working at a new restaurant

spicy chik’n sandwiches, fries, water, candy lady fudge


Various elements of _Scanner Darkly_ creep into this dream at the front end, including me being Bobby Hill and I eat one of the bugs from the beginning of the movie.

I am working a night at the “other restaurant” in the business. I have refused to work here before, but I am doing so as a favor to Meg. The evening is just getting started. The restaurant is a rather large space, all one big room, with a bar (or something) in the middle and a bar over at one wall. It’s a white walls, dark wood concoction, wait staff in white shirts & long aprons & ties. The action is starting and everyone is hustling. But I’m not certain what to do, and I don’t know where I’m supposed to be working. I approach some ladies stuck in line and offer to get them a drink while they wait. They select cocktails with some sort of pink liquor in a low brandy-shaped bottle.

I go to make the drinks for them. I can’t find any of the liquor, though; I open a reach-in and dive in there up to the waist, and find one last bottle, but it only has enough for one drink, if that, not three. Fuck. I’m flailing around trying to get more of this stuff, but I don’t even know my co-workers’ names to ask anyone for help. What do I do? I feel like I should have been back by now with the drinks. I finally go back, and show them the bottle, but now it really does have enough for three drinks. Fuck it. Fine, I’ll get the drinks together.

I go over to the bar by the wall and hop up on the bar top & lay over to reach some glasses. Someone grabs my legs and thrusts me over the bar and I crash over on the floor. I am incredibly pissed off. I go to a girl that was facing whoever it was, across the bar, and ask who did it. She won’t talk to me or make eye contact. I finally get her to say, “If he sees me tell you, he’ll be pissed. But he’s eyeing you right now.” I swing around and some fratboy dick in a trendy blue striped shirt yanks his eyes off of me. I charge around the bar. Here goes.

I push him off his stool and try to fight him, but true dream-style, I can’t get any power in my swings, we’re both moving too slow to really be fighting. AAAAAAAAARRRRRGH! I let it go, but I’m out of here. I storm through the restaurant, taking off this stupid gear. Meg stops me, asks me what’s wrong. I tell her I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know the system, I can’t function, I don’t even know where my section is, and since the restaurant is FULL, that means that people have been sitting without even a glance of service for a long time. (My alarm really rises at this realization.) She protests, that maybe I don’t even HAVE a section. I don’t understand how this can be.

I’m walking home, through a neighborhood that looks like Pill Hill/MLK Jr. Something alerts me. The fratboy is here. And this time I’m not dream-weak or slow. I drop him and smash his face into the pavement. In a very scramble-suit-style, his body is morphing, various cartoon elements and characters. At some point he is a cartoon skeleton.