It had been a long day at the office, and I was exhausted. As I drifted off to sleep that night, I dreamt I was at a fancy work event in a dazzling ballroom. My coworkers were there dressed in elegant suits and gowns. Soft music played as waiters roamed with trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres.
I noticed my phone on a table and remembered I needed to call my wife to check on the kids. But when I picked up the phone, the buttons were all jumbled. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to dial the number correctly. The phone stretched and morphed in my hands, transforming into a baguette, a bouquet of flowers, a rubber chicken.
In frustration, I looked around for help. But my coworkers were no longer themselves. They had been replaced by animals dressed in formalwear – a cow in a gown, a pig in a tuxedo, a crow wearing a top hat. They gazed at me blankly as I grappled with the shape-shifting phone.
I turned and rushed out of the ballroom, finding myself suddenly on a train speeding through the night. The other passengers had the heads of fish, their wet, bulging eyes staring at me as I struggled to operate the ticking phone in my hand. The dream became more and more vivid and bizarre as I moved through train cars full of creatures eyeing me suspiciously.
Finally I was back in the dazzling ballroom. My human coworkers had returned. The phone was just a phone again. I clicked my wife’s name in my contacts list and heard the line ringing. Just before she answered, I awoke in bed, heart pounding. The everyday sounds of cars honking outside assured me I was no longer in that strange, unsettling dream world. But I couldn’t shake the lingering sense of confusion and dread as I replayed the bizarre dream in my mind.
