/yesod

Tag: parking lots

  • parking

    At the gateway of the ramp, I take the ticket from the mechanism and slyly point out that we can go through the first level without being detected. My companion is skeptical but follows along as we pass through the gate without being stopped.

    On the other side, a woman in uniform stops us for confirmation and I show her the ticket. She waves us on but my feet lose their purchase on the ramp and I begin the slip away, falling upwards into the sky, pulling her along with me. 

    I tell her that she has to be in trouble for me to be able to do anything, that my own power cannot be activated unless another is in peril. 

    “Help me,” she says unconvincingly at first. “Help me.”

    It does not work, though her sincerity increases as the danger grows and I jerk awake.

  • payroll

    …I find that I have overslept and am in a rush to get a stack of deposits to the University’s bank by noon, otherwise all of the faculty and staff paychecks will bounce.

    The deposit is a stack of checks and slips totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are pink and yellow carbon copies, very slippery to keep in order. I leave the darkened school library — exhausted students sprawl here and there across chairs and couches, utterly done in by finals and the drunken afterglow parties.

    I pass through a maze of corridors and stairwells, time slipping away. Once I get out to the parking lot, I see a few professors heading to their cars. Everyone wants to get to the bank before noon. It closes early on the weekends, of course.

    Running out of time, I try to flag down one of the faculty but they do not see me. I end up running through the surrounding office park, cutting between buildings and scrambling over landscaping.

    Arriving at the bank, I see the tellers inside beginning to pack up for the day. I bang on the door but they wave me off, mouthing “we’re closed.”

    Somehow I manage to climb up to a small skylight and, quite suddenly, burst through to the floor below in a shower of glass.

    But, after all that, I make the deposit in time.

  • thugs and church

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 4th, 2003]

    …and as I’m walking through the parking lot towards my car, I see two guys approaching — I make eye contact, just to established that they know that I know they’re there . . . One of them nods and says “How’s it going?” And I realize that I am in trouble. They’re both heavier than I am, and they move with a raw plodding strength that I do not possess and cannot hope to match — Like an idiot, I’ve parked on the far side of the lot. The other cars are very far away and a few people are moving in the darkened a lot.

    As I said, they’re big and they spread out a bit, drawing my focus first one way and then the other. I exchange words with the smaller of the two, can’t remember now what was said but things escalate and I realize that I’m not looking at a typical robbery — These guys are looking for someone to be and I’m more than convenient.

    Bad news for me.

    And this is the strange thing… I don’t remember how I got away from them but I did.

    I remember shouting to a group of people who were standing in a pool of light 100 yards away… I remember leaving my car behind — perhaps Iran?

    At any rate, I get away and at least one thing sank in — I wasn’t clear of them. They’d be waiting for me when I went back for my car.

    The next day is Sunday and I am at church — not my real church but one of those awful Seeker churches tucked away in an industrial park behind a Sam’s Club and a warehouse.

    And then everything gets murky. The dream went on for much longer, but it just didn’t stay with me long enough to capture it here.

  • wedding errand

    Walking through a parking lot towards a line of children. Accosted, my money taken. Finally convincing them to let me go — “Please, I’m getting married today.”

    Amazingly — I’m released.

    But the ceremony has started and I’m late.

    Putting on a tuxedo in the great underground empire while searching for a washcloth.

    Sent on some pissant while of an errand by my wife, my own wedding starts without me.

    * * *

    My chest is continually constricted and I have blood in my eyes.

    The gray dawn has returned and my nights are only pain.