Dream Journal Ultimate
Date: 10/9/2025
By amandalyle
The atmosphere in the depot was heavy that morning — thick with sweat, stress and the faint tang of machine oil mingled together until you could practically taste exhaustion. Bodies bustled in every direction, mechanical and muttering, like worker ants in a metal nest. I’d been put on a HCT round — High Capacity Trolley, low capacity patience. Too much post, too many parcels, and never enough space to cram it all in. But that’s Royal Mail for you: you shut up, you cram and you carry on. So I did what I always do — pushed, crushed, squeezed, cursed, until my trolley bulged like a fat uncle at Christmas. And that’s when Mr. Big Boss swooped in. He wasn’t big at all. He was actually rather small in stature. Small frame, BIG attitude. The kind who still thought he was in the military. His palm slammed down on my trolley lid and he barked, “HALT!” like we were mid-battle. It would’ve been funny if it weren’t so pathetic. A stiff upper lip, running the place on fear, still thinking he could make grown adults tremble. “You’re not on that job,” he snapped. “Excuse me?” I whimpered, already regretting it. “You’re on parcels!” he barked. “Now get to it!” Off he strutted, his spindly legs marching like he was leading a parade, chest puffed with invisible medals. You could almost hear the brass band in his head. Nobody liked him, but everyone feared him enough to stay quiet. I sighed — a deep, soul-draining sigh — and dragged my overstuffed trolley back to its corner. “Come on, come on, come on!” he shouted again, like a sergeant pushing his ants into battle. I glumly shuffled to the parcel section and began scanning each item, every beep echoing like a countdown to madness. “Anyone want to help?” I asked. A chorus of “Not I,” without a single glance up. Buggers. I thought of my son — the promise I’d made. A bike ride after work, no excuses. Just us, the open air, and maybe some peace. Later, I was chasing him down the pavement. A full-throttle sweatathon. Alex was a blur on his too-small BMX, a daredevil with no brakes, weaving between pedestrians like a pinball. “Alex! Be careful!” I yelled between panting. But he was gone, off like a shot, pedalling like a boy possessed, zigzagging between pedestrians, nearly knocking people clean off the path. We ended up at the local swimming pool, the sun dipping low behind the roof like it was clocking off early too. The receptionist smiled at me from behind the counter — too cheerful for this hour, maybe too human for this world. “Got your pass?” she asked, a little too keen beaver. I rummaged through my purse, pulling out bits of broken plastic. My old swimming passes had somehow shattered into a hundred tiny pieces. I poured them onto the counter like confetti. “Any of these will do?” I asked hopefully. She giggled. “Tell you what, love — this one’s on me.” A saint, that woman. An Angel sent down from the heavens themselves. “Kiddo,” I said, turning to Alex with a grin, “we are going swimming today!” And then the scene shifted — no warning, no reason — and I was somewhere else entirely. An old friend’s house. Kylie. We hadn’t spoken in years, and the silence between us was thicker than the depot air. We were pegging socks. Matching pairs, one by one, like a strange domestic truce. Every time I clipped another sock to the line, I felt her eyes on me. Cold, judging. I shot her a side glance. She glared back. The tension was unbearable. You could slice it, peg it, hang it up to dry. Get me out of here, I thought. Just get me out. Then I woke — or maybe I didn’t. Hard to say with dreams like that. Everywhere I go, someone’s barking orders or watching too closely. Me? I’m always scanning, sorting, cramming. Trying to make everything fit — the parcels, the promises, the people. But maybe some things aren’t meant to fit neatly. Maybe life’s just one big sorting office: half chaos, half comedy, and full of things marked “Return to Sender.”