Dearest Rachel –
Back in the day, I rarely had nightmares about work – or at least, not that I can remember. After all, I would wake up a little after five in the morning in order to begin preparations to get myself ready for work, and the alarm would essentially interrupt any dream that I had in progress at the time, likely causing me to forget it completely (assuming I’d been having one in the first place – it may well be that I rarely ever got to have any R.E.M. sleep during such a shortened night, which might well explain why I was often so exhausted at work). All of which is probably just as well, since I always wanted to put the place behind me when I got home; life there could be bad enough without the workings of my unconscious mind adding to the experience.
These days, while it occasionally factors into my dreams, I can’t credibly consider them to be nightmares. If nothing else, there always comes a point when I remember ‘wait a minute, I don’t work here anymore – this isn’t my responsibility,’ and I can simply walk away from the otherwise distressing situation at hand. In a way, it’s gleefully liberating.
Last night, however, was a little bit different. The first situation was one I couldn’t really walk away from, once I was in the middle of it, and the second… well, let’s just say that it wasn’t an accounting problem I was dealing with.
For whatever reason, I found myself inspecting one of their properties – one that I wasn’t aware that they owned (of course, this being a dream, I can almost bet they don’t own anything like this building in real life – but I’m getting ahead of myself), but one that they believed was worth less than what they had recorded on their books. I was there to determine if their hypothesis was correct, and whether they needed to impair the building’s value. Honestly, for a non-accountant, this would probably be pretty boring stuff; it’s one of the reasons I rarely talked to you about my life on the job.
However, it didn’t take long for me to conclude that no, this place wasn’t worth what they had it recorded as (not that I even had a clue what that amount was, or anything about inspecting or assessing the value of a property). Aside from the fact that it seemed to be in a neighborhood that a suburban boy like myself would be uncomfortable in, even in broad daylight, the place was clearly showing its age, with weatherbeaten walls and the smell of must as I entered. If I believed in such things – and it was more like a house than boxy warehouse-type building it was – I would suggest that the place might well be haunted by one (or several) murder victims that had died here. Heck, it might well have been a long-ago mob hangout, at some point in its history.
The climax of this particular story had me on the upper level (I think it was the third floor), walking across the creaky wooden floor and staring at the high ceiling and fluorescent lights. Imagine the gymnasium at our church’s Des Plaines location, and you’ll get the idea – only this room didn’t have the markings on the floor or the basketball hoops on the wall. All very spooky for an October jaunt, I suppose. But then, as a reached the middle of this empty room, the creak of the floorboards grew that much louder, and I felt them sag underneath me. I didn’t hear a cracking noise, exactly, but I wasn’t about to wait for one – I bolted for the door at the opposite end of the room from where I had walked in, even as I felt more of the floor giving way under my weight. By the time I got to the door and turned around to look, the entire floor had bowed downward. It looked like a crater in the middle of the room, and I was standing at its lip. I immediately put the scene behind me, and pelted my way down the stairwell. Yeah, this place wasn’t worth whatever they paid for it.
***
Later (at least, later in my dreams), I found myself in the conference room with DJ, the boss that had originally hired me, but who had been pushed aside for disagreeing with higher-ups who had put him on a project involving setting up our computer system – he claimed that the system was not being tested sufficiently prior to go-live, especially given some of our unique structures, and was effectively dismissed, despite proving to be more right than wrong. He still had a reasonably well-paid position at the company, but he was no longer in charge of anyone; just marking time until his time to retire came along. So, in a way, he and I weren’t all that dissimilar.
However, in terms of faith, we weren’t exactly on the same page. Interestingly, he grew up Lutheran, and I found out on my last day there that some of his cousins had attended our church (even serving in Sparks alongside us for a while), but religion was not generally for him.
So, it was strange to be sitting across the conference table from him in this dream, and hear him asking me to help him to pray about a situation at work. It seems he was conflicted about an attraction he was having for some unnamed co-worker, and couldn’t figure out a way to deal with it apart from this little confession. I did what I could, in my informal way, and walked him through the process. The weird thing was, I realized he was referring to said co-worker with masculine pronouns. Again, not something I would have expected from DJ (well, either situation would have been out of character, as DJ had been reasonably happily married, from what I could tell). I did my best to conceal my surprise as we continued praying, until the scene faded away, and I found myself awake.
And it was at this point where I determined that I ought to actually pray for both DJ and Mohinder at that moment, seeing as I was thinking of my old job. After all, we’ve been instructed to pray even for our enemies; I wouldn’t consider DJ as such, but you know about the adversarial nature of my relationship with Mohinder. Still, they are humans, with human problems, and ought to be treated as neighbors when they come to mind. It was a weird sensation, asking for them to sense His presence as they go about their day at work today, but it was nice to be fulfilling a duty I don’t often think of doing (especially now that I have no co-workers anymore).
For their sake, I actually hope it might make a difference as they begin another work week today. I’ll never know one way or another, but at least I might have made some contribution to them, eh?
Anyway, until next time, keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 