Russian Prison Mall

Date: 11/27/2022

Scary dream. I’m on a commercial plane flying over the ocean in the arctic circle. The plane is struggling to keep altitude and we are perilously low over the ocean, occasionally skipping off the water. I plug in a power strip to an outlet and it starts messing with the left engine, smoking and sputtering until the engine shuts off. The pilot manages to crash land in Siberia - in a dark cold forest. We (me and other young Americans, all strangers except a work associate, are arrested and taken to a cold and evil prison. We are handcuffed behind our back, stripped, searched, beaten. I am lucky, I fiddle with my handcuffs and manage to free my hands from them. I know escape is needed soon, as they’ll begin to torture and execute us tomorrow. I navigate through the prison grounds and notice there is light and warm coming from one area. It winds up being the backside of a fake mall, or a real mall perhaps used to cover up the hidden prison. With looming forest is behind me, but I’m looking through glass into a Bank of America. And across the street is a Panera Bread, with people milling happily about carefree in the sunshine enjoying the mall. There is a donation box in the Bank of America, and I become acutely aware that I’ve been detained by the Russians before - and that they took twenty three gold dollar coins from me and forced me to put them in the donation box. With this realization, and though I’m pretending my hands are still cuffed behind my back, I pass through the glass barrier into the Bank of America lobby - then sprint to the Panera. There are other shops and businesses on a cobbled street, but the busy crowd seems to fail to notice they are deep in Siberia and surrounded by violent Russian forces. I consider calling my fiancé and requesting she come save me from Panera. I keep thinking to myself that she loves Panera, and she won’t mind rescuing me. Until I realize she won’t be able to make it to Panera in Siberia. I wake up (in real life) just as in the dream I’m conceding to the reality I may be a prisoner until the United States frees me, or I can somehow steal a plane or hide myself on a bus.