I was something like a Survivor alternate only not like in real life where they have alternates before the show is started. I was invited – no, forced – into the game something like half way through. Only in the dream it was entirely of no consequence. I was neither excited nor amused nor stressed. I was just suddenly there because I had to be there but I also understood that this happened all the time, that people showed up for no apparent reason and they never stayed around much.

But I didn’t just show up in a game. It went like this. I had seen it on TV, I had seen some episodes, episodes that I had even been in and then I showed up, as if an actor had suddenly walked into a rerun. So I knew things. I knew a lot of things. I knew where I had lost my ankle bracelet before I had even lost it. I knew that the couch (that we were moving, it was a race) fit going head first in the back and through the front of a mover’s truck.

That was another thing. It was Survivor. There was a lot of money to be won at the end of the game but it wasn’t in a jungle or on an African plain. The people stayed the same but the setting, as with all dreams, was very amorphous. When I first showed up into an episode I had seen, I had lost my ankle bracelet. Or rather, I was in a team of three and the two other people, a man and a woman, didn’t want me there, didn’t like me, I was an outcast before I had started, and it was one of them who had lost the ankle bracelet but they said it was me. At first I tried to argue and said that I knew that it wasn’t me. But I couldn’t explain how. I remember mumbling to myself it was far too existential for them to understand. But I knew exactly where the bracelet was. And, despite themselves, they were impressed that I immediately collected it and we finished the race last but somehow we had caught up where the other players were stuck and the game was now on an even playing field.

There’s more in the mix. I also had foreknowledge that the congenial and elderly couple was cheating. They had smuggled in groceries. They had confessed it on TV. As part of the race the couch after all didn’t fit but that’s because somewhere between the time I had already seen this episode and the time I had participated in it something unexpected had changed. Perhaps it was me physically being there. But still it didn’t matter. The foreknowledge helped me with the couch and we caught up like I said and it was then that I realized that I was still in this game and that I could win after all and then I was excited.

There was a mirror in the snow. Actually it was a car side view mirror and I knew exactly where it was. I collected it after we had caught up. Somebody saw me collect it and told me it was Cindy’s. Cindy I think I was Cindy Brady. And that person meant that I should give it to her but I wasn’t going to. Cindy had lost it. And more importantly Cindy wasn’t allowed to have it. So this intervening girl couldn’t do anything about it. So I pocketed it. I knew it would serve me later.

There was a bit too before the cameras started running where we rehearsed a scene. I was not surprised the scene was being rehearsed. As it turns out almost the entire for TV broadcast game was scripted except the actual winners of individual contests. One of these rehearsals was very early in the morning. So early that the producers, directors, writers, were not themselves; or rather they were exactly themselves so they talked about their personal lives much like they were supposed not to do. One man, an important man, had just been robbed. He was telling someone else that all that was left was his wife and a case of beer. Queer little detail that. One of the contents who was not supposed to talk to him – those were the rules – offered him a dollar. It was all that the contestant had. And eavesdropping, I giggled and thought how ridiculous, but the producer seemed genuinely touched. The fellow contestant, now that I think of it, was Mario from WB Superstar a detestable, loathsome, irredeemable, and utterly entertaining show.

I had no judgments about my fellow contests except what served me. I did not like them or hate them I just knew them and knew how I could use them. That was odd. And while I was an instant and thorough outcast – a real paranoia in my life – I was unalarmed and I used that position to serve me. I was friendless and had no real or honest human contact or friendships but I was happy because I was going to win.

Funny little dream, that. I don’t really care about money. But I do, I suppose, care about winning. I have always liked to be the best. But my confidence was falsely engendered. I had foreknowledge, an almost psychic power, of what was going on and I don’t know what that means.

SS