’s why I came, also I was going crazy in the house sitting around all day, I had to get out. And I’m fine really.

- Does the boss know -

- No, and don’t worry, if I feel tired or dizzy, I’ll retreat.

- OK. I’m glad you are feeling better and the operation was a success.

- Yeah, yeah, soon I’ll be completely healthy.

- That is awesome, we’ll be sad to see you go, though.

- Go where? I’m not going anywhere.

A moment of silence followed, the waitress did not have the heart to tell her colleague that the boss had to, eventually, let go her healthy employees in order to hire other disabled ones.

Fortunately for her, the annoying supervisor came in, for once she was happy to see him. Without any family or friends and with an ambiguous death sentence on his head, he practically lived in his office.

- Aha! I thought I heard your voice, welcome back, how are you? The supervisor gave the returning employee a big hug.

He was a hugger and loud, so tall and fat you could feel his footsteps from the other side of the restaurant.

- Thank you, glad to be back. I’m not fully recovered, thanks for visiting me at the hospital and taking care of my cat, and-

- Stop thanking me, don’t worry, how is Maru?

- Good, lazy as usual.

They both left the room talking to each other, “guess she won’t be in costume today”, the waitress thought to herself. She then closed her compartment and went to her computer to check the social media, sadly it was her duty to check the reviews and send newsletters depending on what promotions they had. It had fallen to her to be the unofficial PR assistant, on top of being a waitress.

When things were slow she had to either sit outside and invite people in or be entertaining to cementers on the restaurant forum and media platforms. And today it was cold and very early.

She wished she could do the tables, maybe the flower arrangements or anything else, sadly the flowers came prepacked and all the robots had to do was unpack them and place them on the table.

“I could do that,” she thought to herself looking at the robots cleaning and setting the standard stuff up. “They could be polite to stupid clients online, they can’t get angry.” The place was so dark she was getting sleepy again, she wished they didn’t make such efforts to save electricity. “Soon we’ll have winter decorations up, that will be fun and festive and cozyyy, hope they let me do it”.

The blue light of the computer screen flickered on her face as she looked unto the dimly lit table area. A couple of orange lights were expected to light the place up, just enough to get around, but it just seemed like a cozy cave to hibernate in.

When she opened her eyes she was seated on a old little tram, slowly going down a hill. And when she looked out the window it seemed like she was in the middle of a savanna, a couple of stray zebras and a giraffe were visible in the distance.

She noticed her hand on the window frame and then looked at both her hands, the backs of which had very dark skin. So she touched her face and head. She now had very short curly hair and a broader nose and thicker lips. She looked around to see who else was around, and when she saw nobody was around she touched herself and realized she wasn’t a girl like in her usual dreams. She was a boy again.

This was definitely a dream she thought to herself. “But, why am I dreaming this she wondered and where could I be?”. She usually dreamt of tunnels, a city and being hunted down.

The scenery was warm and sunny, the grass was golden yellow and the soil red. Since she had never been to Africa she wasn’t sure where she had seen this area before, this landscape made her think more of Australia. Because she had never been outside Japan, she wished she could visit Europe someday, but if the other two continents looked as nice as this dream she wouldn’t mind visiting them too, though the idea of venomous spiders and snakes were a real deterrent for her.

The little tram stopped at a old gas station tucked away in between a couple of huge boulders, two stories high, striped in different shades or red. A conductor got off and went around the building, toward the bathroom sign.

She got off as well, to look around. There was no road apparently leading to this place and nobody was using petrol in this day and age. Was she dreaming something from the past she wondered. She was pretty sure she wasn’t a dream walker so she couldn't be in someone else’s dream or body. Was she in another part of the dream land she keeps entering?

She kept wondering to herself as she continued to walk down the tracks to a ostrich she saw in the distance. The bird was looking to her so she thought maybe it was someone's avatar, like the ladybug girl. But as she left the stony area of the gas station she heard a deep grumble to her right and to her horror saw a huge maned lion sitting on a bed of dried grass, squashing it under his weight.

The animal was so huge, she froze in place not knowing what to do. She looked with the corner of her eye for the ostrich but it had vanished. The lion looked at her, while it sat there naked in the grass, hungry drool seemingly dripping from its mouth. And she wondered if she was going to be eaten.

The tram was behind her, on it’s way again, clicking and clacking as it passed over the tracks. She turned around in fear and began to immediately run toward it for safety, yet as fast as she ran she was never able to catch up to it.

She was now alone in the middle of nowhere under an empty sky and a blistering sun. The blinding light was almost as bad as the darkness of the caves. She turned around in despair and fear of the lion, but it wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

When she raised her hand to her eyes to get a better look of the city skyline at the end of the train tracks she noticed she had a piece notebook paper in her hand. Inside it there were some letters or symbols in a foreign language she could not understand, but the numbers were in arabic numerals and she could read the hour 13:00.