behind the central

My alarm in the waking world sounds at 7 a.m., but a part of me really wants to go back to sleep. I can sense a chasm of promise awaiting me back in Morpheus's grasp, a pit of pregnant nothingness that must be explored. After getting up to shut off the alarm I go back to bed, roll over onto my side, and slip immediately into dreaming. Twice more I wake up, each time the pull of the chasm, the nothingness, less strong but still present. When I finally awake feeling rested, memories of my dreams linger. They are recorded here.

I'm on a bus that has no roof driving through a brightly sunny landscape, sitting toward the rear, just behind the central doors. It's unclear to me where we're going but I recognize features outside and feel the journey has purpose. A few other persons (4, excluding the driver) are on the bus, also, all toward the front, all with their backs turned toward me, although I can tell they are aware of my presence. The bus slows to a halt in the middle of some featureless scrub and 2 more persons clamber aboard. They sit next to and slightly behind me. I turn to look at them. They are talking to each other and both are in military uniforms of sort. Neither of their uniforms bear insignia. Further from me is a woman with curly blond hair and an attractive but acne-scarred face wearing a light blue shirt, dark blue long pants, and a black belt. Closer to me is man in what could be Marine Corps blues. He has closely-cropped dark hair and his seemingly crippled hands are raised in front of his chest, fingers curled and spread wide. His eye-sockets are scarred and sunken pits devoid of eyeballs. He asks me what branch of the service I'm in, and I tell him something akin to 'I've never served.' The two talk to each other for a while and when I look back, the woman is sitting a row further back, low in the seat with her crotch thrust forward. I imagine briefly if I have a chance to make sex to her but the notion evaporates immediately.

The bus accelerates. We're driving down a snow-covered dirt track through a wintry scrub landscape at high speed and I remark at the driver's skill in negotiating the narrow and hilly path. I can see fresh tire-marks in the snows that cover the road. We pass a road-marker for the 'York Historical Society,' a bronze plaque atop an iron post that features a picture of an old barn or covered bridge. I'm speaking with the service-members about where I come from, explaining to them that I was in a sad place for a long time, much like the town the bus is driving into. The road is lined with boarded-up houses, burned-out cars, and weedy lawns. Because of an obstruction up ahead, the bus driver stops, reveres, and is doing a 3-point-turn when he runs us into one of the houses, cracking its barn-like sliding door. At that point I awake, refreshed.

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