I don’t remember some of the dream.

I do remember that I’m dressed in almost futuristic clothes yet I’m walking around an Old West/Victorian town with dirt roads and green laws and houses and shops around forming a square. I’m alone. It doesn’t feel quite real, like it’s a tourist town.

I walk around and try to find someone. After a while, I find a young man walking towards me, probably around the age of 20. He’s tall and pale. He has short, dark hair under a black cowboy had, dark stubble on his face. He wears a red suede western coat, black pants and black cowboy boots. (He sort of looks like a young Bob Dylan.)

I walk up to him and try to talk, but I’m nervous and I try to talk to him but I stutter and choke. I finally say, “P-p-p-pardon me, d-d-do you k-k-know if a-a-anyone around h-h-here is l-l-looking for help around a s-s-s-shop? I need some money.”

He gives me a sly little look and smiles. “Mike Willkie over yonder at the book shop needs a clerk” he replies with a thick western accent.

I thank him and watch him walk down a road between houses and out of gold gate that leads to an unknown land. I walk to a section of the square that is lines with shops. The setup is too much like an Old West kind of movie with the entrances of low decks off the ground and ragged wooden buildings.

I enter the shop but nobody is around. I look at all the stuff and say to myself that this place doesn’t look much like a book shop. There are little paper books for children and metal toys on one shelf protected with glass. It looks more like an Old West/Prairie museum than anything.

A fat, middle age man with red hair enters the store from a back room. I realize that now I’m dressed in the right kind of clothing for the time period.

“Good day, ma’am,” he says with a thick Irish accent.

“Good day,” I reply with a very soft and genteel voice. “I was wondering if you had some kind of position that needs to be filled. I am in need of work.”

“Yes, I do believe I have something you can do,” he says as he leads me to the back room.

All of a sudden, I’m a little girl with perfect brown curls in a long brown skirt, a red linen shirt and brown boots, all still correct for the time period. The man leads me to a beautifully decorated room where a gorgeous little blonde girl and a slightly older brown haired boy are played with old toys.

I’m no longer worried about a job. I get the feeling that I’ve been adopted and that these are my new siblings.

“I’m leaving you for now. You three place nicely while I’m gone,” the man says to us. He’s squatting down to my level and has a hand one my shoulder. He gets up and leaves.

The blonde girl’s hair is curlier than mine. She’s very pale, as if she’s terminally ill. She’s dressed in a blue dress that seems to have a short crinoline cage under the skirt, judging by its width. The boy is taller and darker, as if he’s spent a lot of time in the sun. He looks like a younger version of the man who directed me to the book store.

“Hello,” the little girl says with a soft British accent, “my name is Caroline. This is my brother, Thomas.”

“I’m Kelly,” I reply.

Caroline looks very nervous. She’s gripping her little porcelain doll tightly.

I don’t know what happens right after that, but I do remember the man coming back and telling us that tonight was the night he was sending up the rocket. Caroline and Thomas are very excited.

The man leads us out to the square. The streets are filled with people wearing extravagant 1700s/early 1800s clothes and masquerade masks. They’re dancing in synch without music and the world is eerily silent except for the sound of our footsteps and a gentle breeze. In the center of the square is a modern space shuttle. We walk past it. I’m more amazed by it than Caroline and Thomas are.

We walk down the road the Bob Dylan guy walked down. We go past the gold gate and approach a huge Ferris wheel. It’s made of wood and the gondolas are shaped like elegant, gothic houses.

“Get in, children,” he says, “you’ll be safe here in case anything goes wrong.”

There are already some children in our gondola and in the gondola beside us. The inside of the gondola are beautiful. The windows, which made up most of the walls, had beautiful curtains around them, the floor was padded with Turkish rugs, the seats were cushy and covered with so many pillows some of the kids threw at each other.

We all gasp and giggle and scream as gondolas lurch as the Ferris wheel starts up. We stop at the top to get a good look at the rocket launch. The two gondolas with children are stopped so that we are side by side. I can see everyone inside the other one, including someone who didn’t quite belong.

It was the Bob Dylan man. While the children were pushed up against the glass of the wall closest to the view of the rocket, he was sitting on the back seat, very straight and still, with his hand clasped together on his lap. He looked straight ahead with no emotion on his face, not looking at the rocket, but past it, as if he could see through it.

I stared at him the entire time. I missed the rocket launch although I heard it.

When the rocket was gone, he looked directly over at me and smiled. He had completely black eyes.

The dream ends.