I’m moving through a mall which seems to have four levels. It’s a crowded mall and I’m threading my way through people while on my bicycle, looking for my son who’s with my z-wife. I’m trying to make my best guess as to where I might find them, but logic is always so slippery in dreams. I know – because maybe I’ve already visited them – that each floor in this mall is not only a different place, but a different time. The first floor is some sort of beachscape next to the ocean in what might even be a pre-historic era. I remember how I had been the only one around when I was there the last time and I deduce that Ann and Ian went there; they should know it would be the easiest place for me to find them.
I ride through a dark part of the mall, like it's a pub or something, and there's what looks like an old, closed-up service elevator. There's a button to call it, but it's obvious from looking that it's broken; broken in some way that people can still get off this elevator, but they can't get on. I'm going to have to look for a different one.
I ride through a dark part of the mall, like it's a pub or something, and there's what looks like an old, closed-up service elevator. There's a button to call it, but it's obvious from looking that it's broken; broken in some way that people can still get off this elevator, but they can't get on. I'm going to have to look for a different one.
Except this guy stops me.
He's a huge guy with shaggy black hair and a beard, like a biker dude. He's wearing red t-shirt that stretches tight across a massive chest and he has a gun that he presses against my heart. He doesn't say anything. I start to calculate my options - play it cool? Funny? Scared? Submissive? What do I do?
The guy gets down on his knees pulls down his zipper (or it might have been mine) and I decide I’m not doing that. He’s put the gun down to pull down his zipper. I pick it up. It’s a huge black handgun, an automatic with heft. I bash him in the head with it and he goes down, unconscious.
There’s a short moment where I don’t know what to do next.
Then (slippery) logic reasserts itself. With my left hand, I reach in to my pocket to pull out my cell phone. I dial 911 with my thumb. A female operator answers and I tell her it's an emergency, I need the police. A man has tried to sexually assault me.
She begins to laugh.
She laughs and laughs and laughs. I’m horrified. I ask her, Do you think I’m joking? Do you want to hear the gun? And so I raise the gun to 45 degrees and pull the trigger. The gun goes off, not as loud as I would have thought ... or liked, for the sake of the operator ... but as the bullet fires I recall when considering my options I thought maybe there's a chance the gun's not loaded. But it fires when I pull the trigger for the operator and I realize it could have killed me.
She begins to laugh.
She laughs and laughs and laughs. I’m horrified. I ask her, Do you think I’m joking? Do you want to hear the gun? And so I raise the gun to 45 degrees and pull the trigger. The gun goes off, not as loud as I would have thought ... or liked, for the sake of the operator ... but as the bullet fires I recall when considering my options I thought maybe there's a chance the gun's not loaded. But it fires when I pull the trigger for the operator and I realize it could have killed me.
The operator continues to laugh.
There are patrons around me. They too can hear the operator and are confused by her reaction. Empowered by the support I feel from them, I start swearing at her. “Do you think I’m fucking kidding here? I was being fucking sexually assaulted! Get me the fucking police!” She keeps laughing and I begin to berate her. She keeps laughing until suddenly it's silent in the phone and I realize she’s hung up on me. I'm envelopped in wonder and fury.
I try again to call the police.
The man I cold-cocked stirs but now he's a cat. A sleepy, fat, black cat. I consider killing it by bashing its skull onto the concrete hearth of the pub's fireplace. I have it by it's neck and knock it's head to the floor, but just once, only to keep it unconscious.
I make more futile attempts to call the police. Frustration and wonder and fury. The perpetrator is now a blue jay. It revives and flies off before any one can catch it. I realize, now even if I am able to get through to the police, there’s no one here to arrest.
