Dream 3

It's been ages since I've posted a dream, and this one is probably the weirdest and most far fetched yet. And the best part is, this isn't the first time I've had this one. I distinctly remember having this dream at least once before, although it was before this blog existed, so I'll write about it now.

Dream 3: A Fishy Plan, night of 01-02 December 2006

So there were these fish. Four of them, I think; all different types. And this whole thing was sort of told from their point-of-view. So swim, swim, swim they go.

It's nighttime, and a sort of wintry day (although underwater, what does that matter?). And these fish decided that they were a little bit hungry, so what did they do? They went to a local fast-food restaurant of course. Sadly, however, this restaurant, although it was sort of reddish in color, was not a Wendy's, so these fish could not "eat great, even late" as they had hoped, because the restaurant was already closed.

So the swam, swam, swam some more, and they find the sub-basement of this restaurant (not the basement, below that). And because these fish are apparently stupid fish, they decide to go in, swimming through some sort of crack.

The structure of the sub-basement is awkward. It's completely circular, obviously filled with water, and the restaurant rests on a single round beam in the center. So the fish are free to swim around and around the donut-shaped expanse surrounding the support. And that's exactly what they do.

Then the little fish finds a stairwell leading up to the next level. As for why it's a stairwell, I don't know. It's not like the fish are going to stop swimming and sink to the bottom so they can physically walk up the stairs. But alas, the stairs are there. It's just one of the many anomalies one can find in my weirder dreams.

Mind you, these fish are really hungry. So of course they decide to go up the stairwell.

Bad idea.

The owner of the restaurant is there with a sort of sinister grin on his face. Rather than just saying "I caught ya" and turning them in for breaking and entering, he has other plans for these fishies (and it's not to fry them; they don't serve fish at that place anyway).

No, he scoops them up and keeps them confined overnight. Then in the morning, the fish awoke to find themselves being watched by hundreds of people (apparently, the tide went out and the restaurant was now above the water). The restaurateur then reveals his elaborate scheme.

The fish were now in a sizable container, and there were three more areas separating them from the rest of the lake. They were desperate to get out to see their families... and perhaps to eat, because they never did get that late-night meal they were craving.

In order to advance to the next area, the fish had to complete a task. In most cases, it was something like biting through a net. But the last area had a concrete wall at the end. And the fish had to win a game of Battleship for the concrete wall to open, leading them to the vast lake on the other side.

Meanwhile, a second concrete wall would constantly be closing in behind them. If the fish didn't complete the last task in time, they would simply be squished against the other wall and die. But that wasn't all.

In the basement of the restaurant, just above the new water level, the restaurant owner held captive all of the Olympic swimmers from the Western Hemisphere. How he got them, nobody knew. But that's not the point. The point was that their fate was directly tied to the performance of the fish.

As the concrete wall closed in on the fish, the water displaced would fill up the cell in which the swimmers were held. And at the moment the fishies would get squished, the cell would be completely full of water and even though they were the best swimmers in the hemisphere, the swimmers would drown. Of course, at this point, the "camera" of my mind immediately panned to the swimmers, who were frantically panicking for their lives.

Well, to make a long story short, the fish ended up completing all the tasks and winning Battleship with just a few short moments left. By opening the second concrete wall, the water in the cell rushed back out into the lake, and the swimmers were subsequently released. The restaurateur lamented the demise of his master plan. Not that he wouldn't be able to try again, because he wasn't arrested, despite the spectacle he made of the whole thing.

And the four fish were thereafter lauded as heroes, and of course they lived happily ever after, but they became ever wary of fast-food restaurants at night.

Random tangent: Didn't my last dream have something to do with tartar sauce? What a coincidence that is.