Thena

I'm living in an older apartment building with red brick walls. In the other room, my roommate is holding a baby. I spot a pacifier sitting on the floor and give it to the roommate, who announces that she is going to get it steam-cleaned. In the meantime, she makes me hold the baby. The poor thing seems to be in a lot of discomfort and keeps squirming. As soon as my roommate returns with the pacifier, the baby drops off to sleep. I'm a little relieved to hand him over.

Two old friends drop by, but I'm reluctant to let them leave. I know that I'm going to need them as an alibi. Sure enough, just as I plead with my friends to stay, the police show up a bit too early for their cue. Good thing I knew they were coming! But how did I know? My roommate and I must have put together some sort of plot that I'm carrying out alone.

There's a man who joins us who thinks he can help me. He looks a little bit like Lou Diamond Phillips. He thinks he can find evidence by demolishing the red brick walls around my bathroom. It doesn't seem like any great loss, since the bathroom is so large with an odd layout. It actually has three showers stalls at right angles, but we don't need quite that many. As he starts tearing out the brick wall, I can see the sidewalk outside. Pretty soon, the opening is wide enough to walk out onto the street.

I woke up briefly, then managed to re-enter the dream.

I'm on that same street. Instead of apartments, there's a building holding a coffee shop, a resale store, and an empty storefront between them. I seem to own the coffee shop. A suspicious-looking man enters and wonder what happened to the old shop. I tell him that I bought it and reopened it. He asks if he can still get number 17 from the old menu. I have no idea what that is, so I give him a new menu. He keeps asking for #17 with a wink. Eventually, I realize that the old shop was a front for a brothel and he's asking for a woman. I hustle him out the door.

It's nighttime outside and the stars are out. I look at the sky for a little while, though I can't identify any particular constellation. It's almost as if someone covered the world with a piece of blue velvet and poked holes at random to represent the stars.

When I head back into the building, something feels different. I go into the resale shop where I know I have friends working, but they don't seem to know me. It seems that while I was outside, I went back in time by two years -- taking me to a point before I had met them. I wonder if I should take the same path or do something entirely different with this second chance.