Surgery (2 gifs)

I run a cash register at work. There is one customer who comes in daily, buys the same thing every day, and insists on paying only at my register, at least when I am there. Seriously, he'll wait in line to pay at my register when the other cashier is open and waiting, and even if she calls him over to her register, he won't move out of my line. He pretends to not hear her. If I go into the back room to hide from him, he'll wait over by the coffee until I come back out, just so he can pay at my register. 

This guy really, really creeps me out. It isn't just the insistence on contact. Different customers at our place do prefer specific cashiers, often because one of us may have their orders memorized, sometimes because they like our sense of humor, etc. 

This guy is different. He doesn't talk, doesn't smile, and moves with a measured, meticulous care in everything he does, right down to folding his receipt and putting it into the pocket of his green scrubs. And he doesn't wear his facility ID when he comes into the store. He's the only one in scrubs without a facility ID. Everyone else who comes in wearing scrubs has a photo ID card on a lanyard or a name tag pinned to their chests for some kind of medical or dental facility. Then again, everyone else has scrubs with brighter colors on them, too. It makes me wonder what the guy does. Is he a surgeon (who might not wear a tag because it could fall into his patient?) 

Worst of all, though his movements are insanely slow and careful, he does not watch what he is doing. He stares at my face the whole time he's at my register. This is not like other men, who make eye contact, smile, and sometimes harmlessly flirt. His face is nearly expressionless. I almost feel analyzed by that stare. If this guy isn't a shrink, he's kind of scary. If he is, he's being really rude. Either way, I guess he bugs me even more than I thought. He showed up in my nightmares.


I've come out from behind the register to keep the coffee stocked up while my co-worker runs to the restroom and my boss goes to the shed for supplies. We just had a big rush of customers come through, but now there is no one in the store except for us, and I'm the only one on the sales floor. Half of our pots were empty when I started. I've got two down, four to go. I load them up and set them brewing.

I'm about to turn around to return to the register when something hits the back of my head, really, really hard. Holy crap, it hurts! I think my co-worker has hit me, and turn to see why, but it isn't her. The last thing I see before passing out is that creepy customer in the dingy looking green scrubs. For once, his face has an expression. He looks surprised.

I'm on my back. My hands are tied above my head, and my feet are tied beyond my line of sight. I try to lift my head to see, but I can't because there is a strap holding it in place.

I'm laying on something moderately soft. It almost feels like a massage table or a thick gym mat. It's wide and stable enough that when I wiggle, it stays put. A quick glance around the me shows little. The room is small, maybe only 8 feet wide by twelve feet long. There is no window, just a door, a light overhead, and a lamp down by my feet. Hanging on the wall nearby is a lacy white dress.

Finally, I notice the creepy scrub guy. He is standing next to the dress. To the scrubs, he's added a cap, a mouth cover, and gloves. He sees me awake, and approaches. When he comes up next to me, I see that there is also some kind of tray table. I can't get a good look at it because the strap keeps me from turning my head.

He lifts something up. At first, it looks like he's holding a bag of water. He moves his hand, and the bag jiggles like unflavored gelatin. I am confused. Why is he showing me gelatin?

He points at me, then at the bag of gelatin. I still don't know what the heck he means. I must look as scared and confused as I am, because he jabs his finger at me again, directly at my chest, and then points again to the bag. He picks something up off of the tray table. It makes a clinking noise. Then, he shows it to me.

He's holding a scalpel. He lays it in the other hand with the bag. He points at himself, then at the scalpel, the bag, and my chest. Probable understanding dawns on me. I think he is telling me that is a breast implant, and he's going to cut me open and put it into my breast. He notices the change in expression on my face. He picks up another implant, and holds the two together up next to his chest, and nods. Then, he puts them back on the table.

He doesn't put down the scalpel. He doesn't pick anything else up, either. He just takes the scalpel in his right hand, and puts his left hand on my left breast, the side facing him.

This is when I realize that I am naked, and that he is really going to cut into my body with that scalpel. It doesn't look like he's going to knock me out first, either. I'm not sure which thought is more horrifying... knowing he plans to cut me without anesthetic, or the thought of being unconscious again with him in the room. I start begging him not to do this.

I tell him I don't want bigger breasts. I don't want surgery. I don't want to be cut open. He just looks at me.

I ask why he is doing this. He points at me, then at the dress. Again, I am confused. He wants to give me breast implants so I'll fit into the dress? I don't get it. Then I realize... it's a lacy white dress. The back hangs down a bit further than the front. It's a lacy white dress with a train. Hanging off of the shoulder is a flowery headpiece, with a short veil. That's a wedding dress.

I start to tell him that I can't marry him, because I'm all ready married, but something inside stops me. What if he's messed up enough to hunt down and kill my husband so I'll be single? What will he do if I just tell him I don't want him? I'm tied down, and he has sharp cutting tools. I had better not piss him off.

I tell him that I have back and neck problems, that breast implants will make those worse. I ask him to please not alter my body. His eyes look amused, then he utters a thin, whispery laugh. He moves over to the dress, and with his elbow, moves it aside. Behind it is a small window. Looking through the window is one bizarre looking big red eye. The eye is almost as big as his head. He points to me, then the dress, then the eye.

I have no chance of persuading him. He's not doing this for himself. He's doing it for whatever huge, terrifying thing is on the other side of that wall. Nothing I say could change his mind. He's going to perform surgery on me while I'm awake, and then he's going to give me to that thing, whatever it is, that is so huge its eye is as big as his head. I start to realize this can't be real. I'm trying to turn my head fast, so I can wake up, but the strap prevents me. I can feel tears on my cheeks.

He returns to me and again starts maneuvering my breast. The scalpel descends, and I feel it cut into the flesh just below my nipple.

The pain is intense, sharp, pinching, and burning. I scream and pull against the bonds on my hands and feet, but they hold tight. The surgeon looks at me sternly and shakes his head.



Yeah. Sooo... I swear... next time he comes in, I'm hiding in the restroom until he leaves. O.o

Saving the Children

This dream is not a recurring dream, but it is part of a recurring theme. Every so often, I dream of having to rescue, or having rescued, a group of mostly inept or helpless people. I have to get them from where they are to a safer place. Sometimes I'm removing them from the vicinity of a natural or man-made disaster. Other times, there's an enemy or a monster (or several) chasing us. This time I was rescuing kids, and there was a group of people chasing us. The enemy's function and motive were undefined. I just knew that they meant the kids, who they had taken from their families, some kind of harm, and that it had to do with some goal they were trying to achieve.

The kids I am rescuing had been kidnapped by the other side in a war. I don't remember why the enemy wanted the kids, just that whatever they wanted them for was even more harmful and dastardly than the act of taking them away from their families in the first place, which would have been bad enough. I am the only full adult, but the oldest kids are in their mid teens. They are helping me keep track of the younger kids. I am terrified for all of them, afraid that they will get separated from the group, or that one of them will be injured or killed as we hurry away from the site of their captivity. We are being pursued, and even though we can't see anyone, it feels to me like our enemy is right on our heels. I keep trying to look everywhere at once.

I have taken the children from the facility in which they were being held. It was bigger than a house, but I all ready cannot remember what it actually looked like. We are fleeing through a wooded area, where we have to avoid fights between small groups of men. Some of them are so close that we can hear them shouting between bouts of gunfire so loud it is hard for us to hear each other over it. We cannot tell who is on what side, and even if we find some of our own troops, they may not be able to help us. In fact, we would be endangering them. We must avoid everyone. We listen carefully and change direction often to avoid running into combat areas. I am afraid one or more of us could be hit by a stray bullet, but we have no choice except to keep going through this area.

We are headed for our known safe point, which is the home where my parents-in-law live, about 80 miles away from the area where we're fleeing, near where I live now. My mother-in-law is waiting at her house for us with food and a place for the kids to rest. The distance seems impossible, but there is no place closer that would be safe for us to even rest for a few hours. We have to get there, or the kidnappers will catch us... if their allies don't find us and shoot us first.

In responding to what the evidence I can see, hear, and remember from our escape tells me the enemy is or should be doing in pursuit of regaining the rescued children, I keep finding myself actually a step ahead of them. We go through heavily wooded areas instead of areas that would be easy to pass. We come across a scared deer, and send it off through the woods. We go a different direction than it does, but still maintain a close connection to our course.

To avoid leaving obvious footprints, we are walking through brush, rather than on dirt paths. We have fabric tied around our feet up to our knees to keep poison plants (ivy, sumac, etc) from causing rashes. Taller kids are carrying littler ones through higher patches of brush. I am carrying a little boy. We find a dead enemy soldier. We can tell he's one of them by the symbol on his sleeve. It looks like a fat white capital letter U, woven through a red and blue infinity symbol, over top of a black background.

(Kind of like this)

 At one point, I am watching enemy searchers from a vantage point of being one of them. They are totally inappropriately dressed for being a wooded-area search party. Most of them are in business formal dress; suits, or slacks and pressed shirts, ties, skirts and blouses, all in blacks, grays, whites, and dark blues. All of them are wearing various highly polished black dress shoes. Some of the women even have pumps on with high heels. Their hair is neatly styled. All of them have that same patch somewhere on their upper-body clothing. They appear to be ignoring the difficulty they should be having moving through the woods dressed like that.

One searcher has a black brief case with a wire sticking out of it, but I can't see where the wire goes. He is looking for us on a path and figures out our trick, so he starts searching among the plants. While examining them closely, he realizes that he has exposed his legs, arms, hands, and face to the poisonous weeds. He panicks and tells everyone he is extremely sensitive, and they all get these gravely serious looks on their faces. He turns a pleading look at another searcher, a severe-looking lady with a perfectly coiffed brown pageboy cut (not a hair out of place) and a totally church-lady outfit. I get the feeling she knows something about him beyond what has just been said, something the other searchers somewhat know, but do not understand as fully as she does. She looks sympathetic, and pulls a gun from a totally out of place camouflage-patterned  duffel bag she has over her shoulder and shoots him in the head. He actually looks relieved as he falls. It is like he is grateful for being shot. I get the feeling she has spared him an extremely torturous ordeal that would have killed him in the end, anyway.

The scene goes back to us. I know we are close to the city that is our destination. We have traveled over 70 miles, mostly through woods and across farmers' fields. We are filthy and tired, but no one has gotten hurt. The kids are scared, but not as much as when we first left, because we have not had any big scares along the way. We know that we still have some way to go, and the people chasing us are still not far enough away for us to rest. Older kids are carrying younger kids on their backs.

We come to an area where we have no choice but to go in the open for a while, through an area with grass and weeds that only come up to my knees.. There is no one within sight, and the sky seems clear of flying vehicles. I admonish the kids to listen for jet or plane engines, or the chopping of a helicopter. I tell them to keep their eye on me. I show them a signal to watch for, and if they see it, they should lay down in the brush. Our clothes are dirty and stained enough to blend in from that far away.

On the other side of the brush there is a creek. We can easily cross it. Once we are on the other side of it, something about that area will make it much more dangerous, but not impossible, for our pursuers to continue to chase after us. There is something about the kids that would make it worth risking their lives to come into that area, but the risk to us will be much less after we cross. We start across the field. We are too far away from any action to hear people shouting. Off in the distance, though, we can hear gunfire coming from various skirmishes. It sounds almost like firecrackers.

I did not dream the scene of getting to where we were going, but I do not have that "unfinished" feeling that comes with dreams like this when I don't finish them. It feels like we got there and were put in touch with the next step of our journey - connecting the kids back to their respective parents. Basically, it felt like I managed to do the right things along the route we took, and we were "out of the woods," but I didn't get to dream the sequence of the story's happy conclusion.