Flood

For some reason, my dreams have been dark of late:

I was walking down a wide dirt road with a friend. We were relieved to see we were coming up on a restaurant constructed of old wood slats. The place was busy with customers and activity. My friend said he needed to go do something and he would catch up with me shortly. He went to the left and I went into the front door on the right.

The place was bustling inside with a classic western motif and what looked like cement floors. The people around me were mostly dressed in dusty brown colored clothes as if from an older era. I sidled up to the bar and ordered some food before involving myself in small talk with some of the locals around the pool table. Eventually, I realized my food was long overdue and made my way back to the kitchen area to find out the only cook, with a pot belly and all dressed in white, was on break. He apologized for the delay and asked if he could just have 10 minutes to eat something himself and then he would start right away on my food. He looked exhausted and in much need of rest so I took the news cheerfully.

Here it gets a bit blurry. I remembered it all clearly at one time but now it is fading. But I know I was called away for some reason. I left the building and went to speak with some people that were some kind of news organization. I remember seeing various scenes of confusion and fear. One scene I remember clearly was a man on a horse with muddy water coming up almost to the horse's back. The man was trying to get the horse to move forward by clamping his legs together repeatedly but the horse would only make as if to move but then balk. I had the impression the horse was exhausted. Around him, other people were moving around in the water, some on make shift rafts, others half swimming or slogging through on higher ground. Everyone was too busy to help the man with the horse.

Then I came back to the restaurant. Some time had passed and the ambiance had changed drastically. I could hear an angry black man's voice demanding that someone get those people out of his restaurant, that they had destroyed it, etc. He sounded almost irrational and used a variety of epithets.

I walked through the same front door I had entered earlier and the view was shocking. The entire interior was now covered up to about 7 feet high with a dark grey colored mud, the walls, the furniture, everything. A few people walked around listlessly with heads down in despair. Slung high over a tall rack were 6 dead adults, each completely covered in the dark steely mud. Several other dead people were slung over some of the other furniture, all bent at the stomach with arms and legs dangling down towards the floor. The shock of the sight woke me with a start.