Scattered Dreams & Dragonflies

Astro and Bridgette

I awoke to the image of endless corridors, surrounding alleys bathed in gray as far as my eyes could see. I felt immediately worried. As I looked around, I instinctively held on tightly to a disinfecting alcohol spray bottle. It reminded me of the one I always carry with me when I'm out. Needless to say, this scenario didn't seem to warrant the use of a disinfectant. However, I marched forward, pointing it in the direction I walked. With every few steps, the spray bottle began to change, turning into my pocket knife. Oddly enough, my hands instinctively adjusted their grip to the new equipment. The changes continued as I walked on until I arrived at a different place.

Within moments, I found myself in what seemed like a public bathroom. The floor and the stalls carried the same monotone coloring from the previous corridors, and the scarce lighting only served to further accentuate the rather ominous feeling in the space. Walking inside the bathroom, I noticed there were lots of things on the floor. To my eyes, however, they were indiscernible. All I could tell was that there were objects other than the hard floor beneath me. Regardless of their shape or what they were, I moved around them nimbly. There were no urinals, but certain stalls were open. Walking past them, I noticed that there were, as you would expect, toilets. These toilets, however, had an odd shape. The mouth, as conventionally expected, was in the shape of a circle. These, however, resembled more of a seat. The mouth started from the back and bent downwards halfway, making a slight hole in the ground. Looking closer, I could see that the water, instead of going downwards with gravity, continuously spiraled in a counterclockwise motion, starting from the bottom upwards.

As I stepped away from the stalls, I noticed the lighting in the room getting brighter. The intensity of the light grew stronger with every passing moment. To protect my vision, I covered my eyes and fled to the closest exit. On my return, still using my hands to cover the top part of my eyes, I noticed a couple of cats obstructing the exit. Each cat rested rather comfortably in its bed. Both had the same type of bed: black around the side, with a cream-colored interior.

I had never seen these cats before; however, names, for some reason, came to me with ease as I looked at them. Astro was a little black ball of cotton. Its fur shone in the overwhelming lighting, highlighting the glistening dusky shades in his enviable life-born coat. His eyes were, in contrast, a pearl-like golden yellow, divided rather elegantly with a black line for its pupil. As his name came to me for the first time, an image of a shooting star placed itself in my head.

Then there was Bridgette, a cat whose fluffiness was only matched by that of his counterpart, Astro. His fur was a delicate hazel color, with a mahogany-like pattern bathed in shades of coffee grounds scattered delicately through his coat. His eyes matched those of Astro's as well. Both looked at me for less than a moment and immediately went to sleep.