The setting: Early-to-mid 20th century, Europe.
The scene: A boarding school for boys and girls (whom were separated, of course.)
The season: Deep winter, cold as fuck.
I was riding along in a large horse-drawn coach with many other children. All of the children had identical satchels with them. Brown leather, shoulder strap, just enough room inside for a couple of small books and maybe some writing paper. Mine was the only one that was different. Someone (I presume it must have been one of my relatives) had embroidered a beautiful blue swallow on the front flap. In fact, it looked a lot like
this, but the bag was brown.
Some kids started making fun of my "purse." It was then that I realized I was a boy, and boys just don't carry satchels around with pretty little birds on them. I have several theories as to how I came into possession of this bag. Perhaps it was a hand-me-down from an older, female sibling, and my parents couldn't afford a new bag. Perhaps a grandparent lovingly embroidered the swallow without regard to the possibility of jeering from the other boys.
At any rate, I shoved the satchel next to me and towards the wall of the coach so no one could see it until we got to the school. We were all wearing identical burgundy coats, the girls' coats cinched at the waist, and the boys' tailored (more or less) like a suit jacket. We all filed into the school where there was a large gymnasium with tables set up to check off our names and write down our parents' professions. I did my best to hide the swallow the whole time, but inevitably, one of the boys started mocking me for it.
At that point, a great brute of a woman wearing her hair in a bun wound so tight it ironed out all her forehead wrinkles, wrenched me out of line by my arm. She talked in another language, but I remember it in English because, in the dream, I could understand her and everyone around her. She snatched the satchel from me, informed me that it was not proper school attire for a boy, and told me I would be made an example of.
Once we finally all signed our names, we were split up- girls on one side of the gymnasium, boys on the other- and we were all taken to our designated classrooms for our first lessons. I wondered when the promised retribution for my "non-regimental" bag would come. Soon after sitting down in a seat that was so small and termite-eaten I thought it might buckle beneath my weight, the lady with the bun took me out of the classroom. We went up several flights of stairs, and we finally reached the door to the roof.
"Give me your coat," she said. I hesitated. "NOW!" she screamed. So I gave her my coat. My punishment was to remain on the roof in the cold winds and snow for as long as she saw fit. Now, this is where the dream really jumps the proverbial shark. In order that I not try to climb down the building and run away (where the hell would I go? The school was many miles' walk from anywhere) there were machine guns trained in a line of fire just inside each gutter. "And don't get too close to the edge," said evil teacher lady, "because I don't want to have to interrupt your parents' work day to announce your death." Then, she left, and the grey metal door closed behind her.
It was screamingly, paralyzingly cold on the roof, and with only my uniform shirt to keep me warm, I wondered if I would die up there. Then I spotted a strange structure, sort of a geodesic dome that looked like it had once been a greenhouse of some kind. Some of the triangular sections of glass were missing, but it still created something of a windbreak. I curled up in the tiny snow-free area inside the dome, shoved my hands into my armpits, and prayed.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where that dream ended, or, rather, morphed into something entirely different. Yet, some memory of the first dream lingered in the next one, and I was at some sort of summer carnival near a blocky, non-descript building that looked suspiciously like the school. It was falling apart, now. Then I realized I had my satchel back. The last thing I remember before waking up was rummaging in my satchel to find my mobile, because I was convinced, somehow, that I had taken pictures of the whole ordeal and I wanted to show them off to my friends. (I guess I must have survived.)
The rest of the dreams I had were the usual child-abuse flashback dreams, and I really don't feel like writing about those.
