I see burning skyscrapers.

This morning my alarm clock shook me out of what I recall being a thrilling dream. I immediately began trying to memorize the key points, less than a minute after hitting the alarm-off button, but was left with nothing but a feeling that I had an impressive journey.

Throughout the day an image keeps coming back to me that I am failing to place with any medium in the real world, game or other story: a small group of strangers, all middle-aged, standing albeit displaying gaping high-caliber gun wounds in there chests. Bloody, almost zombified images--if they were dieing, or undead, or somehow clinging to life I haven't remembered. I think that was an earlier part of my dream from this morning...

...around 1:30PM, I returned to my room and realized how absolutely exhausted I was. This weekend I got less than 10 hours of decent sleep, and it finally caught up. So I tried resting, and eventually my mind lingered long enough to wander back toward dream county.

I took a bus to a hybrid of my highschool and two Hyatt hotels I've stayed in. Outside the front entrance was a small announcement board with a picture of a pirate and words something like, "The most hardcore person ever!" I remember following a group through revolving glass doors into a mostly red-and-gold lobby, and outside the door of a dining room there being a similar sign, a receptionist, and a woman about my age wearing pink clothes and a pirate hat.

The group, apparently an audience I was part of here for this personal spectacle, sighed in collective disappointment. She was a woman--what could she ever do to impress people? She yelled at us: "Who thinks they're stronger than me?" She grinned and glared. Mockingly, she took a few short steps forward, there still being much distance between the group and her.

Somehow, this captivated the audience--captured them, even. They stepped backward for every foot she put forward. I was the only one, man or woman, who was standing his ground.

A second receptionist, a man in a black turtle-neck, beckoned I follow him to an arcade machine. He told me that if I could acheive a high score, that would be enough proof. This game was reminiscent of the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade side-scrollers--like Turtles in Time. The player-characters of the beat-em-up formula looked much like Power Rangers, and enemies ranged from midgets to lawyer robots. Mr. Turtle-neck assumed it necessary to demonstrate, in detail, the controls.

I lost interest and walked toward the pirate girl. "What would you have me do to prove my superiority?" I asked. My stature was maybe a foot taller than I stand in reality, and I donned a black duster coat and steel-toed boots.

Her reply was exceptionally vulgar, so I asked how this would serve as proof, recommending she bid me attempt a more impressive, more respectable feat. I challenged her to demonstrate what she asked of me, sure she would waver.

I stopped my dreaming then.

There are five weeks of classes remaining. In this time, I must complete two Philosophy papers, a 10-page English research paper to post on a skeletal webfront, and a third Statistics midterm. I almost want to have a little more to do--all of this I could, if deadlines differed, complete by the end of this week.

Maybe I'll come home this coming weekend and idle, not focus on a damned thing. Maybe finally talk, face-to-face, to the two friends I've owed some explaining to since early February.

Or maybe that meteor I hallucinated this afternoon raining on the residence hall-side of campus was more an accurate premonition, and Hell will finally break loose in this deceptive interrim.