The Interpretation of Dreams

[MTPersson]

The Interpretation of Dreams - Closed for Bevatoria

OOC: Closed.


"What do you mean you haven't got the data?"

Sarah stood in a plush boardroom, her hands resting on top of the richly veneered table in front of her. The man she was talking to was wearing the sharpest suit she had ever seen. Anyone looking into the room through the large windows would have guessed - no, they would have known - that this man was successful. Intelligent, witty and someone you definitely wanted to be around.

Sarah looked at him and wanted to hang him with his tie.

One job. He had one job to do and he hadn't been able to do it and now their deadline was fast approaching. Shooting daggers across the room the urge to let go and tell him exactly what she thought of him built and built within her. Clenched knuckles turning white, she bite her tongue and stayed silent.

Come on Sarah. Losing your cool won't help. You'll lose everyone else's respect.

Moving her eyes around the room, she could see the other members of her team looking at the pair of them face off against one another. Her; hands on hips, ice in her pale blue eyes and blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Him; sharp, slick and wearing a smirk that made it clear to all that he had a high opinion of himself and a low one of Sarah.

Come on Sarah, you can work this out.

"Lisa, how long do we have?" Her eyes didn't leave his and she released a little of the pressure on her knuckles. The small Asian women sat on her right stopped typing on her laptop keyboard and checked her watch.

“About half an hour, Miss.”

Half an hour. Half an hour. What the hell am I going to do?

Curling the corners of his mouth, the man opposite her widened his grin as if he could sense what she was thinking, as if he was in her head. There was no way she could let all of the anger inside of her out. That would let everyone know that he had needled her, gotten under her skin and made it squirm with disgust and revulsion.

What can I do?

It hit her like a bolt of lightening from the sky. Humiliate him and he would only stand his place. Charm him and she would lose the respect of the others around her. But...

“Lisa, I want you to get hold of Dave from I.T. and Juliet from H.R. Get them together and make sure that they work as much of the data into an easy to understand visualisation,” The pretty young woman looked up at her and nodded along to what she was saying. “We don’t need it all, just as much as possible.”

You know how I’m going to deal with you, you fucker? I’m going to pretend you don’t exist. I’m going to do your job a thousand times better than you and then the boss will hear from one of these guys how unprofessional you are. I'll be there to watch as you grovel for your job in front of the him before stepping in and saving your ass.

“Tom,” Sarah turned to another suited guy on her right, “Get the presentation slides ready so we can just drop the files from I.T. straight in when we get them. Everybody else get on with the jobs you were given and if you don’t know what job you were allocated, get out of the room.”

Several heads nodded and there were one or two ‘Yes, Ma’am’s’ as people started going about the tasks that she had given them beforehand. No one left the room.
Turning to look at the source of her problems, Sarah was shocked that no one was standing on the opposite side of the boardroom table. Nobody was there smirking and trying to stare her down.

“Lisa, where did-”

She hadn’t noticed the sound of Lisa’s keyboard stopping but as she turned to look at her co-worker she took an involuntary step back against her chair. There was no one there. Anywhere.

She stood in the boardroom alone.

A low rumble shock her back to her sense as she stumbled to stay on her feet. Chairs rattled and slide around the floor as the whole room shock with violent tremors. Collapsing walls revealed an empty void beyond them, a world filled with nothingness and the sound of a deep bell ringing echoed through the darkness.

"What the hel-"

This is a dream. None of this is real

The small, insignificant thought floated through her mind until it finally caught and Sarah wo-...

*​

Sarah woke with a start.

The ringing of her alarm clock filled the small room and a bright morning sun shone in through the thin curtains pulled across the windows. Rolling over, Sarah reached out an arm and blindly swatted at the button which stopped the small hammer from striking the bells. Ignoring the small black box that lay on top of her bedside table, she sat up and stretched, a long yawn escaping her mouth.

A small blipping sound from her mobile phone told her she had an email waiting to be read.

Dear SarHutch23489,

Congratulations on successfully completing level 4.3 of your Learning to Lead module. Details of your performance can be found within you profile pages on our web portal.

Level 4.4 is now ready for you to download to your DreamBox system.

Good luck,
The Team at Dream2Train.com

Smiling, she put down her phone and pulled her hair back into a ponytail, securing it with a thin tie she kept around her wrist, and glanced over at the small box that lay on the table. One of her girlfriends had suggested she tried a DreamBox when she had mentioned that she wanted to sign up for a leadership skills course the university were running. A way of learning new skills whilst you sleep she had said and she wasn't wrong. Sarah could download a whole host of different training courses and gain experience inside her dreams.

Well...not my dreams, not exactly. The programmed sdtraining dream.

Ponytail secured, she climbed out of bed and carried on her stretching on the floor before unfurling her yoga mat. For the next forty-five minutes Sarah moved gracefully from position to position naming them in her mind as she focused on her breathing.

Runner's lunge into Vinyasa Block into Downward Dog into Flying Crow.

Every morning the same routine followed by a shower where she let the warm water cascade over her body washing away the sweat she had just worked up. Every morning an annoyed knock on the bathroom door telling her she had spent far longer under the water lost in her thoughts and one of her housemates wanted to pee.

An hour later, dressed in a top, skirt, and jacket, Sarah was stepping out of her front door and joining a small group of friends on their way to their morning lecture.

 

[Bevatoria]

Darkness surrounded him even as he could see his hands, his arms in front of him. He was dressed in a black t-shirt, and black pants, and even as he couldn't hear anything around him, and not see anything, either. But it teased him, tormented him. Not because he feared the dark, of course, merely what it was hiding from him. What it chose to keep from him.

For Bradley Hess, it seemed like the darkness was toying with him. First, he saw something simple. In the distance, a phone appeared on a pedestal, the newest model. The prototype for Apple's next technological marvel, floating in the air, being held up by some unseen force. And all he had to do was take it, grab it. Take a few steps forward, hold it in his hands, and it was his.

But he could never seem to. Brad would hesitate, feeling uncertain about his intent and about what would happen if he did take it. So he'd take his time and then make the decision, but no matter how much he ran towards it, it would let him come closer and then get further and further away, as if it was moving as fast as he was. And that was if the dream was being kind to him.

Then there were the cars. He'd want to test it, try it, but he would start it, feeling the ignition turn on in his nice 2013 Porsche. Or a BMW. Or whatever car he'd happened to get a glimpse of online. It had even been a Batmobile, once. And no matter what he did, he could never get the car to move. Sometimes it would say 'Operator Error' on the screen, even if cars were never supposed to do that.

Then there was the food. Delicious cakes, delicacies he could never convince himself to indulge in. It would fade in front of his eyes sometimes. Other times the aroma would be so intoxicating, and yet he could never quite reach the plate. Or, in its cruelest form, it would let him take a piece of it, and the fork would fall out of his hand, into the black abyss, never to be seen again.

And it was always because he'd hesitated. Brad could never will himself to be confident enough to know exactly what it was he wanted. And, when his dreams were at their cruelest, when they would dive into the deepest, most desperate parts of his mind...

It would show him the women.

************

These weren't nightmares, exactly. It wasn't as if he was falling in his dreams, waking up before he hit the ground, or that he was dreaming about dying in horrible, horrible ways. But they sure were annoying. As shy as Brad tended to be despite what many had referred to as his charming good looks, he had actually gone to a psychologist to diagnose it.

But what he'd told him hadn't been what he wanted to hear. Instead of prescribing drugs, or more rest, or...well, anything other then what the man had suggested, he had told him that it was a symptom of something deeper. "It's simple, Brad. You need to go after what you want. It's telling you to be more confident, and be more assertive. Believe in yourself, and what you want."

Easy for you to say. He'd never really adjusted to University life as he slipped out of his dorm room bed; grateful that his roommate was already gone. They got along fine, but he wasn't really that comfortable around many people, and he showered quickly, slipping on his khakis, a plain white t-shirt, and a jacket that had seen better days.

He slung his book bag - an older black one that he'd used for the last few years - over his shoulder, ready for his lectures as strolled sleepily down the hallway. After a few minutes of walking on the campus, he found himself back safely in the crowds, into the anonymity of being another University student. One of the masses.

Which was another deception about how he lived his life. His expression was blank as he walked into the lecture hall, settling into a row near to the back. There were people he knew in the class, and he was hoping for some company, even as he sighed looking around the room. It wasn't that Bradley wasn't noticed by anyone. But too often, he wasn't noticed in the way that he wanted or hoped for; simply as another friend, another guy to sit next to, take notes with, study with.

And never as more. He took another peek, hoping to see someone familiar. Or at least someone in particular. He caught her entering the lecture hall, and Bradley caught Sara's eye at that point, nodding at her with a smile before he turned away. In case she didn't want to sit with him, of course. So she wouldn't take offense.

 

[MTPersson]

The time spent walking to and from lectures was what Sarah looked forward too each day. That and lunch, of course. It was when you could chat freely with your friends about everything and nothing. There was also something about the light and the feeling in the air on a spring morning that Sarah loved. That sense of freshness and a cool, crisp breeze blowing through the air.

There was food at lunch.

Each morning, a group of five would meet on the small wall outside Sarah's house and they would chat about what they were wearing, who was sleeping with who, how Pete Wilkins was a complete arsehole, and more about who was sleeping with who.

And just like that, the time flew by and their walk was all but over; Sarah's enjoyment of the brisk morning was cut short and the warm, stagnant atmosphere of the lecture theatre waited to greet them through the heavy, oak panelled door. Warm, stagnant atmosphere and really uncomfortable seats.

Although Sarah enjoyed each mornings gossip, it usually meant the group of them turned up a little later than most and found themselves peering over people's heads, trying desperately to spot five seats together. More often than not, they failed and had to split up.

"Come on, come on," she urged the Gods of the lecture theatre, "Five seats...please."

"Look, over ther-...oh shit." Pippa excitedly pointed up the steep bank of seats before dropping her arm and deciding on a facial expression that best suited a five year old who had just dropped their ice cream. All of them asked what was wrong.

"It's that guy who creeps me out. He just sits there and says nothing."

They all peered up at the row in question and saw who Pippa was stalking about. A chorus of "Shotgun!" rung out in perfect unison as all four of Sarah's friends tried desperately not to get stuck in the seat next to Pippa's new best friend.

Sarah craned her neck to see who they were talking about and was surprsied to see that it was Brad. To say she knew him would be overstating it, but she had shared a handful of seminars with the guy and thought him quite nice. Quiet though he was, he came across as the kind of person who excelled when surrounded by people he already knew. Where that left him when the people he kept around him moved on, she didn't know.

Always the unqualified psychoanalyst.

Casting a reproachful look over her friends, she started up the stairs and down the row of seats towards where Brad sat. She sat down and gave him a warm smile, the kind reserved for people you had an acquaintance with and who hadn't yet pissed you off so much you wanted to punch them every time you saw them. He returned it, equally un-pissed off.

"Morning, Brad. You OK?"

 

[Bevatoria]

Even as he tried not to look at her, lest he be called out for creeping again (something that, strangely enough, never seemed to happen with the school's athletes, whether they were better looking then him or not), Bradley felt a bit of a tingle as he hoped that she'd sit next to him. Even as there was something comforting about the numbness of complete and total anonymity in a university this large, with classes this varied, there was something to be said for being recognized by someone. And even in the brief glance they had shared, he could see that flicker of recognition in Sarah. Not quite a friend, yet definitely not just another face, the smile didn't come to his face as he looked away, and hoped for just a bit of friendliness on this lonely day.

They'd taken some seminars together, and had gotten in on a group project in the same group. He'd found her studious and helpful, which even in an institution like this had seemed to be quite rare. Or at least rare to him. They hadn't talked about much other then business, but still Sarah had struck him as genuine and warm person in their interactions. He couldn't help but glance over as he heard the shuffling of bags in the seats next to him, and he turned to her.

She was smiling at him. Not one of complete familiarity, but one that said it was more then just the I'm-just-tolerating-you-for-now smile that he seemed to get from everyone. Involuntarily, he felt a wider smile come back on his own face as she spoke. "Morning, Brad. You OK?"

When he spoke, Bradley could've sworn that his thought process was to say 'yeah'. Which he did. "Yeah." But instead of the neutral tone he had intended to convey the word in, a sigh escaped him as he said it, and he knew the jig would be up quickly. One of the dangers of not interacting with many people socially was that it was much harder to hide awkward feelings and situations, and something in her tone made him feel obliged to continue; the lecture would be starting at any moment.

"Still not sleeping well." It was an ailment that dogged many students, or at least something that many students chose to indulge in with the rigors and temptations of post secondary life. "Drugs won't help, and the doc..." He paused, wondering if Sarah remembered that he mentioned he'd been seeing a psychologist, deciding that he could at least keep it vague enough that it could be any kind of medical professional if she wanted to try to paint a story around it. "...well, what he'd suggesting isn't helping." He shrugged, trying to play it off lightly. "First world problems, though, right?"

He tried to measure the look on her face to see if he'd said too much, and as always, Bradley decided he had. "How...about you, Sarah?" He glanced around quickly to see if the professor was starting soon, hoping he'd get an answer. Someone had told him that he couldn't always talk about himself, and as he measured her for the answer, a small part of him was grateful that he'd even remembered her name this time, and not just as someone who was actually nice to him.