Dream: a night in Bangkok

(This is the most vivid dream I have had in a little while, the night after I return from Bangkok)

Fragments of the beginning are lost. The dream starts in darkness, the type of deep inkiness that is associated with the time between 2 – 4am. It is much too late to be awake from fun, and much too early for any type of constructiveness. P and I are in a large bed, but there are no distinguishing features of the room in the darkness.

I pick up my phone and see a message from a friend from long, long ago. He sends a screenshot of a conversation he had with someone who is typing in Tamil – the words are lost on me, but he explains in Chinese under the screenshot that he is planning, “at the right time”, to blow up a plane.

I stare at the screen and blink several times. I wake up P and he takes a while to process the news. We discuss why he may have sent this message to me, whether it is some type of joke.

Let’s go for a walk. He says.

It seems insane to go for a walk at this hour, but I am too stunned to object. We dress hastily and head out onto the street.

It is humid outside, the air thick and fragrant with humanity. It occurs to me that we are probably in Bangkok. I look all around at the signs but nothing means anything.

We walk down several streets and several lanes, talking about various things but never addressing the message itself. Eventually, we come back to the corner where we started and P turns to me solemnly. His face is dark in the darkness, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an expression from him before.

That is enough time. He says.

Enough time for what? I ask.

He says nothing, but suddenly I realise that the messages will all have been tracked and that someone out there knows that I know. I shudder with some type fo anxiety and many thoughts cross my mind simultaneously. I do not want to live in fear.

We open the door to the apartment, and inside it is dark and still. We stand in the kitchen and talk for a while. We have our backs to the stove and we face the bedroom door, which is closed. At a natural gap in our conversation, we both see a shadow pass through the door. P grabs my arm just as the door swings open and in the blink of an eye, there is a small Indian man standing in front of us. He seems impossibly short next to P, scrawny as if he was malnourished or addicted to drugs. He points a gun right between my eyes.

My heart is racing and I am utterly speechless. P starts to talk to him, and at the moment when he is determined to shoot, he asks him in the gentlest of voices, so what were you doing when this lovely doctor here was born?

The guy loses focus for a moment and thinks. He starts to stutter something about how he was living on the street, and at the moment I cannot tell just how old he is – was he a streetboy?

Just that flicker of distraction is enough for P to grab the gun from him. I see it from the corner of my eye, but the motion is so rapid it is almost imperceptible.

P points the gun now at the very same spot between his eyes. Without a second of doubt, he pulls the trigger.

The gun lets out a silent click, but it does not discharge.  

It’s a fake. I realise.

The guy starts to laugh, and I wake up.