Dream on

When I'm actually able to sleep, I dream in vivid color, the same things over and over again. Like the one where the basement turns into orange and red pools of magma and I'm trapped in my bedroom as the house burns down around me, a nightmare left over from studying volcanoes during fire safety week in first grade. Then there's this one, which I always remember perfectly clearly on waking:

I am standing in a certain hallway in the newspaper building where my father worked until I was 10. The carpet is dark brown with black and taupe stripes; it's threadbare, in places worn down to the wood floor beneath. The room smells like ink and newsprint and spilled coffee, and the white paper piled everywhere makes a sharp contrast to the dark wood paneling on the walls. To my right, dimly, are the desks where the newspaper is laid out; I can see large slanted tables with X-acto knives and rolls of decorative tape and glass rollers resting at the bottom: these are the tools used before computers made the process antiseptic and cold. To my left is the cubicle where Lois works, where a white cursor blinks against a blue computer screen.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
The pictures I sometimes draw for Lois with my father's fat highlighters are pinned up around her computer, pink and blue and green and yellow. No orange; that highlighter is missing. I'm not supposed to get in the desk drawer where the highlighters are, though, so I don't mention it. My father's office is around the corner, out of my line of sight, and the hallway that leads to it is dark. He's not there.

I stand in that space, watching a 13" black-and-white TV. People from the newsroom crowd behind me, pushing and talking, leaning in to see the TV, but I pay no attention to them. I don't know them, don't remember their names, although I'm sure they all know me—the boss's oldest daughter. I only know Lois and Dad, and neither is there. There is a car on the TV, some sort of convertible from the 50s, and it is being chased by cowboys and Indians, all whooping and throwing lassos and shooting arrows. All of a sudden the cowboys and Indians come riding through the office, straight down the hall to Dad's office, and as I watch them ride by, I say, "I wonder when Dad will be back."

That's it. That's the entire dream. It's so specific, and then it ends so abruptly. Where is my dad? I suspect he's in that car, and maybe Lois is with him. Maybe they have the orange highlighter. I don't know. It's a weird, weird dream, but I like it because the sensory memory is so specific. I haven't been in that building in over ten years, but everything is overwhelmingly immediate in the dream. There were never cowboys or Indians, though. Dammit.