Dream Log #1

This is the first entry in what I hope will be a series in which I write down my dreams. Sometimes my dreams are kinda awesome, so if I'm gonna write them down, why not share them with absolutely everyone who can access a computer and read English? (Also, if anyone wants to translate these into other languages, I give you permission on the condition that you tell me what you're up to.)

I had a dream the other night about being in an orphanage. It wasn't exactly an orphanage, but we were basically a bunch of kids hiding out in an enormous attic that must've been for a mansion, or some building that was quite large yet presumably residential. All of us were male. I was about ten or eleven, and my best friend was a boy my own age. We were very close, and while we seemed to have other friends, too, our relationship was set apart.

Everything in the dream appeared very dull and shabby, but also very sharp. Everything in our orphanage was gray and shabby, and our clothes were tattered and covered in dust. They looked somewhat like civil war uniforms, except small and less bulky. The place was lit by skylights that appeared frosted, and the light above them seemed to come from a cloudy sky. Despite all the gray, there were bright reds and blues that were part of our clothing. My jacket had a red inner hem, and though it was dusty and tattered, it was clearly once a very deep and brilliant red.

There was another boy about my age who was very much a bully, and his group of kids would give my friend and me a hard time, as well as make life difficult for other kids. So one morning, this bully goes up behind my friend and grabs at his curly hair and pulls it up into a sort of afro on top of his head. He mocks him when he does this and calls him a Jew. Some or all of us seem to know he actually is a Jew, but this is very upsetting, and it's understood that we're not supposed to talk about this thing.

I become irate when the bully does this, and I run around the table and run after him. I follow him into a room, and there I find him crying, along with a very small boy who is always with him who is probably about three years old. I go over to the boy and I pull him onto my lap because he's smaller than me, and I tell him that I know, and that I understand.

It's in this moment that I realize I've known all along that this boy is actually a girl, and he's been pretending to be a boy in order to avoid apprehension. I'm uncertain as to who all knows that he's actually a girl. She cries in my lap and never says a word, and I know that I've conveyed very much by telling her that I know and understand, and so I don't speak again. She knows that I forgive her for all the times she's been cruel because I understand why she did it, and I know that she had to do something hard to live in our hard little world in the attic. The little boy is holding my left arm and leaning against it, and he doesn't say anything, but just holds on. She falls asleep, and then sometime after the boy and I do as well.

I get the impression that time is passing, that I'm asleep. A part of my waking brain realizes this and becomes a little confused and wakes up, so that I'm sort of awake, watching myself as this little boy sleeping with this little girl and the smaller boy. Suddenly I wake up screaming and in pain, but it's within the context of the dream. One of the other little boys had come in the room with a bow and arrow he'd made from things lying around the attic, and upon seeing us, he'd shot at us with it. A bright blue projectile he'd fired went into my cheek, piercing it and hanging from the side of my face. The boy was alarmed and told me immediately that he didn't think it would work.

Some panic ensues, and one of the older boys steps in to calm me down. He grabs a book that is sort of our Bible because it tells us all kinds of things we need to do in situations like this. He looks up what to do and begins bandaging my face, and it's at this time that I wake up.