clock
I was walking down the side of the dreamscape road with a child around four or five years old and another adult. The beginning of the dream is too fuzzy to recall, but I feel like we had escaped from some kind of laboratory or something like that. Something with a sort of Stephen King's Firestarter feel to it.
The child stepped out into the road quite suddenly and at just that moment a fire truck whizzed passed us from behind. We both frantically tried to grab the child and pull him to safety but it all happened too quickly. When the truck roared out of sight we were looking everwhere for the child, expecting to see him still in the street. However, he had somehow made his way ahead of us and was now on the other side of the road walking along the shoulder, perhaps 100 yards away.
Then, once again he darted back into the road without warning, bending over as if to pick up an intriguing object off the highway's surface just as a semi-truck appeared from out of nowhere at top speed. I was screaming for him to move out of the road as I ran toward him, too far away to be effective on either count. The semi was bearing down on him, only feet away, when my subconscious dreaming mind and my conscious mind met and for a split second I realized that I was me and that the child was Norbu. I was still screaming my futile cries and still dashing that futile distance as I watched the truck reach Norbu, only inches away from his precious body, when I was rescued by the alarm. Quivering, I felt an enormous sense of gratitude to that long since outdated clock radio that I've been dragging along with me ever since my late grandfather gave it to me for my 11th birthday.
I stumbled out of bed and into Norbu's room and lowered myself down next to him, stroking his hair and staring at his pale clear skin, thin blue veins carrying his vitality beneath the surface. He pulled the covers over his head at the intrusion while I breathed a sigh of relief.