The Test and the Trio

The pill was large and brownish gray. It didn’t taste good. That was good, though; bitterness is a useful thing to help wake you up for a test.

There were perhaps eight others at the table with me, plus the instructor. The test was easy, but I took my time. I was one of the last to finish.

I saw something on the floor, on the gray carpet. I dropped my pencil, and leaned over to investigate the floor item as I picked it back up.

As the visual memory was deciphered on my realistically quick return to the table, I realized it looked like one of the pills. The others hadn’t taken theirs. I made a note to wonder what that meant, but I’d puzzle it out sometime when the instructor couldn’t see my face.

I handed in my test to the instructor sitting across from me, then squatted down to grab my backpack. I scooped up two of the pills. There was at least one more pill far to my left, but I could only get these two without arousing suspicion. The instructor would find the other, and whatever would be would be.

One of these two pills had sat at the feet of the amicable young lady just to my right. She had seemed too open to cheat; she must have had practice at this to discard the pill so casually. Her mannerisms had given away that nothing was wrong when we spoke to each other, so the pills were likely harmless. But she had discarded hers without concealing the act by hiding the pill: she’d dropped it on the floor instead.

What did the pills even do, I wondered as I walked to my car. They had no markings on them, and they were large, like vitamins. They could test the trust of the participants or students, or they could induce a placebo or nocebo effect. It could be an experiment of a nootropic drug, or any other form of psychoactive.

Maybe the gal to my right was a plant. Her job would be to buddy up to me, then a few people would drop the pills to see if I follow suit. Maybe the test was to see if I would take the pills from the floor. It was crazy no matter how I looked at it, and it didn’t seem entirely legal either.

I would try to study the pills when I got home, but I wouldn’t get far without any markings. Perhaps I could look them up by the taste.

Intermission:

Mom and I walked down the sidewalk toward the apartments. We passed a group of three teens at the corner, and I gave them a curmudgeon’s wide berth.

Mom was more intent on continuing our conversation.

“We leave a trail of tears everywhere we go,” Like slugs, I thought; how appropriate. “When we are dried out completely, we die.”

I wrestled my raspy voice into producing a softly sardonic reply; “And how far does that philosophy get one?”

We had arrived in the apartment complex’s exposed courtyard and antechamber. My boyfriend was leaning against one of the long beige dam-like concrete slopes along the side, apparently waiting for me. He bounced off the wall with his arms, into a walk to join us. I could see the vivid colors of the anime designs on his white shirt reduced to shades of amber under the sodium lamps hung high above.

Mom began harassing him immediately. I wasn’t listening, but it was probably something about how he looked waiting there. It made little sense to me; she never did this when I was with whats-her-name. The crazy one.

Maybe she was trying a new strategy at making my relationships turn out right. It was thoroughly misguided, but impervious. I would have invited him to ignore it, but he seemed to be in a bad mood.

“If you have something to say to me, just say it,” he said.

“Well, you’re an impressive drinker,” said Mom.

Another reference to the night we’d gone through that entire bottle with my girlfriend. I wondered how Mom had heard of that, but it didn’t matter; the talk was going to be unpleasant and undeserving of attention regardless of the topic, because every topic was a target of opportunity somehow.

Back to the present[?]:

I slammed the car door, grateful for the mid-day heat inside the car. A honk from behind somehow failed to surprise me; a car was waiting for my spot. I wasn’t ready to pull out of the parking lot yet; I wanted to examine the pills and stow them somewhere safe.

A glance at my mirrors showed an open space behind me. This is insane, but not even remarkably so, I thought, as I started the engine and pulled backward a couple meters into the other open spot equidistant from the car behind me. That’s when I noticed the sign above the space I had been parked in: 15 minute parking.

There’s only one facility here, and they have zero fifteen minute services. I looked at the sign in my rear view mirror, as I finished navigating into the other spot. One hour parking.

Madness.

I heard a swift series of loud knocks against my car window.

Great. It’s a cop, and I’m going to get a ticket for parking there. I’ve had enough bullshit, if I had a g–

Then I realized I couldn’t turn my head to confirm my suspicions of who was knocking. I couldn’t move at all; I was paralyzed.

End dream.

Notes: I’m lucky to be able to tell you my mother’s nothing like the mother in this dream.

On faces: The mother didn’t use my mother’s face, thankfully. The boyfriend had a face I could possibly duplicate in that fancy software from the crime dramas, but I never actually saw it in the dream; his face was the idea of the features the dream assigned to him. The mother’s face was an idea of a face, and did not exist as details.

My love life in that dream bears no resemblance to mine, and as a [historically, not decidedly] straight and monoamorous person, I find that grounds for the dream to be interesting enough to share.

This dream marks the point at which dream characters began speaking out loud in my dreams; before this dream, almost all of my dreams were nonverbal or telepathic — like the stories of alien abductions, people spoke without moving their mouths.

The change happened when I was speaking out loud more than typing in my waking life. I wonder if it has to do with auditory processing and memory.