Bizarre Mall Dream

Every so often, if I can remember them, I write down my dreams directly after they happen, so as to avoid any lapses in memory or distorted recollections. This is definitely one of the greatest hits. It involved me and my friend and bandmate Jeff Smith on a strange saga through a shopping mall in dreamville.


The dream involved a lighthearted (and ravenous) jaunt through a mall in some sort of bizarre alternate reality. For some reason, there were buffets sporadically set up all around the pedestrian walkway at the mall. Not little tables but huge, elaborate, silver platter feasts.

I kept on trying to get Jeff to come into stores with me but he was heavily distracted and insisted upon dishing up food items at the buffet. He gathered up a heaping plate of various food items and kept adding to it as he went. Eventually, I grew distracted with him and I began to check out some stores.

Once Jeff had finished his gregarious meal he caught up with me only to announce that he was “hungry again.” He immediately went off to the buffet and returned with a massive crepe that looked to weigh somewhere around 15-20 pounds. Jeff sat at a bench for a substantial amount of time trying to fold the tortilla around massive 2lb hunks of chicken and about a gallon of mysterious white sauce. He wrestled with it, trying to position it for a bite. After a few failed attempts Jeff had ruined the tortilla shell. It sat dead and ragged on his plate like the tattered sail on a ghost ship. He had to return to the kiosk to ask the “burrito guy” for another shell. Looking frustrated, the burrito guy begrudgingly took the plate from Jeff and quickly wrapped the burrito himself, shaking his head, rolling his eyes, and exhaling in dismay. Jeff then managed to eat this leviathan.

Afterwords, he and I began to check out a few stores. Towards the end of the dream Jeff tugged my shirt and pointed at a massive video store at the end of the mall. I remember the store signs boasting the “largest selection of rare DVDs.” I should assume that that the sign meant the largest section of DVDs in dreamville. Jeff and I walked in the store and went our own separate directions. I went straight to the horror movie section, which was elaborately decorated like a cemetery, complete with dirt floor and pre-dug graves, all of which, I assume, were intended to heighten the consumer experience, not to increase the feeling of dread. For some reason, I hopped in a grave to investigate a product that was down there. It was a special edition of some rare horror movie (some bizarre dream reproduction of THE BEYOND or some other FULCI film). I opened the DVD case and pulled out what I considered to be a “limited edition” poster of great worth. For some reason, I desired this poster very, very badly. Instead of deciding the buy this poster/movie combo, I went straight to the bathroom in an attempt to steal JUST THE POSTER.

Once inside the bathroom I quickly undressed and began to tape the poster to my bare chest (I have no idea where the tape came from) to avoid security and nosy employees. I thought this was a very clever plan, of course. The bathroom had a toilet, a bathtub, and a mirror. I stood on a bathtub to get a better look in the mirror while I taped when I suddenly slipped and fell face first onto the toilet, violently breaking my nose and instantly bruising the whole right side of my face.

The last vision of this dream was me looking at my bruised, swollen, shattered reflection in the toilet water... with blood leaking from the gash in my broken nose.

Then I woke up.