This was a weird dream. It started out with me somewhere in Atlanta, and I was going to go swimming at some country club type place. Dan's mom was driving me--it was 30-45 minutes away--but she was going to drop me off a couple of blocks away. So she drops me off on the main road we'd been driving on for most of the way, and I'm going to walk down a side street to get to the place. The side street is to the left. I get out of the car, but there is a lot of water in the road. And by a lot, I mean... well, I walked toward the traffic light in the left-turn lane, and as I got closer the water was rising because the road dipped down. By the time I got to the light, I was swimming in about 5 feet of water. Not clean water, either, but road-puddle water. I actually swam underwater for part of it, for some reason. I swam fast to make sure I caught the light, and swam left through the intersection just as it was turning from yellow to red.

I climbed out of the water onto the side street, which went uphill. I was soaked, obviously, but so was the bag I had. It was a black canvas tote bag which had my purse, my towel, and a change of clothes in it. I was already wearing my bathing suit. In fact I was only wearing my bathing suit. I had planned on putting the towel around my waist as I walked to the place, but my towel was soaking wet with muddy water, so I walked just in my bathing suit, feeling self-conscious.

When I got to the place, there was a sort of fenced-in patio, like many restaurants have. There were people sitting around at tables, and one of the people was my friend Tom from Tucson. He's an interesting looking guy--6'7", long hair, tattoos... He looked a little out of place among the country club folk. Anyway, I hung my bag on the back of a chair and went to talk to some lady about getting a new towel. They had a fancy towel boutique but all the towels were over $50, so I said nevermind.

I went back out onto the patio in time to see a guy in an orange shirt and orange shorts casually take my bag off the chair. "Hey, put down my bag!" I yelled. He took off running. "Grab the guy in orange, he's got my bag!" I shouted toward the tables of people that the guy was running past. Some guy got up and started chasing. I was chasing, too, but they were much closer. He was going for the opening in the fenced-area, and some guy was coming toward it from the other side. I shouted to him "stop the guy in orange! He stole my bag!" and that guy tried to head off the thief. I saw Tom glance up from whatever he was doing at the table he was sitting at. "That guy stole my bag!" I called out to him, pointing. Tom got up and more or less stepped over the fence (it was one of those low decorative wrought-iron fences that is just to keep the table area enclosed) and chased the guy. Tom has long legs. He caught the guy pretty fast and grabbed my bag.

I got my bag back but the guy ran off again. We were standing around considering calling the police, and I was going through the stuff in my bag and laying things out on the table to dry. A guy at the next table sees that I have several photographs that I've put on the table to dry, and he says "hey, we should put those on the internet!" I said I didn't think we should. They were all like mug-shot or id-style pictures of people's faces, but I can't remember who they were of, or why I had them. The guy seemed fairly annoyed that I didn't want to put them on the internet and said sarcastically "oh, I suppose you are too busy".

Nearby, a woman was talking on the phone. She seemed to be a doctor or nurse, because she was questioning someone about symptoms.

Somehow, connected to the people at the table, or maybe to the photos, there was an Asian man. The whole scene changed, sort of like a flashback or maybe a scene cut in a movie. Suddenly I was still looking at the Asian man, but it was through bars. He was in some kind of prison. It was very surreal--it was black and seemed like it was outdoors, but at the same time it felt like it might be inside a very large building. The bars were a very high cage or fence, that enclosed a large area with probably a hundred prisoners.

An older Asian couple, who I took to be the man's parents, was talking to the man through the bars. I noticed a closeup of the low block wall that the bars came up from (it was very much like tv or a movie at this point, as far as the angles that I could see from. I don't think that I was actually "there" as a character in the dream anymore) and saw that it was crawling with thousands of bugs. The couple started running and went around to the back somewhere, and into the small building that was in the middle of this prison yard. (Well, middle right-to-left--the fact that they could get to it, outside the fence, I guess means that it was up against the fence on the side across from me). They came out of the building calling to the man. As they did, all of the prisoners rushed toward the building at the same time, but were suddenly jerked to a halt--they were chained to the fence. The chains were about 20 feet long, and attached to metal collars around their necks.

Several guards were positioned around the building, and they held the parents back while also threatening the prisoners. The one nearest to me was a heavyset woman in her 40s or 50s. Her hair was up in a bun and she was wearing a uniform, but it didn't look like a typical "prison guard" uniform. It looked more like a store or restaurant uniform. The shirt was red with a white collar, and had large writing on the front. There were four words, but I only remember two of them: "paper" and "company". She was brandishing a knife at the prisoners, but not the kind of knife you'd expect; it was a table knife like the ones in a set of silverware, that you'd use to spread butter on your toast.

I started to wonder where we were, and suspect that it wasn't an actual prison... what was going on...?

Then I woke up, so I guess I'll never know.