“The Bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn”

I just had the weirdest dream in my life. It’s a little sad but comforting at the same time.
The dream started with me in school - university. I had just finished my exams and I was celebrating with Simin and Adlina. The scene didn’t feel right… We were wearing our graduation robes even though it was not the convocation ceremony. We joked about many things, enjoying the moment with many others who wore robes too.
I remembered turning away from the girls to look at a school field below us. We were located on the second storey of a building, which overlooks the school field. My university does not have anything like that and the place felt nostalgically like my secondary school.
There were beautiful flowers blooming on a big tree, and they were orangy-red in color. They reminded me of spider lily but I knew that they were not. It’s the kind of flowers that the Japanese use to pay respect to their deceased family members and closed ones. I’ve always liked that flower, though I do not know its name.
The next thing that I can recall from the dream is picking those beautiful flowers off the tree. There were so many of them that the branches holding them had bent over and drooped nearer to ground level. I plucked off a few hanging on the tip one of those branches. The flowers were in clusters and it felt really good to be able to select the nicest and freshest of them all.
The scene changed to a stairway. With the flowers in my hands, I was walking down the stairs alone. This time, the location feels like one of my previous residential area - Bukit Batok to be exact. There were 2 home units on every level. When I reached this level with the elevator, I met this uncle holding a bouquet of white flowers. I do not know the name of the flowers nor do I know if they really exist in real life. But they were beautiful too. I stared at the bouquet, mesmerized by its beauty. The next thing that happened was really sweet - the uncle handed me the bouquet without saying anything and walked, away, towards a unit just beside the lift lobby, presumably to deliver the other item that he had with him; a basket full of flowers and other misc things.
I continued descending the stairs with the bouquet and the red flowers in my hands.
When I finally reached the ground level, it was already evening time. The sky was in a shade of velvety blue, not too dark but it was enough for me to know that it was no longer in the day.

The scene around me was that of my previous residential area as mentioned earlier. Eric was waiting for me by the railings a few steps away from the stairway. I walked a little faster to greet him. He was smiling at me when I reached him. We walked up a slope together while chatting about school and other misc topics.
“It’s finally August,” I mentioned casually. The next thing I know, Eric shot me a puzzled look. “It’s already the 17th of October,” I thought I heard him say. I was thrown into a state of confusion. The flowers were still in my hands as fresh as the moment I picked/ received them, but he was telling me that it’s already October. At first, I reassured myself that he was teasing me and I replied,”It’s all good. Like this I don’t have to take the final exams in September.”
I took out my scheduler and flipped to the page on September. On it, I had marked out the various dates for the different papers that I had. While looking at the pages, things felt wrong all of a sudden. I flipped back to August and realized that I had not cross out the days that passed. It is a habit of mine even when I’m awake. For days with no events or happenings, I’ll cross them off when they go by. My crossing stopped on the day when I celebrated the end of exams with the two girls.
Looking through the final few days in august, I thought I suddenly recalled something. It was a black and white image but it was too blurred for me to make anything out of it. We were then walking on the jogging track. A little boy walked passed us and gave us the “they-look-like-mad-people” stare. You know, the kind that you will give to someone, talking loudly but you have no idea who the hell he’s conversing with - in which you will come to realize that he has a blue tooth headset on his other ear that is facing away from you.
The black and white image that had been flashing in my head was getting clearer by the second. The denial in me had been materializing as a numbing migraine.

I was feeling highly irritated and disturbed. “Just ignore him, ” I heard Eric said.
When the boy got closer to us, he suddenly looked terrified. “You were not there just a moment ago,” he shouted out loud while pointing at me. The b&w image had gotten so clear by now. There was a man in mask holding an electric chain saw. Behind him, it was a gruesome sight. Even though in black and white, I could discern that the muck splattered all over was blood. Amongst the bloody mess, I saw my own face. It was terror-striken - so this is how I looked when I’m horrified. Putting my first thought aside, I tried to recall the exact details of the image. There were other faces too but they were all scattered amongst the many body parts. I could not remember who was in it but I know they were people who were close to me.
Eric was now talking to the boy. I could not hear the details of their exchange for they were whispering in low voices.
A while later, the boy walked up to me with a different expression. “Your face looks better if you don’t open your jaw so wide. It looks scary if you do that.”
I felt amused and confused at the same time. First, my mouth/jaw was not ajar at all. Second, the image had gotten even clearer after he mentioned about my jaw.
The scheduler in my hands felt heavier all of a sudden. When I looked down at it again, the page for August was encrusted in a dried maroon-almost-black layer of flaky stuff.
I felt for my lower jaw. The feeling I received from my hand was very weird. My jaw felt numb when touched, but my hands told me that nothing was there.
I turned to Eric and asked,” Is my jaw that bad?” I thought I saw him shook his head…

This gives me the chill even now. The only comforting thing was the fact that Eric( in the dream) did not mind if I was dead or alive and that the first person I met after descending the stairway was him. The flowers were beautiful too.
When I met up with Eric, I said many other things that I cannot remember now. They went along the line of not needing to go through certain events stated in my scheduler as I went through it. I was attempting to convince him that it was still August. He listened to me the whole time while looking into my eyes, offering me the familiar and gentle( yet a little cheeky) smile. That was enough to warm my heart in this dream, and that is why I won’t call this a nightmare.