I had two dreams last night!

I was Batman and I was preparing for a final showdown with the Joker. We were the comic book Batman and Joker, not the movie versions. The site of our battle was a wide open lot covered in 1.5 foot square concrete tiles. The Joker was seriously creaming me, and soon I began to have an out of body experience. It was then that I realized that I was dying. I watched as the Joker pulled up some of the tiles, dug a hole, and deposited my body there. He then filled the hole and reset the tiles.

As a ghost, I didn't know what to do. I tried going to Robin for help, but since he couldn't hear me or see me, it was no good. Instead, I just floated around the lot. I didn't float very high--probably 10 to 12 feet off the ground at the highest. After about a month of this, activity began to take place at the lot. Surveyors were out taking measurements, businesstypes were talking to architects with their rolled up maps...I could tell that construction was beginning on the lot, and that meant I'd be saved!

You see, I had an agreement with the woman who owned the property for many years that if she was ever going to build there, that she'd first tear up the tiles and dig up the soil. So that meant they would find my body! I was pretty happy, because I assumed, from my knowledge of ghosts, that once they found my body, it would be buried properly, and my spirit would be free from its ties to this world.

Well, it wasn't that easy. As it turned out, there was going to be no turning of soil or anything of the like. They were going to build a mall on top of the concrete tiles to avoid the costs of removing and disposing of them. I was furious! She was breaking our agreement! Sure, she probably had no idea that in doing what she agreed to do, she would discover the body of Batman, so I knew she wasn't doing this maliciously to go back on her word, but still, she gave her word, and since she was breaking that promise, I was going to be stuck there forever.

Apparently, in anger, I was able to make myself detectable, because one day during the early construction stages, we had a conversation. She began apologizing to me, which caught me off guard, since I didn't know she could see me. She apologized for not doing as she said she would, but she assured me that now that she knew the importance of digging up the ground, she would. So almost immediately, work began to discover my body. And soon enough, they found it.

The convenient thing was that when they pulled it up from the ground, I got up close to look at it, and then BOOM I was in it. I was looking through the eyes of my body again. I was alive again.

I went back to the Batcave to tell Robin, who apparently thought I had been kidnapped or lost. He was sitting out on the Bat Patio, so I pulled up a Bat Lawn Chair and we had a good long talk. Apparently we sat out there for about a week, because one day, the woman from before (I think she had a name in the dream, like Julie or something) ran on to the Bat Patio and screamed "Where have you been?" We told her that we had been right there on the Bat Patio all this time. She then yelled "I have been trying to get a hold of you for several days now! The Joker heard you were discovered, and now he's terrorizing the city! I've been trying to summon you over BAT TV since Monday!" That's when we realized the problem--Robin and I didn't have a tv out on the patio, so that's why we hadn't seen the BAT TV channel--we hadn't been watching tv! We got into the Batmobile and took off.

I was back in Nemaha County for a few days and I decided to drive my car into town. It was night, so I felt all sleek and stuff like I was in a spy movie. I drove into the town, and it was pretty deserted. There were a few cars, but I guess it was late enough that everyone was home. I got to the intersection of 136 and 75, so I turned left (south) onto 75.

I was driving along and turned on to what should have been open space, but instead there was a mall there. It caught me off guard, but I was able to maintain a safe pace. The problem was that after every store, there was a stop light. And there was no yellow. So I kept having to make quick jerking stops. There were no shoppers in the mall (it was late, as I said, and all the stores had their gates down), so I just stopped obeying the traffic lights and drove on to the end, hoping to find my way out.

I got to the end, and it was a large open terraced room, probably like a JC Penneys or a Sears or something. But the terraces were like you'd find in a lecture hall or movie theatre or something. I parked the car and got out to look around. It was strange because there were some sections of the room that were caged off, yet the main area was left open. I don't remember much actual merchandise being out, but I was sure that it was a store. I looked up at the doorway where I drove in, and saw that from the level that I was on, I could walk along the outer wall and go to a small doorway beneath the ramp I drove in on.

I walked through that door, and before I actually saw anything I knew where I was. The smell of chlorine told me that I was in the Lancaster Sports Centre. I was tired, and swimming sounded quite nice, so I decided to go in. I was on a catwalk outside of the pool areas, and from there I could see two or three pools. I couldn't tell if the third one was an actual pool or if it was a reflection. I went down to the locker room to change, and was shocked to see that one whole wall of our locker room was a window into the womens' locker room. Then I noticed that the women were wearing the same clothes as the men, and I thought that was strange. I asked one of the employees what was going on, and he said that it was a specially designed mirror to make the mens' reflections look like women. It was designed so that if the men thought they were being watched by women, it would hopefully keep their behaviour a little more civilized. I could kind of see their reasoning. It was still pretty uncomfortable though.

I got into the water of the largest pool, and everyone was swimming laps. There were so many people swimming laps that there was a current, so I was being pulled along and not really doing anything. Then a British boy came up to me and asked me a question, but his accent was so heavy I couldn't understand him at first. He kept repeating it until I understood that he had dropped his brown sports bottle in the water and he wondered if I had seen it. I hadn't, but I told him I'd help look for it. After a little while, I spotted it, but it was on the floor of the pool and it was at a section where the floor sloped downwards. There was a small tunnel area connecting that pool with another pool, and it went down about 5 feet so it could safely go under the walkway along the side. Anyway, the bottle was slowly sliding down the slope, and I told him that I couldn't get it for him because I couldn't go underwater with my eyes open or I'd lose my contacts. He said that was okay and he got it himself. I went on and swam for a while, but not very long.

I got out, and was greeted by my parents. They had decided to come to Lancaster for the weekend to visit. I went and got dressed, and we decided to go to the Auburn basketball game that was in the court down the walkway. The gym there was very similar to Auburn's, except the walls were 2 to 3 times higher. The walkway led to the highest level, so that when you got to the end where the stairs led down, you could look down over the court from fairly high above.

When we got there, some cheerleaders were coming off the court. I thought to myself "I wonder what British people think of cheerleaders," because I hadn't recalled ever seeing any cheerleaders at any sporting events here. My mom and dad were getting some food for the game and right as they came back, Kelli Clark and her parents walked by us to go sit down. My dad said "What are they doing here? They don't even have a kid out for basketball!" I said "Neither do you guys," but it was different, because my parents had a separate reason to make the trip to Lancaster. Then something else occured to me. I said "Why did you guys come this weekend? You know I'll be home next weekend." They knew, but they just wanted to visit. Then my dad said "Neal, you remember Bob Kechely, right?" Mr. Kechely was my grade- and middle-school p.e. teacher. I said "Yeah, hi Mr. Kechely." I didn't understand why my dad had his arm around Mr. Kechely. My dad said "We've been talking about the corruption with the town of Auburn and the football team. Go on, ask Bob a question about Auburn football. He'll tell you all you want to know." I couldn't think of any.

I'm not sure if we left and went to a small cottage, or if this picked up the next weekend after I came home. But anyway, this cottage was like something you'd expect to see in some fairy tale theme park. My dad, Mr. Kechely, and I went into a little room with a heavy lavendar and light green color scheme. There was an elliptical rug on the floor and along the wall opposite the door was a small table with a box on it that resembled a tabernacle. I remember going towards it, but I can't remember opening it. We went into another room that resembled our living room at home, and suddendly I was forced to try to explain love to chalk drawings of Marge and Homer Simpson. After that, all I can remember is attempting to sharpen colored pencils (black in particular) with nothing more than the power to squeeze them.

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