Rêves étranges

Dream #1 Mario, Falafel and Fridge

Based on an actual dream lived in November 2019 by Salomé D.

Okay. What the hell am I doing here?

I sigh while stuffing my hands in my pockets. Darkish and orangey colours, a suffocating atmosphere, and granite. Well, I appear to have found myself in a middle of a vast volcano cave. Sure. I end up looking down, for some reason.

Oh, okay.

Right, so... I'm actually on a precarious rocky sculpted bridge, approximatively fifty feet from lava. Great. I take another shy look downwards, but the sight of molten magma and its creepy bubbles makes me sick, or very afraid - actually, probably both.

"Neat..."

My voice echoes gently as I look up to the path in front of me. It's surrounded with stalagmites. Stalactites? I don't know. Who cares? There are a lot of them, both on the ground and the ceiling. Besides, Mario's here. Yeah, THE Mario, the one from the videogames. He's the boss of my gang.

Oh, right: I'm in a gang.

He's got that dark and self-assured look on his face. All of the sudden, that psycho starts jumping and bouncing towards me, kicking the air like he's in Tekken. I take a step back and frown, wondering why he would do that. Also, how in the world can he manage to sneak through the stalagmites so easily?

The next second, I'm in Paris. We're in a line in Le Marais, waiting our turn to order falafels. When I say "we", I mean myself and the rest of the gang. It's all chitchat and small talk, until a guy around my age gives me a nudge in the ribs while nodding towards the beginning of the line:

"You see that girl over there?"

I wasn't really expecting any rando to actually talk to me, so my first reaction was to stare weirdly at him while frowning. Yeah, I'm not good with strangers. Never mind, I follow his gaze, stretching my neck to spot the girl. Once I have, I just let him know by grunting:

"Hm?"

He starts laughing in that particular way guys do when they're making up fantasies in their heads. I'm not judging; I have that exact same laugh sometimes.

"She's super hot, right?"

I glance at his stupid smirk, then back at the girl. As much as my antisocial self hates to agree with such a guy, I do have to admit: she looks really good.

"Well, yeah."

He giggles and carries on with that special tone of "I'm so gonna enlighten your world with my incredible knowledge":

"But like, actually, her face is completely melted! What you see is just a kind of mask or fake skin to cover up the mess."

... Okay. Now, that is some very strange thing to say to someone you've just met, Kevin. I sigh without taking my eyes off of her. There's no hint to whether she wears a mask or else, but somehow I believe him. What caught my eye is that she seems rather happy. I blink and next thing I know, I'm next to her.

Don't ask me why or how, but we're together - her and I. Yeah, yeah, ever since I appeared at her side, literally thirty seconds ago. Gotta deal with that, now. I guess it's pretty cool; I didn't have to flirt with her. Because, oh boy! how I suck at that. But it doesn't matter anymore: that girl is my girlfriend. My girlfriend whose melted face is hidden under fake skin and who's part of the same gang lead by Mario as I am. What a mess. I didn't even get to eat those falafels.

I complain, but it's mostly to cover the fact that I'm freaking out about her face. It's dumb, I know. And who cares? As much as I want to see it, I just can't help myself to worry about it. Next scene, we wake up in a bed together, and I panic.