Bizarro World

He may be mad, but there's method in madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.
-G. K. Chesterton

A night or two ago a had a really unsettling dream/nightmare. Usually I can either make (relatively) clear sense of my dreams, or they are simply too far beyond me to even take a stab. This is the latter.

I start on a street, during some sort of event, because there are trailers and bicycles and a mix of people around. It's not an absolute throng, the kind of condensed human mass that takes a concerted effort to move through, but it clearly wasn't just the average, unoccupied street. I'm with a bunch of people, probably two or three dozen, composed of people from my home life, my school life, and kids here at the program. There's the tangible feeling of an elephant in the corner, like everyones mind is on something, the same thing, and they all are about to open their mouths to speak hushedly about it, but force themselves not to. They exchange cautious glances, and I step closer into them and they begin to speak.
It seems someone has been kidnapping and poisoning some of "us" (though its never at all clear what commonality we share). They've taken two already, and everyone seems perfectly aware of who they were, and in what order they went, but they refuse to say their names. The understanding at this point is that the person doing these things knows us, and our work, and activities, and thoughts, with disturbing intimacy and accuracy. He captures someone, injects them with a slow acting poison, one that slowly makes you sleep more and more (until you die, I presume) and releases them out into the world again. I don't understand why people can't seek help at this point, why they cannot do something or tell someone, but there seems to be a paralytic fear amongst them- there were even two of the currently infected at this streetside discussion. Apparently, exactly fourteen days prior to your death he reclaims you, locking you into a room, and allows you to write letters to your friends and family.
At this point, as we're all discussing this trend, and trying to support the two who are currently dieing (who seem somewhat resigned to their fate), one of them decides to simply go back to this person under the premise that hey, he's dieing, theres nothing worse he can do to him, and to try and understand him as best he can before he dies, and to write to everyone he knows prior to his er...shuffling of the mortal coil. After the group concedes and this person leaves, one of the remaining group says, startled and very much like she's had an epiphany "The Food!" Without saying as much, I now possess the knowledge that the food this kidnapper has will kill you instantly, and far more painfully.
We rush off on bikes to intercept our friend, but, as far as the dream is concerned, we are instantly in the foyer of a large mansion belonging to the kidnapper.
The mansion's expansive and cavernous. The floors of made of immaculately maintained white tile, patternless and pure, seamless and ongoing. The walls are made of glass and mirrors, and they almost all bent sheets. The mix of transparent and reflective seems to make the place, at once, both fold in on itself and expand infinitely outward. There is, distinctly and uniquely, a single door made of gold set into one of the glass walls, but it seems that the part of the wall within which the door lies is actually below the surface of the floor. I think we can only see it because of it's reflection, but honestly, its a dream, and if you haven't realized that it doesn't make sense yet you should probably just stop reading now. It only gets worse.
There are less of us now, about half as many as before, but we all immediately notice that our friend who left us earlier, resigning himself to this fate, is on a large glass dais. The dais is shaped like a bean and rests, unmovingly, in midair about 25 feet above the floor of the massive foyer. Smaller bean-shaped panes of glass weave around the room and up to the dais. Upon the dais he is shackled, and a large desk made of impossibly white wood sits atop it. He is writing, taking, one at a time, sheets of paper from a stack on one side of the desk, writing slowly and consistently, and then placing it atop a stack on the opposite corner.
At this point, A man in a white suit with silvering hair and a small beard walks out, adjusting a strange orange tie. He doesn't open his mouth, but gestures around as if he's saying something, and I know I'm in trouble. The rest of my friends disappear, and the one writing on top of the dais doesn't even seem to notice what's going on. I'm confused, trying to look at the man talking to me, but without his voice to hear direction and the refracting mirrors, I just end up spinning around.
I'm in a dark room, and the man is sitting at a desk, his face lit by the blue glow of a single computer monitor. Now he's speaking, in a voice that is controlled to a fault and a sound that vibrates just over a river of anger. He says "Did you not say 'and their depiction shows the newscaster in a despicable, godless light'?". I respond "Yes, but their depiction was inaccurate, and I go on to-" and at that point my ability to speak is suspended as he returns his gaze to the computer screen.
I'm in a glass room somewhere and I'm sleeping on a single pillow. As I sit up I feel a definitive soreness in my bicep that tells me my days are numbered. For some reason, I'm not outside, being allowed to exist for some period before I die, but I'm not on the dais, writing. I don't understand, but I feel the need to use the bathroom and instinct guides me. From the bathroom I'm able to escape through a window, and the bikes we used remain outside in a heap. I pick up the nearest outlier and speed off down the roads, leaving the house behind me. The mansion seems normal from the outside, and not at all composed of self-inverting glass, but who knows?
As I pedal I'm nauseous, wrestling with whatever this person *must* have over me that means I shouldn't have tried to escape and shouldn't call for help, and the throbbing power of instinct that forces my hand into my pocket and pulls out my cell phone. I call my parents, and I'm trying to explain myself while I pedal towards a police station or some safe haven. Just as begin to make headway and the people on the other line begin to understand the situation, A silver SUV drives from a copse of trees onto the lawn of the house I'm cycling past. There are stickers on it that say COMMERCIAL ABC, and I know this somehow refers to the television station. The man in the suit walks out of the passenger side door, holding a red trunk delicately between his palms. I drop the phone from my hand and fall off the bike, reaching for a loose brick in the curb.
And then I'm awake and totally shocked to find that I am, in fact, not on top of a bike, or on a lawn, or anywhere that I had recently been.

So, that was weird and inexplicable and just had to be shared.
On a more realistic, but equally bizarre note, last night we had a toga party. It became infinitely clear to us why the Roman Empire fell- togas are really easy to trip over, and incredibly difficult to put together...and wear while dancing. We had a good time, even though we all wore clothes under the togas (of varying degrees). There was a bit of an inbalance as far as male-female participation (alot of the guys forced themselves to go, and all save for about four girls were touch-and-go). It was kind of irritating that the self-appointed DJs refused to let any song actually finish, but it was a good time all in all. Afterwards, we took a half hour shower break (because dancing, wrapped in bedsheets, in a relatively small room sans Air Conditioning is a recipe for such massive amounts of BO) and then came back together to watch Animal House. I'm not sure if the movie inspired our party, or the party inspired us to watch the movie, but it was a great opening to the weekend.