London | The Dreamweaver

I was in London looking for the entrance of the Underground.

Once I found the entrance, I had trouble getting down the long escalator which was out of service and very steep and narrow.

I saw a food hall and decided to have something eat, hoping that once I finished, the escalator would be back in service.

As I stood in line at the pizza stand, I saw a man and a woman I recognized as being anchors on CNN.

I ordered a couple slices of cheese pizza but one of the slices clearly had pepperoni so I told the young woman at the counter and she said if I didn't want it I should just throw it away.

I told her I would and asked if she was going to replace it and she said no, that I had already paid for it.

Not wanting to argue, I simply ordered another slice of cheese pizza but the woman insisted on charging me for a slice of pepperoni saying it was my "punishment" for throwing away a perfectly good slice of pizza when I could have offered it to one of the many vagrants that were hanging around the stand.

Incensed, I asked to see the manager who came out from the office, listened to his employee's version of the story while giving me dirty looks the whole time.

The manager approached me with a fake smile and insincerely offered me an apology and asked for my original receipt.

He took the receipt and stuck it on a spindle and walked back into his office.

I took my slices and walked to an empty table and sat down.

Later, on a crowded bus, I had forgotten to put on my face mask.

I arrived at the park-and-ride and got into my Tesla and pulled out of the parking lot into the stifling rush hour traffic.

As the traffic began to dissipate, I couldn’t figure out how to get more speed though I was pressing the accelerator to the floor.

I finally arrived at my friend Todd's apartment where I'd been staying and ran into his old girlfriend in the lift. She said she had come by to try and patch things up with Todd, but he told her he had a friend staying over and didn’t have the time for her.

The woman said if she knew who that friend was, she would personally kick him in the balls.

I took her side telling her that she was right to be angry and if I was her I would do the same thing.

Once the woman got off the lift, I took a deep breath as I was relieved she hadn't figured out that I was the friend who was staying with her ex-boyfriend.

Later that evening, I decided to take a drive around London and found myself trying to navigate through a busy intersection where I saw two cars nearly collide.

Too nervous to continue driving through the busy London streets, I decided to leave my car at the park-and-ride and take the Underground back to my friend's house.

When I walked into the Tube station, I noticed that riders were only able to access the station with a pre-paid travel card, which I did not have, so I decided to get back in my car and drive to my friend's house and go to bed.

When I arrived, my friend had left me a note saying he was going out for pizza with his ex-girlfriend.

I put the note on the kitchen counter and turned around to see that his cat had shit all over the Persian rug.

Then I woke up.