The Stolen Mosque
Level of Lucidity: N/A Level of Cohesiveness:
Rating:
Lucid Intent? No
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I was at work with all of my colleagues except my ex-boyfriend, Rich, who was absent for some reason. I was chatting to my colleague Kevin when I noticed a spider crawling on the cupboard near me. It wasn't huge, but it was big enough to scare me - probably about 5cm leg span. I panicked and asked Kevin to kill it, but he kept ignoring me. I picked up a DVD case and tried to kill the spider, but I kept missing. By this point, I was hysterically crying and screaming for help, but Kevin kept pretending he couldn't hear me. Eventually, I managed to hit the spider, but it didn't die - it was trapped half under the DVD case, and I knew that if I let it go, it would probably run up my arm. I kept screaming and begging for help, but still nothing. After a while, I managed to flip the DVD over and kill the spider, at which point Kevin finally turned round and asked me if I was ok. Our boss, Nicky, was angry and asked him why he wouldn't help me, and he said he hadn't heard me. I knew he was lying - he just couldn't be bothered to get up, so I started yelling at him. Once I started, I couldn't stop, and it turned into a tirade about how he was lazy and never helped his colleagues out. By the time I'd finished, he looked really upset and I felt guilty, but I reassured myself that I hadn't said anything that wasn't true.
Shortly afterwards, we had an announcement that everyone was gathering in the accounts department to have a collective minute's silence in honour of a colleague who had recently died. I really wanted to go, because I had been friends with the deceased man, but I knew Rich's new girlfriend worked in that department, and I was afraid to go up there and have to see her. My colleague, Mark, understood I was worried, so he said he'd go with me. He told me not to worry, and said we could stand together, so I agreed. We headed to the other building, and up the stairs towards Accounts. Mark put his hand on my shoulder and told me it would be ok. When we arrived in the office, I noticed there was a large alcove with a conference table where there used to be a wall. Rich's girlfriend wasn't at her desk. I looked around at the people gathered, but she wasn't there. As I passed her desk, I saw she had a photo of Rich in a green plastic bubble-style frame. He didn't look quite right, his build was wrong. I noticed her shoulder in the corner of the picture, and wondered why she'd cut herself out. I expected to feel hurt by the picture, but I didn't. We had the minute's silence, then went to leave. One of the directors asked me to go to the new conference table with him, and he put a load of charts down in front of me. I was chatting to him, and pointing at the charts, when I realised that the girlfriend had come back to her desk. I could see her out of the corner of my eye, and I knew she was staring at me with a weird expression of shock or awe. I pretended I couldn't see her, then I left, feeling slightly smug that I had unnerved her.
On my way downstairs, I saw two more colleagues, Rowan and Wayne, trying to do a huge jigsaw puzzle on a fold-up table. They asked me to help, so I stopped and put a few pieces together. They told me they were really struggling, and asked for my advice, so I told them to do the edges first, then pick a large object on the picture and search for pieces that matched its colour. They thanked me and said they hadn't thought of that, then I left.
I left work and headed towards a tiny village. I'm not sure why, but lots of people were being sent to live with families out in the middle of nowhere - it was kind of like children being evacuated during the war, but with adults. I didn't want to go to meet the family I would be staying with, so I wandered around the village for a while. I went into one shop which sold games and toys. I saw some Final Fantasy card games, which I really wanted to buy, but I didn't have any money. Eventually, I realised I had to go at some point, so I headed to the house where I would be staying.
I was greeted by my new "family". They were an older couple, probably in their mid 60s. The man just grunted a greeting, then went to bed. The woman was in a dressing gown, and she said hello, but it was clear that neither of them wanted me there. She showed me to my bedroom, then left me. The room had a single bed and a double, and I was worried that I would be sharing with someone else, but I soon realised that I wouldn't. As I was getting ready for bed, a black and white cat came into the room. I called him over and gave him a fuss. he was really affectionate, and started purring. I realised that life wouldn't be so bad here, because I now had this cat as a friend.
The next morning I got up and went to find the bathroom. The man was already in there, and the woman was waiting on the landing for her turn. She kept looking over the bannister at the glass door downstairs which led to the garden. I said hello to her and asked what she was looking at, and she pointed at the door. I saw a gorgous, long-haired, white cat sitting near an elderly-looking labrador. I told the woman I had already met the black and white cat, and asked how many they had in total. She told me there were three, and the other one should be around somewhere. I went downstairs and looked out the door. There was a dog kennel nearby, and I saw what appeared to be a young lion come out of it. I could only see the lion from the back, but I realised this must be the other cat the woman had mentioned. I got really excited that I would get to see a real lion, but then it turned around and I realised it was another labrador.
After I got dressed, the man asked me to meet him in the garden. The grass was all dead, and the ground was cracked. The man was sitting on a swing, and gestured for me to sit next to him. He was looking out over the village, which looked from there like a poverty-stricken area of Eastern Europe, with a couple of tall Turkish-style buildings. The man told me that he knew my (estranged) father when he was young. He said that they had been in the army together, and had been posted to North Korea. There had been a very special mosque in North Korea, which was rumoured to be the target of a terrorist attack. In order to save it, the army had arranged to lift it into an enormous specially-built train, and transport it back to Europe where it could be protected. The man and my dad had been given the task of guarding the mosque while it was on the train, waiting to begin the journey. They had turned away to sign some papers, and were only out of sight of the mosque for a couple of minutes, but when they returned, it had been stolen. The man told me that my dad had dedicated his life to finding the mosque, and that the reason he hadn't been with me is because he was trying to retrieve this building that was so important to so many people. I knew he was trying to do something good for me, and let me know that my dad had left me for a good reason, but it actually made me feel resentful, that he had chosen to abandon his only daughter to pursue a stolen temple for a religion he was not a member of, which was stolen from a country that he did not live in.
