Dodgy police § Corporate justice § Cup of tea, Sir?

Please devour my mammoth dream if you have the guts

I desperately need to gain employment in my current Swedish climate. If I don’t within 1-2 weeks then I will run out of cash supplies and be forced to go back to England. I have found my way into an English speaking office where they require a person to complete some vague, data input work. I am chatting/flirting with the manageress and another office girl for many minutes. A lot of laughter and eye-lash fluttering eye contact is involved. It transpires that another man has been given the position. Rueful looks indicate that they really wish they had given it to me. Further sour facial expressions reveal that they also are not too keen on this time-travelling usurper and inform me that he is employed on a trial basis only. If he fails this testing period then the job is mine. Definitely mine.

"I'm gagging for a cup of tea" I say "do you mind if I make one for all of us?"

Showing my “new-male” house-trained side makes them even hotter towards me. I make sure to offer the same kindness to my work-based enemy, in fact, going one step further and asking if he has a special little mug he likes to drink his tea out of. He looks like an archetypal stoner: Long greasy hair, scruffy ripped jeans, hole ridden t-shirts brandishing ancient metal bands nobody listens to anymore. I give these people some credit though. It’s no mean feat to be so cluelessly out of touch as a 40 year old whilst technically aging half that number. I feel deflated that the destroyer of my Swedish dreams is so completely devoid of wit, charm and is unable to fully open his red, sleepy eyes. A general air of self-served, unsubstantiated doom surrounds him.

Next I find myself in the kitchen with a mug in my hand that somehow I know for certain is his -Even though he never specified which mug is his and even though all the mugs are the same.
The tea is already in his cup. Out of my pocket I pull out a box of high strength sleeping capsules. After splitting each one, depositing the white powder into the drink and giving it a quick stir I was all ready to present to him with a lovely cup of tea. I give my mobile number to the office ladies, leave the building and simply wait.

Whilst pacing the streets I receive the anticipated phone call.

"There has been a problem with one of our employees that has lead to his dismissal. Would you mind coming in now to start work immediately. I'm really sorry, I know it's short notice. Do you mind?" says the womanly voice

'No, No.’ I soothe.

‘I'm up and raring to go. I'll be there shortly'

On my journey to the office I see a Swedish, Telia phone box. This brings to the surface previous anger against these people. During my time in Sweden I have made phone calls that equate to £1 for less than 12 seconds of talk time. I enter the phone box with the intention of twatting the phone receiver against the metal box a few times to gain some futile satisfaction. On the wall I see a new notice, in English, which I have never seen before. It states that charges begin, credit starts to deplete from the moment it starts to ring. If you ring for 20 rings and no one answers you will still lose all your calling credit. I am incensed. I try to tell the Swedish people walking past me what this company is doing but they don't care.

"We use our cell phones"

Cell phones? Typical Swedish-American wannabes. I storm off towards my new work place, releasing my anger with every step until when I arrive I am completely calm.

The office is now a large, corporate tower block with an elaborate stair case donned in red carpet. I see a short, podgy man in a suit climbing the stairs. He wears round glasses and looks like a mole. After a couple of seconds I recognise him as the head of the entire Swedish public telephone system.

"You!" I shout whilst pointing at him.

My hand is trembling with pent up emotional anger. He instantly looks sheepish and afraid.

"I know what you're up to. Causing the price of the telephone box to become so expensive that it forces people to use their mobiles. Once people view the phone boxes as obsolete they will remove them and then you, with your position as head of various mobile phone companies, will sky rocket the price of mobile calls because no one will have any alternative. There will be no competition"

He starts to run away. I begin to chase whilst shouting…

"You idiot. In a few years time everyone will be making phone calls over the internet anyway. Think you're clever?"

The CEO of Telia runs into an office, managing to hurdle over the solid front desk. I follow his manoeuvre with grace, then pounce, grabbing his tie in the process. I head butt him with the intention of breaking the lenses inside his framed glasses, forcing shards of glass into his spongy, rat eye-balls. I start to lift him off the ground with his tie and repeatedly pound his shiny head into the ground. I then embark on a frenetic, bezerker style fit which involves smashing the table and office furniture around me whilst making rabid growling, panting animal noises.
My power is immense.

I'd spent about £10 in real life on these phone boxes. Once it took 3, £1 phone calls just to arrange a time and place to meet. I am pissed off

After a brief period of fruitful smashing a horrible realisation fills my body causing me to stop dead in my tracks.

It is such a shock that my mouth is

h

a

n

g

ing

open

( )

and

I am

staring

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

off

into

space

¤-¤-¤(-0-) ¤¤¤¤¤ *

* *

* *

*

with a

catatonic

expression `^´ `^´

on my

face as

dogs often do.

This office is my new office.

On most peoples' first day at work they make some nervous small talk and worry about whether they can actually execute the job description which they confidentally claim they can whilst lying their way through the interview. I'd just chased a very important looking man who actually WAS a very important and powerful man into my work place, given him a Scottish style beating and then broken a lot of expensive looking furniture. The look of sheer, aghast, horror on my ex-work mates’ faces sends a stark shudder down my spine. I am racking my brain to think of a witty one-liner that may in some way rescue the situation when I see a team of security guards coming towards me.

The Swedish security guards are slightly different to the over-weight, stupid, under-trained, slow, apathetic security guards that laze about English shops and offices. The Swedish security guards act with military style training. They carry telescopic batons, handcuffs and walkie-talkies. They don't bother trying to talk down a situation with sweet words. For the most seemingly innocent of offences -not paying for a ticket on the underground metro system - they will happily slam you into the ground face first, handcuff you then drag you away to a secret place where even more guards await you. There you may receive a vicious beating, but this all depends on your nationality. I am pretty startled by the site of these people, as afraid as if it was the actual police themselves.

I pelt it away from the office and execute a magical, Disney-like slide down the banister of the staircase with the plush red carpets. I continue running. The gravity of the carnage, the harshness of the Swedish legal system coupled with its possible punishment is growing inside me. I now know that I need to acquire a get away vehicle.

As soon as I have entertained this thought there appears a strange man who looks something between a circus performer and a Marilyn Manson fan. He has long black hair, a top hat and boots covered in tin foil. He juggles bowling skittles as he moves. This man isn't walking though, he was moves utilising a very odd contraption. It’s a cross between moon boots with springy, bouncy heels and a unicycle. I calmly tell him to get off and he silently submits. I place my feet on the metal foot holders and try to get to grips with the control. It’s a combination between walking normally wearing a rucksack full of bricks and cycling except that it takes much more effort and energy than either of them. The top speed is a snail’s pace but I decide to venture on to escape the security men. I turn round to see how close behind me they are but they have disappeared.

No feeling of relief comes over me after this miraculous escape. The piece of shit the freak gave me I dump by the side of the road then set off walking. Moments later I notice a policeman on my right side, talking to me about where we should patrol. I look down at myself, spy a police uniform and realise that I too am now a policeman. Nothing seems peculiar to me about this situation.

I decide it’s best to go back to England for a while until I can make sense of everything. To do this I need money. A shady looking character is skulking around on the other side of the street.

"Let's illegally search him" I say to my partner.
'Ok' comes the reply

we shake him down finding a large quantity of cocaine and a large wad of English cash on his person. My partner starts to handcuff my potential cash cow and reaches for his radio.

"No" I Say.
"He's learnt his lesson. Haven't you?" I say turning to the man with the drugs. The man who hasn’t uttered a single world

'Er..yes' he says in a confused and hopeful manner

"Ok. We'll let you off this time. We're going to give this money to orphans and tip this coke down the drain. Don’t tell anyone about what happened here today though"

The lucky criminal wanders away.

'Wow. It's like Robin Hood' exclaims my partner

"Yes, isn't it just?

I better go and take care of all this now. Carry on as you were"

As I depart from him it doesn't occur to me at this time how utterly naïve my partner is and how utterly terrible my lies that he has swallowed are.

Openly,

in broad daylight,

whilst wearing a Policeman's uniform

I start snorting coke in the middle of the street. The next moment I am in England -Minus the money and the cocaine. I head back to my old house in Withington to see Olga. Now that I am in England this is my main and most important mission. In real life I know she has been suffering from flu. Inside her bedroom I find her curled up in bed, asleep, with her head at the opposite end of the bed to where she usually rests.

I wake her up by calling her name.

Her sleepy eyes are very pleased to see me but because of illness and sleep she is still groggy, probably thinking that she is in a dream herself. I start tenderly kissing her neck on the areas that all girls seem to really enjoy. Even in the dream I’m aware that Olga is a close friend and that we have never kissed each other before, but it seems like the appropriate thing to do and so I follow my heart. The noises she makes as I kiss her are ones of longing satisfaction.

She realises that I am real and lifts up the duvet as an invitation to climb inside the bed. The bed is comfortable, warm and we start to hug. The hug is strong, feels emotional and perfectly right like we are missing pieces of a jig-saw fitting together at last. I feel safe and at peace.

Known and unknown Swedish girls in my dream.+ something about my tongue

Of all the dreams I must have dreamt last night here are 2 of the 3 that I remember. The third one is obese and commands it's own post proceeding this one. Back story regarding the characters in this dream follows within this post. I know nobody reads this anymore because it died but maybe some ghosts can work out my dreams?

I was sat on the floor of an unknown bedroom in Sweden. To my right was a wardrobe containing a mirror attached to the middle panel. In the room with me are 2 of Leylla’s friends, Emilia and Maria. They are both highly amused at something and Maria passes to Emilia some fake, black eyebrows that are in the shape of a wide, inverted V.She attaches them to her face whilst shielding the results. When she takes her hands away, her face is contorted in such a hilarious, villainous way -complimented by the eyebrows- that we all fall about pissing ourselves. It’s sort of like count von count from sesame street, done in a hammer-horror style but better. I start to reach for my camera to take a photo of Emilia’s comedy face but before I can she passes the eyebrows to Maria. She now makes a face too, it’s pretty funny and we laugh quite hard. Maria realises that Emilia’s face is class and so passes the eyebrows back without a trace of bitterness.

Now however we are sat in a different room of the house and Leylla is sat in between both of them. Her hair is now an afro with way too much hair on top to make it seem like a cone, this causes her face to look chubby and accentuates the worst feature of her face, her nose. The clothes are completely different from the type she would normally wear. A plain, dark green t shirt is all I remember; it had stains on it and is something you’d expect a really poor American child to wear. The look in her eyes was as if she had been half-lobotomised.

Emilia is making the funny face again and I really want to take a photo of it but feel that I can’t because Leylla would have a go at me and later at Emilia –In real life she controls some of her friends through fear and her outrageous, unnecessary emotional tantrums. I feel disheartened because I can’t do what I want to do. I look at Leylla and then realise I don’t want to look at her anymore. I choose to look at Maria because she has such a pleasant face. The dream ended.

*It is weird that I should dream about Maria because I only ever met her briefly twice in my life and didn’t even have a proper one on one conversation, maybe a few words in a group conversation. I have no idea what kind of person she is. Obviously she is some kind of representation of Sweden/me in Sweden that I cannot figure out.

This is the second time or so she has been in my dreams since I have been here though. In another her and her sister, Anja had come to visit me in England. I would ask them a simple question in English and then they would talk together for about a minute in Swedish, start laughing a lot and then Maria would turn and very sharply give blunt one word answers. It felt very odd.

I used to dream about Anja quite a lot when I was going out with Leylla but we would normally just be sat, calmly talking about things. I don’t remember anything specific.

I dreamt about Leylla one other time in the 2 and bit weeks I have been here. I was walking near the train station in central Stockholm when I saw her. I called out her name and she saw me, started to cry and then ran away. I started to chase her but after a minute I completely stopped. What would I do if I caught up with her? All I wanted to do was talk and if she didn’t want to how could I make her. I just lie on the pavement and put my hands around my head.

This is the first time I dreamt about Emilia since I have been here. When Leylla and I lived together she visited us in Manchester for a week. She kept telling me how ugly Emilia was before she came and that if I made a move on her then she would go through with it because she didn’t care about Leylla. I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of test. After I first saw Emilia Leylla told me that she thought I was attractive which perplexed me even more. If she thought this way about Emilia then why invite her to stay? Because Leylla had lowered my expectations of how Emilia would look and act I was surprised when I met her. She looked like the kind of girl I would normally fancy and somehow she made a nose piercing look well.

Buck 65 was playing a gig at the Night & day on the second day of her visit. Leylla had bought 2 tickets and promised that I could have the other one; she kept telling me how good a time I would have. When Emilia was here Leylla decided that she wanted to go to the gig by herself because someone needed to stay and look after Emilia. The logical thing would be for Leylla to either not go to the gig or just maybe give Emilia the other ticket. No, in Leylla’s world it was now MY duty to stay with her friend from Sweden, the one who I had met the day before for the first time. It would have been easy to stick on a DVD or something but then I would feel uncomfortable because I feel better once I have had a proper conversation with someone, otherwise my mind starts to play paranoid tricks. Instead I spent the time hanging out, talking to Emilia and had a really good time. It felt comfortable and I suppose in the end it was the best thing because 3 people is a crowd sometimes and it might have been awkward between us if we had to be around each other for a week.

Upon Leylla’s return she was angry that we had connected with each other. She wanted me to, and I quote, “get on with her friends, but not too well.” Hmm. Such clear and specific guidelines, totally arbitrary in their complete unjustness.

Despite Leylla’s concerns we were all sleeping in the same bed. She demanded that we should leave the dirty sheets on because that’s what Emilia would do. I declined and put fresh sheets on. As the week went on I started to like Leylla less and less because of the way she was treating both me and Emilia. We went out to a shit forest rave and dropped pills. Leylla was in the bathroom and overheard me and Emilia plotting against her and saying how much we loved each other. She then realised we had been talking in Swedish and that was impossible for me so therefore was hallucinating

Leylla kept asking me if I fancied Emilia. She kept going on and on about it so much that I started to wonder myself. She kept saying that Emilia was the worst person out of all of her friends who I could like, that she was the most forbidden chocolate in the sweet shop. On and on and on she would rant. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t enjoy being told what to do and want things that I’m not supposed to, allowed to have. By saying these things Leylla was only creating a situation she feared so much. I hadn’t even thought these things about Emilia, why would I? She was my girlfriend’s friend. All I wanted to do was be a good host and be nice to her. It was a bonus that I genuinely started to like her quite a lot, but only on a friendship level. I hadn’t considered the physical side of Emilia apart from the first meeting when I was like “oh, she’s not ugly.” Leylla kept putting all these ideas in my head. I didn’t know if I liked Emilia in that way but I do know that I liked her more than I liked Leylla during that week long visit.

Emilia had to sleep upstairs after a while. One night I had a dream about me and her having really passionate, bed breaking sex. I woke up worried and sweating to be greeted by Leylla.

“I just had a really horrible nightmare that you and Emilia got together. Did you dream about it too?”

I didn’t wanna lie to my girlfriend particularly but the consequences of admitting this would be devastating for both me and Emilia so I was forced to lie for the greater good. It freaked me out a lot that we had had the same dream and woken up at the same time

Leylla broke up with me during that visit, went mental, and kept calling one of my other housemates who had gone to her new flat to see if she could stay. Leylla was going seriously mental and saying “oh, now you can sleep together and fuck each other like you wanted to all along.” Other nasty things were said. Emilia and I were just sat in the front room talking about what happened and why Leylla had gone that way. I hated Leylla so much at that point that I wanted her to leave so I wouldn’t have to hear her spiteful words. Someone like her drains the life out of you. She still kept going on about me and Emilia. It was starting to seem like a pretty good idea actually. I liked Emilia a lot more emotionally and physically at that point and I wondered if she would be able to swap her ticket with Leylla so that she would be the one to disappear and then Emilia could stay behind. I concluded that my thoughts maybe weren’t my own and I had just been drawn into Leylla’s poisonous world.

Leylla refused to take Emilia to the airport. I had to go to a new job I had started and actually liked so I couldn’t take her any further than town. I stole a book for Emilia and some food I think and said goodbye even though I was 25 minutes late for work. I felt sorry that she had to be so scared of Leylla and what she would do. Could she not see how insecure and weak she was? Probably that’s what made her seem so dangerous.

Leylla’s version of sanity returned after Emilia left and she actually apologised….probably never did to her friend. We fell deeply back in love and things went up and down the way they usually went. I thought about Emilia every now and then but only in a friendly way, never in a sexual way. However, for 2 solid months after that she would be in my dreams in one way or another. Usually heavily sexual. I started to become disturbed by it all and had to admit it to one of my close friends to gain advice.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My other dream

I spent a lot of time practising rolling my R’s. Eventually succeeding. I still cannot do this in real life, finding it embarrassing and irritating when contemplating my deficiency. However, when I mastered this skill -which I desire so badly- in my dream, I felt empty inside, possibly a little contemptuous.