Weird...

... dream.

This usually happens to me when I sleep in an unfamiliar place, or specifically, “namamahay.” So here’s a quickie entry, while the dream is still fresh...

I was in a big house with five businessmen. I went out with two of them to roam a busy marketplace, much like the ones in Divisoria or Baclaran, in search of a legendary shoemaker. We found him busy at work in a small shop full of not shoes but wood.

A fifty-something man with graying hair and sparse moustache, he reminded me of one of my betel-chewing uncles in Batangas.

He was working on a piece of furniture, and was driving ten-inch nails, with surgical precision, with a single smash of his hammer.

Maybe that makes him an even better shoemaker, I wondered.

And so we invited him to the big house. He sat down beneath on a stool beneath a cage with a yellow bird, and started to work on the shoes. Lots of shoes! All leather, expensive-looking shoes.

Then the scary part began.

At first it was a scratching sound that came from underneath the wooden floors, then a clear noise of something moist slithering through smooth surface. The old man stopped, and peered down a two-inch diameter drain fixed on the wooden floor.

The “thing” leaped out of the drainage – a gooey mass of dark green – swallowed the entire upper body of the old man, and pulled him back down in the drainage. How it managed to squeeze a fully-grown man through that drain was... scary.

Not one of the five businessmen noticed what happened as they went on with their own affairs – which is doing absolutely nothing. Some were standing, some were seated, but all were staring into nothing.

I went down the basement to search for the old man, and found an abandoned subway station. The dusty benches are full of cobwebs, and the rusty railroad tracks were broken and twisted. I called out for the old man, and I heard echoes coming from the pitch-black tunnels.

Suddenly, a group of high school kids came down through the basement and gathered in one of the dusty benches. One of them played the guitar, and in no time the whole place was filled with songs, loud voices, and laughter.

I went up back to the house, and saw a familiar person – my fiancee.

The moist, slithering sound filled the house, and grew louder and louder.

I shouted for everyone to go upstairs.

As the businessmen snapped out of their zombie-like state and rushed up the stairs, the “thing” burst through the floor and erupted into hundreds smaller versions of itself, eating and gnawing everything they come into contact with.

I called out to my fiancee to follow me upstairs, but she and another lady ran in the opposite direction to another room. They were able to slide the glass door shut just as one of the “things” made a jump for them.

Somehow, in that dream, I felt a bit sad because my fiancee chose a different escape route. But as I woke up, I knew she made the right decision.

We are different in so many ways, but somehow here we are, surviving and growing together still, and soon to live as one.

Some dream, huh? ^^