I just woke up from a dream I really fancied. It was one of those dreams that you enjoy so much to the point that when you wake up from it, your disappointment is so bitter and complete that you make an effort to put yourself back to sleep. And you really try your best to re-enter that dream and resume the timeline of that fantasy. But it doesn’t really happen. Imagine the possibilities if dreams would work that way.
What do I do then? I’m awake, that’s as certain as it appears to be. I stare at the blank ceiling indefinitely and recall everything that happened in the dream. And then I do it again. And again.
I’m starting to wonder whether or not my whole perceived reality was the actual dream and the so called timeline I had just “woken up” from was the actual real world. As I’m writing this, I’m still not sure if I’m completely honest with you. And even though the dream had some phantasmagorical elements that couldn’t really be explained whatsoever, I’m still stubborn enough to believe there might be a bit of a chance that the dream was the real thing. Just for the sake of it. Maybe if I trick myself to believe this, I reckon I’ll dream part 2 one of these days. Who knows?
Once I had to reconcile with the realization that the dream was probably not coming back and after one or two more attempts to force myself to sleep, I eventually got up and did the one thing I deemed necessary to honor the dream. Write about it in the best way I can.
The whole thing began in Amsterdam. Oh, Amsterdam, the cornerstone of my adult life. The sanctuary of my college days. In my mind all roads lead to Amsterdam. It seemed that my dreams went there too.
It was autumn, which sparked joy. It was cold but it wasn’t the uncomfortable and bothering cold that urges you to stay inside. It was the comfy, pleasant cold, the one that makes you wear only a sweater and a denim jacket. It was probably October or November. The air smelled like autumn and to me that’s one of the best ways the air can smell. The European smell of autumn air is a flavor I can’t really describe. It simply feels right. Refreshing for both body and soul.
The sky was grey, as to be expected on the Dutch turf. There was no rain and the city was still dry. It was morning and a bunch of people were going about on the cobblestone streets of good old Amsterdam. The smell of bakery was in the air.
I was at some corner smoking a cigarette. One of the many typical Amsterdam canals was right in front of me and the slender Dutch ginger bread looking houses were lined up on each side. I was a casual observer of the flow of people, the stillness of water and the many shades of grey tangling in the sky.
I turned around and walked inside a ginger bread looking house, which was actually a private office but with the looks and aesthetics of a pirate bar once inside of it. Dark wood was everywhere. I walked down a staircase to some basement dungeon looking place where everything was damp and the only lights present were a few candles and dim oil lamps. The furniture looked as if Jack Sparrow himself could pop out of the closet and challenge me to a duel any minute.
I looked around and I saw bookshelves and in the middle of that chamber I saw none other than my good friend from Vietnam, Tung. He liked to call himself Tom but I still went for the name his loving Vietnamese parents had given him.
In the actual reality Tung and I had been working for a public school, doing our best to teach some English to a whole multitude of high school kids, some of them more appreciative than others. In the dream reality, Tung and I were some sort of business guys working for that office place in that fancy ginger bread house in the center in Amsterdam.
I didn’t know exactly what was the domain or nature of our work whatsoever and frankly, I couldn’t care less. It didn’t affect the timeline one bit. What mattered was that for some reason we had access to all the finances of that office which were hid in that dim pirate basement place in some drawer. Tung had the key and was planning to take it all. And he had come with the right plan for it. And that was the story began to really kick in.
Tung’s master plan of making a successful heist combined basic preparations with cunning efficiency. For the scene had to look as if we’d been ambushed and not that the whole thing had been our idea. And by the time it would be proven otherwise, my buddy and I would’ve been long time gone in some distant horizon, over the hills and across the water, beyond our previous realm, in some place where the words “not my problem” and “I don’t give a damn” would give us full satisfaction and redemption.
The whole scheme consisted of nothing more than two low life buffed individuals with shaved heads and scars all over their bodies to walk in with baseball bats and simply trash the whole building. Every inch of it. No remorse, no regrets, no soul-searching existentialism to follow any of the respective actions.
The two muscled human tools had just walked in our chamber when Tung was grabbing the whole stash of money in the most relaxed manner, almost laughing about it. He proceeded to pay the two tough guys who looked as if they had just escaped from a craggy prison island which smelled of nothing but vermin bread, rotten morals and decayed wretches. Those two guys sure had the outlook. I wanted to ask Tung where he’d find such specimens but it was too late, as no sooner had they taken the money than they began smashing to bits every single chunk of that respectable looking office place.
Everything that once had been in one piece in that house was turned beyond recognition in a matter of seconds. It looked as if those two lads actually enjoyed the whole thing. They were men of sheer will and commitment. Tung and I were still at the table, casually observing.
“Coffee?” He asked me, proud of the plan going so well.
“Nah, I’m good.” I told him, without even turning, as the smashing spectacle was too good to miss any of it.
After a few minutes of pondering on the dissonant destruction, Tung told me to follow him.
He had a key with which he opened a door. I had seen that door before, but I didn’t give any thought to it. On the other side there were some slippery stairs. I could hear the water of the canal.
We walked down and I saw something I did not quite expect. A submarine was there, barely above surface. I really can’t explain how on Earth did the submarine get there or the whole purpose of it. I wish I could. It didn’t really matter. It was there and Tung apparently knew how to operate it and persuaded me to join him inside.
He opened the hatch door, went in and I followed every one of his steps. I could still hear the two fellas upstairs causing mayhem. They were in their element and I felt really happy for them.
The inside of the submarine looked really bright. It was a stark contrast from the basement place we had just descended from. There was Ikea furniture all over the main room of the submarine, which featured a control panel displayed in a bright silver nuance with blue, green and red buttons spread all over.
Tung pressed some of those fancy buttons and the submarine came to life. Everything was vibrating. I got excited, since I had never been inside a submarine before. I felt like a barefoot Carpathian peasant witnessing electricity for the first time.
Once the engine started doing its thing, a water gate in front of us opened and on the other side there was the Amsterdam canal. The submarine took its course and before I knew it, the canal widened up, as we were approaching the North Sea. Both of us were silent. Our enjoyment and sense of doing the right thing needed no words.
If this story here wasn’t already fantastic enough, at some point the submarine decided to go above the water and simply… fly in the sky. I had no idea how it was happening. It was simply against basic physics. Maybe some hyper advanced propulsion system or magnetism or whatever. I had stopped questioning the whole reality ever since I got a glimpse of that submarine.
We were flying above Amsterdam and then above the North Sea. Honestly, at that point, I was fine with wherever we were going. I was in for the ride. I thought about the face of our boss, this candid lady who didn’t really do anything wrong to us, when she’d see the whole mess caused by those two lowlife lads. It made me giggle. It didn’t matter and frankly it wasn’t real. It felt as a thing from the past now.
The more we distanced ourselves from Amsterdam and the more we went further above the North Sea, the more we had a strange sense of new beginnings. We were our own masters now. We owned ourselves. We had just hit the jackpot. We were in a damn flying submarine, holding a gigantic stash of money and there was absolutely nothing to worry about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the flying submarine was also invisible to any radar and had shields to protect it against any weaponry.
“Where are we going, man?” I asked my partner in crime.
“To Norway, brother.” He said with satisfaction. “I have a villa there. You’re going to love it!”
What were the odds? Tung had it all figured out. I had been good to him all that time I’d known him, helped him every time he needed it and now he was taking me to some villa he owned in Norway through the power and magic of a fancy flying submarine. Karma did the right thing.
The submarine kept on flying through the sea and at some point I saw bits of Norway approaching. The mighty fjords were greeting us. It was so beautiful, so different from the flat Dutch lands. It felt as if we were in The Lord of the Rings.
The submarine descended from the sky and went back underwater just like a normal submarine was supposed to. Eventually, we parked our submarine at a tiny wharf of a little Norwegian town we didn’t know the name of.
Tung and I went out through the hatch door and walked along the wharf. Wooden houses painted in poignant nuances of red, yellow, green, white and blue were dominating the scene and behind them mighty crescents were looking down on us.
We went on this wooden pontoon bridge which had little a little restaurant on one side. We entered and the first people we could sea were this Norwegian middle-aged lady with two teenage daughters. They all had light blond hair and pale faces, having a tint of pink on their cheeks. The eyes were so blue one could see the arctic waters in them. We were truly in the North.
The women were all talking English for some reason, but with a really thick Scandinavian accent, almost cartoonish in a sense. It felt like everything there had been carefully scripted just so Tung and I can understand.
We took a seat at a table and were about to order something. What on Earth had just happened? We were in Norway and Tung was about to bring me to his villa. I thought about the villa. I thought of what would happen later on. It felt so real. It was authentic. It was a dream…
Yes. A dream it was. It was about that time when I opened my eyes. I closed them back instantly just to open them back in Norway. But no. No more Norway. No more flying submarine. No more fjords, wharfs, pontoon bridges or anything of the sort. My mind was boggled. Had the actual dream just begun and the flying submarine business was the real thing? I really couldn’t figure it out. They both felt as real as they could get. Now I really can’t tell which one is which.