Superman screamed across the Atlantic, going at a speed undetectable by human eyes. He got a late jump on the missiles, and he actually worried if he would make it on time. Superman narrowed his eyes and focused hard on trying to fly faster, thinking if he could hit the speeds in which he could essentially turn the Earth the opposite direction on its axis, and turn time back to just a few minutes ago, to where he could hope to prevent the launch of these nukes. But as hard as he flew, he couldn’t catch up.
He was within visual sight of the first two mushroom clouds that emerged from Moscow. Superman slouched in failure, as the savior of the world couldn’t prevent such destruction. This moment of desperation was ill-timed, however, as screeching right past his head were several more missiles, headed in the opposite direction, at an amazingly fast speed. Superman took off, hoping to intercept these Russian missiles, but again, his moments of hesitation proved to be costly. By the time he got within visual of the remains of the New York skyline, all he saw were clouds of smoke, and dark skies.
I wake up in my dad’s old Caprice Classic station wagon. My family is together, my mother, father, and sister.
“We’re here,” my dad says. Where is “here,” I’m thinking? It’s our new home, it’s explained to me.
New home? What happened to my old home?
The television was set to BBC, and it was on breaking news alert. The United States was no more, and Russia was badly damaged, but apparently still alive. The 68 remaining power-countries in the world were in chaos, and there were already thoughts of it expanding to 81 countries. So I guess that answered what happened to my old home – like the rest of the United States, it was, destroyed.
So where was this?
The building is large, and most definitely old. It reminded me of the old Woolworth’s department store in the downtown region of where I grew up in rural Virginia. As we walked inside, I was surprised to see just how much stuff was still in the place. Televisions, electronics, and all sorts of knick-knacks, although I wasn’t really seeing many places to sit, or any beds for that matter. As my sister and I explored through the expansive building, it seemed like a cross-hybrid of a store that was going to be used for as a home.
What struck me as odd was just how much accessibility this building had. It was obviously once a store of some sort, and there were entrances and doors all over the place. And they were all glass too, and with no bars or reinforcement behind any of it. So if anyone wanted to break in, they could literally break in fairly easily. Not all of the doors and windows had steel shutter curtains available to use, either, which I felt was a bit unnerving.
More stuff. Music instruments, kitchen supplies, more electronics. This place seemed to have a little bit of all sorts of things. Some things old, some things surprisingly modern, but just in general, there was simply a lot of crap.
We walked outside of the building, and surrounding the area were more old buildings, and only about a view of 1-2 city blocks. As desolate as it may have seemed, there were people walking about, and the occasional late 50’s era cars chugging along on the street in front of my supposed new home. It’s at this time I realize that these people are entering my new home from the various entrances. Shoppers, obviously interested in the vast variety of wares available for sale still, at my new home.
Disliking the idea of people coming and going into my supposed new home, back inside, I begin locking doors, and boarding up windows, and where applicable, rolling down steel curtains. I don’t give a fuck if these people are paying me money for this shit, it’s still my home, and I expect home to be a home, and not a store.
The people in the area I did interact with, I was surprised to discover that they spoke English. But there something off kilter about their diction, almost as if people were speaking a language instinctually, but with no real understanding of the words coming out of their mouths. One pretty blond who looked precariously like porn star BiBi Jones, asks me if I’m gay. I ask her if she knows what gay even means. She responds a definition of not liking guys. So looking at her, I tell her, sure, I’m gay then.
Somewhere along the line, I anger one of the locals who wants to know what happened to the previous owner of the store/home, to which I simply asked if he had any idea of what happened to the United States? One, I didn’t really know myself, and two, I was just trying to get him to shell out some information. The interaction pissed him off somewhat, and he vowed to come back and wreak havoc around the building. I ask my dad if we sold guns, and sure, next thing I knew, I was in possession of a snazzy pump shotgun.
Next thing I know, I’m doing my best to sell a Street Fighter-optimized XBOX controller to a black guy who really wants an XBOX controller, but since we weren’t carrying any standard XBOX controllers, the Street Fighter pad was my only shot at a sale.
**
And that’s about where I woke up. Thinking that I had possibly the most bizzare dream I’ve had in ages. Even more incredible is how vividly I could remember it. As I jogged around the hood, I tried to think about the subconscious meanings behind everything, and trying to derive some sense of it all.
America was essentially destroyed, and my family had relocated to god-knows-where to survive. Somewhere in my head, it’s speculated that it’s not even Earth, but some habitable, populated planet elsewhere. No answers on where the location of this dream was taking place.
I came to the conclusion that I was dreaming that my family and I were in some sort of purgatory, and were probably already dead from the Russian retaliation, without really realizing it. And in purgatory, there are some cool things like an interesting setting, lots of junk to amuse one’s self with, but also it’s not perfect, because I’m working in a form of retail, and there are people out there that want to hurt my property and family.
What happened to the previous owner of the store? Who knows, but I have to speculate that he had served his time in purgatory long enough, and had moved onto his genuine conclusion, with my family taking his place at the store.
Either way, it was certainly one hell of a weird fucking dream.
