And a long one, too. It began with me accompanying a young woman to the residence of an aging small-time crime boss. She was supposed to meet with him in private, presumably for some sort of romantic liaison, and I was supposed to keep an eye on the situation and make sure she got back okay. Anyway, I was standing outside the door of the guy's second-floor bedroom sipping from a wineglass when I heard a scream. I rushed in to find the girl bleeding from the neck and the crime boss dead with a wooden plank through his chest -- apparently the old guy had been a vampire and had tried to take a bite out of the dame. Despite her small size, she'd snapped off a hunk of a nearby dresser and dispatch him promptly.
Although I was ostensibly there to protect her, she took charge at this point. She snatched a small gun from the open dresser drawer -- I have no idea what kind of super high-tech weapon this thing was; it fired bullets that looked like cell batteries and never needed to be reloaded -- and, waving me behind her, made for the stairwell. Once there, we saw one of the crime boss's sons standing at the foot of the stairs with an uzi. He ripped loose with a hail of gunfire, and the poor girl was instantly flattened against the opposite wall, riddled with holes and bleeding profusely -- her short, blonde curls now highlighted with glistening red spatters -- and gasping her final breaths. As she died, she pressed the battery gun into my hand.
While the crime boss's son signaled for assistance, I ran back to the old man's bedroom, climbed out of a window, ran across the roof, leapt down into the grass, and dashed off into the night... and the rest of the dream consisted of me running from the crime boss's sons and daughters -- he had a lot of sons and daughters -- and dispatching them in various ambush setups. At one point I hid behind a hedge and blew them away as they hurriedly turned a blind corner; another setup found me hiding in a tree and shooting as they ran into a park clearing. Eventually only the eldest son and daughter remained, and, from my hiding spot, I overheard the son suggesting that perhaps they should just let me go. But the daughter was seething and wanted revenge, so he reluctantly agreed to continue the hunt.
I arranged my final ambush at a 24-hour grocery store, hiding behind a display and waiting for them to rush in several minutes later. But while my gun seemed to have unlimited ammo, the potency of the battery shots had begun to wane -- such that, when the sister ran in first, my multiple shots to her chest failed to kill her right away. And since she now knew where I was hiding, I had to go over to where she had fallen and make sure she was dead before her brother arrived. Just as I finished her, though, her brother appeared with his gun just a foot away from my face. He told me to try to shoot back if I could -- "just to make it interesting" -- and I whirled and fired. We each got off about five shots in the next moment...
...and when the slow-motion second was over, I was unscathed and he was slumped back against a glass door with two holes in his left shoulder and one in his forehead. Yet owing to the reduced immediacy of the bullets' effects, he was still conscious and alive, so we were able to talk a bit before he finally died. He talked about how impressed he was, offered no hard feelings, and said we'd meet again in another lifetime -- as friends -- the usual sort of thing. Then he died, and I bought a glazed honey bun and left.
Another weird dream indeed.
