Been staying in bed an extra ten minutes, not opening my eyes, trying to remember as much of them as possible. The thing about dreams is you have to remember them while they're actually happening, and consciously think back on the past of the dream. Like when you're watching Venture Brothers and once a great line is said you repeat it in your head immediately, and sometimes say it out loud in a mock Monarch voice, because that's how you remember those lines: immediate recall. Or like when you go to Showplace 12 and hang out in front of the theatre right after the movie, on the sidewalk, talking about your favorite lines and scenes before stepping into that parking lot, because once your feet hit the asphalt you'll just forget everything.
So in this dream me and Denzel Washington are in the mall. Not recent Man on Fire "I only play cops" Denzel, I'm talking about 80's Denzel, St. Elsewhere and Cry Freedom Denzel. (Sidenote - have you seen David Morse in St. Elsewhere? He's like this curly, glowing, egg-shaped giant. And do you know how bad ass it would be if I could use St. Elsewhere in six degrees? I would dominate even more than I already do. Everyone was on that goddamn show.)
But yeah, me and Denzel are at the mall, a five-story circular one with a glass greenhouse ceiling, and each floor is cut in the middle with a balcony like a donut, so if you stand in the center of the basement level and look straight up you see all sky. We're on the fifth floor, shopping for god knows what, probably something like a scratch-and-sniff special edition of Much Ado About Nothing or a charcoal drawing of Azazel in the form of a murderous cat wearing a blue dress.
I get thirsty and leave Denzel up on the fifth floor to browse. The food court is on the lowest floor, and I'm without elevator, so I get to walk down a winding red-carpeted rampway. There was a platform rest stop on every level with a popcorn cart, like the one that used to be at Yorktown, the big red one with yellow wheels and the window in the body of the cart showing the little six-inch man with the drum major hat slowly turning a giant crank and generating all of the horsepower needed to make enough popcorn to fuel an entire mall. I don't think I bought any.
Frulati is open, thank god, because in this mall they serve margaritas in Big Gulps. I'm a little drunk after one sip, and don't feel like walking back up the ramp, so I strap on my jet pack and head straight back up to the fifth floor.
Just as my eyes clear the balcony railing, I see Denzel, and he's gone fucking crazy.
Dude's standing on top of beaten up Volvo wood-paneled station wagon, holding a submachine gun in each hand and firing in every random direction, just completely fucking up everything he sees. And he's yelling in that fantastic booming growl he's got, "Rossi, where the hell are you? Who fucking took her? I will fuck you up, you goddamn pussies. King Kong ain't got nothin' on me," and other wonderful, terrifying things, all the while just killing and destroying everything around him.
He sticks his hands in the guts of his victims and smears himself with their blood like it's warpaint, everyone is running around and crying and cradling their dead children and boyfriends, I mean it's a fucking bloodbath.
I freak out and take off my jet pack and start crawling, hiding from Denzel because he's goddamn crazy. People are yelling at me, "dude, just go over there and calm him the fuck down. So what if he kills you? At least he'll know where you are" and I'm all "hell fucking no" and I slide head first down the escalator (now there's an escalator) straight down to the food court again.
However, the food court is gone, and the walls have been replaced with glass and mirrors. It's creepy. Through one of the glass sections I see a woman sitting at a very old Apple computer in a room full of green velvet chairs. I go into the room and tell her that I need to insure my jet pack, and I hope she can help me (which of course, she can, because jet pack insurance is her specialty). I explain to her that Denzel is trying to kill me, and at first she's like, "Oh, that's nice."
And then we realize that if he comes down there he can see us through the glass, so we better hide behind the green velvet chairs.
Of course instead of hiding we just talk about hiding, and other people come into the room and we sit around and chit chat about popcorn, jet packs, lemon-flavored galoshes, insurance, and what a shame it is about the people up on the fifth floor.
Then the booming voice is yelling again, but nearer, and Denzel comes crashing down to the floor on a zip line, shooting everything around him as he spirals his way down, destroying all of the glass and mirrors and just screaming the whole time, bloodsoaked and killing half the people in the green velvet chairs. I'm just sitting there, I can't even move.
And we make eye contact, and he smiles, sighs, drops his submachine guns and says, "Oh, there you are. I've been looking everywhere for you." He stretches out his hand.
"I know, I heard." I take it.
"Come on, let's get outta here." He pulls me out of the green velvet chair and we strap on our jet packs to make a getaway, and begin flying towards the ceiling.
Just before we're about to crash through the glass ceiling, Denzel smiles at me and jokes lightly, "This place is dead, anyway."
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