Dream Dollies

I don't want to be one of those people who talk about their dreams (I don't mind people sharing dreams, but it seems to be a serious pet peeve for a lot of folks) but I had an odd dream recently. I'm not gonna lay a plot synopsis on you, but the odd thing was that it was just about entirely negative: one lousy thing after another happened to me in this gloomy dream world. Thinking about this led me to realize that most of my dreams are like my life: an equal blend of positive and negative events and situations. I suppose I'm due a really happy dream now.

Oh, all right, twist my arm, here's the dream:

I'm at a dingy party, where I meet my real-life friend The Alabama Sister. Unlike in real life, she doesn't even pretend to be happy to see me. She chats with some rich guy who invites her to a much cooler party. I pretend that I was invited to the cooler party, but I'm blowing it off; no one buys it.

I leave the party and walk through cold, dark city streets, fretting over The Alabama Sister's no longer liking me. Soon the streets are full of happy, wonderfully dressed young couples, all of them on an Event Date. I keep walking, wishing I could find my home, resenting all the pretty rich young happy lovers.

Suddenly the streets have become a shopping mall, open late for some reason. I'm in a toy store, full of kids and their parents. I want to get out, but suddenly there's a doll in my hand. A whole table of discount dolls, all with scratches and scars on their realistic pretty faces, is somehow mine; I'm holding an impossible number of dolls in my arms. All the children in the shop are indistinguishable from the dolls, and they crowd me like zombies; they're drawn to the dolls. I fear the children, I fear the parents who may think I'm some kind of predatory Pied Piper, I don't want the dolls, I just want to go home, but I can't move as the child zombie-dolls press in... then I woke up.

Like I say, none of the ingredients of this dream were all that unusual for my dream life; it's the relentless yuckiness of the dream that's unusual.