We Serve the Dead for Free

My dreams are long like epics to tell, so this will be long,  feel free not to read it.

My dream began with my death.  Other people had died before me, friends and the like.  They were reaped ala Dead Like Me (in fact, if you watched the show, Rube was actually there).  The difference was that some people, people who were close to you, could see you after you'd gone, until you crossed over into whatever it was that came next.  So here I am, dead, but to many looking very much alive, save a glowing sort of blue smoke that would faintly rise up off my person, and invisible to the rest. Dying meant that I was supposed to be able to travel through people who couldn't see me, but that I could still manipulate things: pick them up, move them around, you know...haunt I suppose.

After I died, we quickly realized that something was amiss.  Almost everyone could see me, and I wasn't "crossing" as quickly as I should have.  So we wandered, trying to waste time and figure out what it was that was supposed to help me.

We were at this concert.  We being Rube, James, a few others.  The concert was smallish, and the band kept playing the same songs over and over again.  It was a semi-stadium seating kind of set up.  Rube seemed like he was far away.  I kept trying to walk through people only to run into them, or poke them with my hands...even the ones that couldn't see me.  I was sad and irritated.  Rube asked me to go put this CD in up at the front, to the side of the stage, because we were all tired of listening to the band and since I was dead they ought not see me.  I obliged, or tried I guess.  Once I got to the stage, and to the CD player to the left of it, I went to put in the CD (incidentally, it was a Johnny Cash CD) and the two men sitting beside the stage looked at me and told me we'd already listened to that.  They saw me because they were dead too.  So I slunk back up to our seats to find everyone gone.

I wandered off.  I went back to the school I was attending in my dream.  I remember that there were these two craftsmen type teachers (I wouldn't call them professors) that had agreed to teach me to build these things.  One of them was like a ship's wheel, and one of them was something else...sort of like a table top I guess, but that wasn't it's purpose.  It was an intricate interlacing of thin strips of wood, but built over and over so that it was thick and round and solid.  The guy that was teaching one of the classes was House...like from the show.  Not Hugh Laurie, House.  He was such a dick.
I went to the first teacher (not House) and he was talking to someone, he couldn't see me.  This person was telling him I had died.  He was crying.  I tried to comfort him, but my hands passed through him and these two people just sort of hugged and mourned, and I couldn't do anything about it.  I left.  I went to go see House (whose name wasn't actually House in the dream, but I couldn't tell you what it was).

He was sitting at his desk, and I assumed that since the other teacher, who had cared for me very much, couldn't see me, neither would he.  I walked right up and sat on the corner of his desk and looked at him.  He looked back at me and asked me what I wanted.  Startled, I told him that I was dead.  "I know," he said.  I was confused and trying to decide what to say next when he told me that he'd always wondered if ghosts could have sex.  It was weird, I had had a crush on this "teacher" when I was alive, but it was never anything like that and of course I certainly didn't think that he would've said anything like that.  I thought about it for a while and declined, and left.  He followed me, telling me that maybe that was what I needed to do to move on, and whatnot.  Then he went back, telling me I was stupid for not trying.

I went looking for everyone I knew.  I ended up in this bar.  Sarah was there, and she could see me.  We drank (don't ask me how I drank), but I didnt' get drunk.  The bar was full of ghosts and living people.  The bar tender was making me these drinks that were clear, and then he'd pour these two colored liquids in them (burnt orange and deep blue) that would swirl about inside it like the innards of a marble.  They were good.  I was running a tab, and it dawned on me that I didn't have money.  I went next door to this other bar that Sarah had meandered to for a bit.  It was long, and opened right into the street, like some of the window bars in New Orleans.  I found her and told her we had to leave, and we did.

Then we were in a Wal-Mart like place, and I had this sweet tea I was drinking.  We were waiting in this infinitely long line, and this large black woman with curly hair was talking to us, she was nice.  Something started chasing me.  Sarah and I ran, and got into her car, which was a minivan.  We drove, and then on the corner was that lady we had been talking to in the store.  She was holding my cup of tea.  I told Sarah to pull into the turn lane, jumped out, ran across the street, grabbed my tea, thanked her, and lept back into the car and drank some of the tea.  The ice had melted and it was warm, so i threw it out the window once we were out of sight of the lady.

Then we were at this house in the woods...just beyond it's driveway.  It was scary.  I was supposed to be creeping up to it to take something and then something saw me, I started running away and kept tripping, and turned to look back at whatever it was that was chasing me...it was this pack of giant tigers.  I just managed to get into the van and Sarah pulled off and the guy from the bar that was serving the marble shots was in the back seat.  Startled, I turned and looked at him.  He calmly looked back at me and said, "We serve the dead for free, but your friend has to pay."  Sarah looked panicked and swerved, wrecked the car, and I saw light in the distance.  I was floating out the window, tried to look back and couldn't see, and then light overtook me and I woke up.