I rarely have strange dreams. Or, more precisely, I rarely remember the strange dreams that I do have. Last night was an exception.

I dreamt that Custom Box Service was having a party or celebration of some sort. A box festival. As part of this festival, I decided to take my house to work.

On the morning of the day of the festival, I jacked up the house, hitched it to the car, and towed it to the shop. I decided to leave my keys in the car in case somebody needed to move the house. The strangest part? The house was painted red.

I felt good because nobody else had thought to bring their house to the box festival. I was the only one to have done so. The box festival was great — lots of talking and fun. Even so, I decided to leave early to work out at the gym. When I walked out to my car, both it and the house were gone!

“Has anybody seen my house?” I asked my fellow employees. Nobody had.

I panicked.

I ran to the road and looked north on Oglesby. No sign of the house. I looked south on Oglesby. No sign of the house. I set off to find it.

For some reason (which made sense in the context of the dream) there was an old, decrepit chicken shack next to Custom Box Service. The shack was being used by a horticulturist society. And for some other reason (which made sense in the context of the dream) I began to search for my house inside the chicken shack.

The shack was dark and earthy. I wandered from room-to-room but, unsurprisingly, found no sign of my house. In one room, a room filled with fruited tomato plants (how did these plants grow with no light?), I found a book with an interesting cover and paused to read it.

I realized that I was wasting time so I set the book among the tomatoes and hurried on, winding through the horitculturists’ maze of rooms and plants. When I reached the end of the chicken shack I still had not found my house.

I was becoming increasingly concerned. I began to jog. I jogged down Oglesby to Needy and then down Heinz. No sign of the house. I jogged back to Needy and then down the hill by the Gingeriches. No sign of the house.

I found myself at Zion Mennonite Church. There was a potluck in progress in the old church basement, and people were milling about. I made an announcement: “My car and house have been stolen. Has anybody seen them?” Nobody had.

Ken Kauffman suggested that I look for them at [BLANK]. (Here you, the reader, need to use your imagination. I have no idea what the [BLANK] was that Ken suggested to me. I can describe the building, but not its purpose.)

I went to [BLANK]. [BLANK] consisted of a large, elongated building with a parking lot. It resembled a college dormitory. [BLANK] resembled a college dormitory on the inside as well. There were several floors of long (half-mile long) white cinder-block hallways with hundreds and hundreds of doors.

I started knocking on the doors. “Have you seen my house?” I asked whomever answered each door. Nobody had.

It was getting late, nearly midnight. I could no longer knock on doors. Instead, I ran the length of the hallway, stopping anybody that I saw, asking about my house. Floor after floor and no result.

At about 5 a.m. I came to the final room, a lounge at the end of the top floor. A group was gathered inside watching a movie: Repo Man or The Princess Bride or After Hours (a movie of which this dream reminds me, incidentally — some kind of weird recursive thing going on here?). They were laughing and eating and having a fine time. I asked for some food but nobody would share. One man offered to sell me some beef jerkey, so I bought $2 of it from him.

“Has anybody seen a red house?” I asked. Nobody had.

Well, almost nobody.

Joyce Trussell, the receptionist at Wilcox Arredondo, was there and she pulled me to the side. She handed me a business card with a hispanic name and a Wilsonville address. She told me that maybe this fellow could help me find my house. The implication was (I remember this clearly from the dream) that the person on the card had stolen my house and that boy, was he dangerous. I’m not sure how all of this was conveyed, but it was a dream, so it was.

I thanked Joyce and left. I didn’t know how I was going to get to Wilsonville; I dind’t have a car or a house.

As I was jogging to the [BLANK]’s exit, a woman stopped me and asked me if Joyce had been able to help me. I said that she had.

Then the dream ended. I was awakened by a couple of loud booms from the other side of Canby. I wonder what they were.

One Reply to “The Dream of the Red House”

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