Abandoning Babies and Hiding from the Police

I was in my sister's car, she was taking me to work. I had rushed out of the house because I was late, and it completely slipped my mind to shower and change. "Dang it. I forgot my socks," I said, looking at the socks on my feet.

I was drenched in sweat, wearing my running clothes and my work boots when we finally arrived at work. Ah, jeez. I just realized how much I dream about work…

"Sorry that you're late," my sister said. "Traffic kinda sucked."

I looked at the clock. It read 2:50. I was almost four hours late! I got out of the car, thanked her for the ride, and rushed inside. I rushed to the bathroom to change with the bag of clothes that appeared in my hands. When I got inside, I realized that I had forgotten a shirt and a hat.

Wearing jeans and my running shirt, I left the bathroom in search of a manager. Luckily, she was waiting right outside of the bathroom door. "Sorry I'm late. I forgot a shirt and a hat… are there any here that I can have?" I asked, knowing that we had extra shirts and hats. "We got stuck in traffic… that's why I am late."

She ignored me and continued doing whatever it is she was doing. There was a cupboard--one, single kitchen cupboard--on the floor against the wall that she and a coworker were talking over.

"Hey, can I get a shirt and hat?" I asked.

"No," she told me, then returned to conversation.

The stress of showing up four hours late and not having my full uniform made me begin to tear up. I rushed to the bathroom, locked the door behind me, and cried on the floor. While in there, I could hear her asking about me. Where was I? Why was I not working?

I rubbed my eyes, took a deep breath, and left the bathroom. I was surprised to find that my manager was no longer right outside of the door. "Where's Amanda at?" I asked my coworker, who was now cleaning the top of the cupboard.

"She's in the office," she told me.

I walked through the dining room, behind the counter, through the kitchen, past Brad (whenever I have a dream about work, you better bet he is in it), and into the office. "Yo, can I have a shirt and hat so that I can work?"

"No, Caleb," Amanda said angrily. "Just go home."

I began tearing up again. Apparently I was ultra sensitive in this dream. I sped through the kitchen and stopped by Brad. "What's up?" he asked.

"They're sending me home. I got stuck in traffic, and now I'm over three hours late. I forgot my work shirt and hat at home, it was 2:50 when I got here…"

"What? It's only 12:50."

I looked at my watch. "...the heck? When I looked at my watch and the clock in Chey's car, it was 2:50!" I exclaimed. Distraught and confused, I fled the building and ran across the Wal-Mart sized parking lot.

When I reached the end of the parking lot, I pulled out my phone to call my dad to tell him that I was getting sent home and needed a ride. I looked up and, much to my surprise, there he was! Next to a van straight from 2002, setting my year-old nephew on the ground of the parking lot. I ran up to him, we made eye contact, and he hopped into the vehicle. Instinctively, I picked up my nephew as Dad closed the sliding door in my face and the driver took off. So there I was, holding my nephew, watching my dad and whoever he was with leave.

Everything faded to darkness. I was running down the road I start all of my runs on. It was dark outside. "The dawn was breaking, it was early morn,'" and I saw cop lights in the distance. Not again… I thought to myself. Luckily, he turned. Then he was followed by three paramedic vehicles and a fire truck.

Confused, I sped up to see what was going on. When three more cops began racing down the street, I stepped off of the road and further into the darkness to hide myself. In the process, I ran into (figuratively) about ten men wearing red shirts. "What's going on?" I asked, looking into the darkness everyone seemed to be fixated on, then back at one of the men in red.

"Someone drove into that lake over there," he said, pointing. I looked back at the lake, and everything was clear. It went from being three in the morning to seven.

There was a cop car and a crane parked on the lake. Yes, on. All of a sudden, I was on the edge of the lake, and the headlights of the car could be seen below. The man who had been in the car was floating on his back, spitting water out of his mouth like a cartoon character.

The crane pushed the car towards the shore. The best way to describe the lake is this: imagine an underground pool that is only ten feet deep all the way around, yet is built to look like it belongs in nature. That is what this lake was. A giant pool, with sand on the bottom, seaweed, even some fish, yet there was no gentle slope from the shore to a drop off: the entire thing was a drop off.

The man in the red shirt I had been talking to dove into the water, grabbed the car by the sunroof, and pulled the car to the surface. He told my brother-in-law to help the man inside of the car to get out by keeping the sunroof open (I have no idea how he ended up inside of the car again). Rather than holding the sun roof open, he jumped into the water and held onto the open portion of the sunroof in order to keep the car floating, which was unnecessary as the man in red, who was standing on the hood of the car, seemed to be keeping it afloat well enough.

Knowing my brother-in-law was not going to realize his mistake, I jumped onto the car, opened the sunroof, the man swam out, and we all emerged dry.