Decay

This dream seemed to have began in some sort of a mall. I was with two girls, whose identities at this point where arbitrary. I'm not sure if the three of us were going to have sex or if we were just being mischievous, but we were turning off all of the lights so that we could be alone together in the dark, where the single security guard couldn't see us. It was at night, the mall was deserted except for these four people, and it had a sort of open design, without walls. Therefore, we had to spread out and turn off the lights at the adjacent stores (I clearly recall a Gap) so that our area would be dark. Once lights were out, we had a bit of trouble finding each other again. I recall that one of the girls had night-vision goggles, and at least one of them had a device that fit into her ear, identical to one that fit into mine, through which we could communicate with each other. You know, Secret Service style. At the point in which the dream dissolved into a haze of finding people in the dark, avoiding this single security guard, and wishing that I had night-vision goggles, the building sort of transformed into someone's house. Not in a dramatic Transformer way, just in a dreamy-mind-wandering way. This house was the most wonderfully old, decaying, run-down structure. And it was big, too. The kind of house that was a suburban mansion a couple decades ago, about the last time that it underwent any maintenance. Later on in the dream when I had come out of the house, I recall standing somewhere elevated, where I could see it more clearly and admire it. This could have been on a hill, from the balcony of another house, or on the roof of another house. I think that at the time, the means of me getting my perspective were arbitrary, but my perspective made the house seem so much cooler. There was something like a valley down below, between the place where I stood and this house. Not an actual valley, more like some really steep hills that led into the street. I clearly recall looking at the vivid architecture and thinking about how much I would like to photograph the place and send the pictures to my friend P-. I recall that it was yellowish beige-ish, very dirty, and with massively peeling paint to reveal the dark wood underneath. I recall the area near the attic being quite wide, and not symmetrical. The right side of the outside-of-the-attic area was more ornately designed, with rectangular areas set out from the wall and classical decorations hanging off of it, while the left side was more plain. I recall a great balcony below it in the corner of the house below it, which must have stretched out 7 feet from the house and had a ceiling 15 feet from the floor. This balcony was rotten away, leaving only wooden shards pointing toward the corner of the house in a wide hole. The corner pillar that would have connected to the corner of the balcony was rotten away on the bottom, too. It started at the top clean and wide, but as one went down its length, it dwindled into a thin, rotten, chunk of wood that didn't even meet the floor. But this was long after the initial introduction of the house to the dream. Though the memories of this dream are fading rapidly from my mind, I can recall what was probably the first scene with me in the house, after the nocturnal mall shenanigans had ended. It seems like I was in a parlor of sorts, to which I can compare no other building or room that I know. There was something of a long bar to my left, a floor above that existed only on the left side, having a balcony that looked over this bar, and an open door with sunlight coming through it on the far end in front of me. There was no presence of alcohol in this dream, though. It was only a bar in design, not function. On my immediate right was a wonderful contraption that I must duplicate in real life. It was a large, round bed, with a very soft, possibly velvet blanket. Everything was black, and it had a canopy and curtains around it, except for an open area on its left. Above the head of this bed was a soft light of some sort. If it were up to me now, I'd choose for it to be a blue-ish, purple-ish light, but at the time, I don't think that it had any specific color. I found myself in bed with three girls. One of these girls is a classmate that I'm close to, but have never been physically intimate with. The other was a classmate that I'm not close to, nor is there any affectionate interest between the two of us. The third was another classmate that I have known for a long time, but have never been particularly close to. The only thing happening in the bed was some idle chatting, and possibly some cuddling, but nothing more. Man, why do I have to be so damned polite in my dreams? I never, ever act on my impulses in my dreams! What the hell is up with that? I have had dreams wherein a topless girl walks up to me and introduces herself and I quite literally offer her my sweater and warn her that she'll catch her death of cold being topless in cold weather. Since being single, I have yet to have ANY sex dreams. Ever. And when I had a girlfriend, I would receive offers of sex by beautiful naked women on a regular basis, and turn each and every one down, explaining that I was "flattered, but taken". TEENAGE GUYS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO HAVE DREAMS LIKE THAT. But I digress. If memory serves me correctly (and I guess it doesn't really matter whether it does or not at this point) some other student came up and started chatting with us from outside of the bed. Something made people get up and get out of the bed, leaving me to myself. That 'something' was probably just a simple "hey, can I get my CDs out of your car?" "yeah, let me go unlock it". The rest of the dream is not very well connected by any sort of a plot, nor any consistency as to where I was in respect to the house. The general theme was that everyone was gone except for me, J- (ex-girlfriend's roommate that I'm friends with, but not particularly close), and another girl whose identity escapes me at the moment. She may have been T- (ex-girlfriend's former roommate that I'm friends with, and slightly closer), but I'm not sure. There was also one other person in the house. He was obviously derived from the security guard character, since he was a person of authority that we were trying to avoid and someone that seemed to have some ownership of the house, but the specifics of who he was weren't clearly defined. I could communicate with J- through the earpiece thingy that I had in the mall. I recall stepping outside to the left of the house and looking up to the underside of a balcony, which had a hole all the way through the floor. I think I should mention that the architecture of the house did not remain constant while I walked around it and at this point, and from this angle, the balcony was unrelated to the aforementioned balcony that had fallen apart. But anyway, I heard footsteps and the man walked out onto the balcony, and looked down to see me through the hole. He was at least 25 feet above me and 25 feet in front of me, but I still ducked and tried to flee. Walking down onto the sidewalk and to a streetcorner, I started looking for streetsigns so that I could visit an old house that I used to live in in this neighborhood. Yes, I actually grew up in this shitty downtown neighborhood with terrible roads, slumlords, and little children teaching me how to make bombs. Like, in real life. Before I knew it, this gentleman was upon me, having powerwalked his way down from the balcony and to the intersection. He asked me what I was doing and I asked if he knew how to get to Howard Street, where I had previously resided. He said that he didn't, and he said that he just wanted to make sure that I wasn't messing around with his van. Here, he pointed out a white van that was parked nearby. I assured him that I wasn't. This man was in a white sleeveless "wife-beater" undershirt and had thin, wavy, light-brown hair down to his shoulders. At this point, his friend, a Hispanic man with short hair and a goatee approached, wearing a similar shirt. The first man explained to his friend that he thought I was messing around with his van. The two were acting unusually aggressive to me and a fear went through the back of my mind that they might wish to murder me. This seemed irrational, but these fears are always present in my mind to some degree since someone I know was quite randomly murdered. The rest of the details of the dream seem unimportant. I remember pressing a finger to my ear so that I could hear J-, ask her where she was, and ask her if she was alright. I remember the people watching me (the man, his friend, and now his neighbor too) being quite confused about me holding my ear and talking to myself. The main point of fascination in the dream was just the mood inside the house and how purely decrepit and abandoned it felt. It was sort of like the house in Animal House, but more like the nightmarish house found in hell in What Dreams May Come, but mostly like the house on Paper St. in Fight Club.