Lions, Dog-Catchers, and Cars, Oh, My!

Yep, you guessed it.
I had another lion dream last night.

This time, it started out in the day, with an vaguely unidentifiable friend and I driving around Portland/LA. Traffic abounded, and we were lost. Eventually, we came to the abrupt end of an overpass at the outskirts of town that looked over a bunch of dilapidated streets and highways that had sunken into a desert. We decided to stay there for the night and do some quality stargazing. A bunch of frantic but slapstick stuff happened then that I barely, fuzzily recall. A lion was involved, and other people.

*flicker*

Somehow, I got back to my hometown. I decided to walk home from the library, but took an unfamiliar route, passing through some sketchy neighborhoods. The late afternoon waned into nighttime. I saw a lion meandering around down a side street and picked up my pace, making it home in time to warn my dad, who was doing yard work, of the lion's presence. Its lazy tracking became chasing, and my dad and I only had time to lock ourselves in his truck outside the house. We stayed there quite a while until the lion had got bored lurking around the truck and surrounding houses and wandered farther down the block. We ran into the house, the lion noticing and chasing us to the door. So we called the police, who didn't know what to do (lions are, after all, quite rare in these parts). Optionless, they called in the dog-catchers, who took forever. In fact, we were stuck inside the house until the next afternoon. The lion paced around the house relentlessly. It didn't speak.

The dog-catchers finally arrived with some sort of tranquilizers. Unfortunately, they were made for dogs, not big cats, so they just subdued the lion without knocking it out. The lion then slurred out something like, "All I wanted was a car ride."


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I had another chasing dream, but this one involved three friends from school and I fleeing human chasers (one hooded in black, a la LOTR, one a normal young chap). It started at some sort of gathering which was crashed by these evil chasers who were trying to get rid of all of us (not kill, just vaguely "get rid of"). Some of the people at the gathering were from school, some from camp, some from nowhere identifiable. Anyway, three friends and I escaped by jumping into someone's Mustang and sneaking away while the chasers chased other people. The two aforementioned chasers tracked us, though, and what followed was an elaborate series of clever, desperate, and sometimes ridiculous escapades involving a lot of driving; crowded airports; windy, mountain roads; long, deserted highways; luxurious, pink hotels; and dingy restaurant/gas stations.

My favorite trick we attempted was hiding in waist-deep pool of water surrounded by lawn decorations and brightly colored flora until the chasers passed in their blue/black/purple car (the color changed throughout the dream, like a bruise) passed us on the nearby highway, once again located outside of Portland. I thought it was brilliantly clever and cinematic, but my friends complained about the chilly water and their new shoes. Eventually, we met the two chasers in the airport, where the young chap explained they didn't like being chasers, but the hooded fellow had a bad case of indigestion during which he lost all control of his mind and joined the truly evil chasers. The young chap had been trying to tell us all along.

Interestingly, this dream happened twice in a row, like an immediate recurrence. I don't remember the first time as well, but it didn't turn out so well. Interestingly, we were aware of that within the dream, and the first experience came in handy. "Remember what happened when we tried that last time?" one of us would say ominously. So we chose a different path, and that made all the difference.