More Dreams

Last night, I had two rather odd dreams that I will report to you this morning. First, let me say that Thanksgiving was fabulous; my grandparents came up from Atlanta and my grandmother made a nice, traditional turkey dinner for the occasion. They're going to stay until Monday, and we've had a great time with them so far, playing cards, playing tennis, going for walks in the neighborhood, and playing the piano. My grandfather gave me one of my Christmas presents early, which consisted of this awesome book of piano sheet music from all the different eras: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary. It has this piece that I've been meaning to try to learn ever since I saw it on Youtube: Mozart's second movement of the K.545 Sonata in C.
So, to the dreams: the first one was rather tame compared to the following dream. In this initial dream, my mother and I were both in the Winston-Salem Symphony. She played the timpani and I played all of the mallet instruments (xylophones, vibraphones, etc.). We had rehearsals every day, and we would all meet in the Reynolds parking lot outside of the arts building to be shepherded over to some practice hall in activity buses. My band director, for whatever reason, would take attendance and drive one of the buses over to the building. On the night of a performance, my mom approached me in the parking lot and said, "I've forgotten my music. Can I trade instruments with you?" This seemed reasonable to me in the dream, because I apparently had memorized both of our parts. So I said, "All right with me. We should probably check with the director first."
Then, as we were about to board the buses, Mr. James came up to us and said, "You know, you were supposed to wear shades of brown or black for the concert tonight."
I looked down, and sure enough, I was wearing a neon green shirt and some purple pants. My mom was appropriately dressed, however. As the buses pulled into the parking lot, I said, "Tell them to wait just a second!" before running frantically to the door of the arts building. After jiggling the knob for a moment, I pulled the door open and dashed across the hall to the band room. My backpack was on the floor, and I rummaged in it for some black or brown clothes. I heard the engine start outside, and tore back to the buses clutching a black, collared shirt from my Hanes days and a pair of tight, brown corduroy pants that I have never owned in my waking life.
I got onto the bus just in time, and I don't remember what happened during the trip to the performing hall. I just remember that when we arrived, I was faced with the prospect of confronting the symphony director about a possible switch of instruments before the concert that night. I was disappointed to find him in a bad mood. As we stepped down from the buses, the sun was setting and we could just barely make him out at the far end of the parking lot, pacing back and forth in his concert outfit. One of the assistant conductors seemed to be trying to console him, but he waved them off after a few seconds. I was unsure of how to approach him. People were muttering around us, gossiping about the possible reasons for the director's displeasure. My mother eventually tugged me over to where he stood on the edge of the parking lot to inquire about our situation.
"Excuse me, Sir, I'm sorry to bother you, but -" and then he looked over and his eyes were red, as though he had cried. I searched for words of comfort, found none, was nudged by my mother to continue. But before I did continue, I woke up to find that I had been sleeping for several hours with my neck in the wrong position with the result of severe pain in the right side of my neck as I turned over and attempted to go back to sleep.
I did, eventually, only to find myself in an equally strange, deeply disturbing dream. In this dream, I was at my mother's house, sitting on a couch in the front room (the couch was placed where the piano would be in real life). We were in the right part of the front room, and the left part was no longer a living room as it is in waking life: it was closed off, with a door, and it was a bedroom.
My mother and I were sitting on this couch, anxious for one reason or another. In the next, closed off room, there was a dog laying in the bed, deeply ill (I'm not sure which dog it was, or if it even was one of our dogs). We sat there as though we were waiting for some action, action which came to pass in the next minute. Wesley came walking through the hallway silently. He paused at the door to the bedroom before entering and closing the door behind him. A few moments later, we heard the crack of a gunshot, as though he had euthanized the ill dog, and perhaps this was what we had intended to do in the first place. My mother and I continued to sit on the couch, and Wesley exited the room, clutching a gun that he had not possessed when entering the room. He walked back down the hallway from whence he came, and left the dream completely from that moment on. My mother then stood up, leading the way to the open door of the bedroom. We walked through the door, perhaps with the intent of cleaning up the mess on the bed. We stopped in our tracks as we entered; there, on the bed, was not a dog, but a human being. The child on the bed was not identifiable, partially because it was unknown to us and partially because of its current, dead condition. I was shocked into tears, and I knelt on the floor beside the bed, hoping that I had been seeing things, that the child was still, in reality, the ill dog which had been put out of its misery. I was going to stand up to confirm this hope when I woke up for the second and final time. Disturbing dream? Yes.