Le Freak

Dreams are, on the whole, a bit odd.

There's the whole thing where they are surreal and are only significant or interesting to the person who has had them or their nearest and dearest, there's the supposed psychological tilt to them, and then there is the frickin' freaky, oh-my-deities-what-the-fuck-was-that-shit-shit-shit.

I'm not sure which one woke me this morning, but you're getting it anyway.
Bear with me.

I was standing at a taxi rank, waiting, as is socially acceptable in these situations, for a taxi.

A car pulled up with a girl in her mid-twenties driving, with her parents in the back. I didn't recognise or know any of them, but as I peered into the car all the better to see the face of the girl waving me in, I saw a CD case on the dashboard. Purple, with a 1950s-style poshly dressed woman on the cover, it bore the legend 'Troubled Diva!' so I got in, thanking them for the lift.

It started to rain, really, really hard. We drove for a while, and the girls' parents started talking about her stopping to buy a sofa...and as we pulled to a halt across the rainy cityscape there suddenly shot three bolts of lightning. They straightened, two closer together, and became lines of light. The two which were closer span round each other in a spiral and flicked and curled in on themselves into a giant sphere of blue coruscating light.

"Ball lightning!" I said, excitedly. The girl next to made 'muhuh?' noises.

The sphere turned a few times and began to move across the city horizon towards the car, slowing down as it passed through the brick wall in front of us and suddenly enveloping me with a noise like an electro-pop version of a dopplering steam-train whistle, and I swear I heard the noise physically, loud in my ears.

Everything was electric blue and quietly crackling and I wasn't in the car anymore. It was an effort, but I opened my lips.

"Hello?" I said, and I said it both in the dream and in my bed and realised I was dreaming so I opened my eyes...and this is the weird bit.

You know the feeling where you go cross eyed or boss eyed? The sensation that your eyeballs are focussed on two different things at once, your brain is getting signals that don't match, and there's a kind of mental frown as your mind struggles with the two scenes?

I opened my eyes. One eye saw my room in Hatfield. Brown carpet, orange walls, white curtains, green sofa, CDs everywhere. NO mistaking it in this or any other mental state. The other eye saw only the electric, white-crackling blue of the inside of a ball of lightning. My brain kinda folded in half and gave in to panic, and everything cleared as I leapt out of bed and stood there, looking around me, daring everything to continue freaking me out.

Which it didn't, I'm glad to say.

Apart from the decor, which normally does that.

I've been throwing suspicious and distrusting glances towards my subconscious all morning.