I meet Richard Ramirez in Walgreens Pharmacy, and Jose Anguiano takes the long way to work

I had another dream in which I was going to be brought back to work, in a limited capacity, at Yuba City Honda. Jose Anguiano, who by now was head of the parts department, was responsible for bringing me in. He rounded up a bunch of the guys, and we were all riding in a van together, getting high one last time before starting work. 

"Here," Ange said, "try this." He handed me a lighter and a shotglass filled with a fine powdery, greenish mixture. 

I was dubious, since I had no idea what was in the glass nor what I was supposed to do with it. He lit the lighter and began warming the bottom of the shotglass, cooking the contents until they turned the glass a dark brown. Smoke rose up from the glass, which he then inhaled, tipping the glass and tilting his head back as if he were taking a shot of whiskey. I thought he was smoking crack, and I wanted no part of it.

"Relax," he said, "it's just weed. I grew it myself."

"Come on, Spark. Don't be a big wuss," Sal Mendez, the senior Honda tech, goaded me from the front seat.

I was still dubious about the technique, and the color of the weed, which was really closer to gray than green, was a little off-putting. Ange explained that the shotglasses were less conspicuous than conventional pipes. You could drive around taking shots, he told me, without arousing suspicion from the cops. People did it all the time. As to the color, well, it just came out that way, but it wasn't moldy, he assured me. 

We went around a corner, and I spilled the contents of my shotglass on Ange's trouser leg. I scooped it back up and found that it had doubled in quantity. It now overflowed the glass. Ange just laughed. 

"That's a good sign," he said. "It means you are going to get super high."

I took the lighter and began warming the shot glass as he'd demonstrated, and that was all I remember of that van ride. 

Next, Anguiano and I were in line at Walgreens pharmacy, making a pit stop. We were casually browsing items near the back of the store when a young man who looked to be in his mid-twenties walked past us. I suddenly got a chill. The man was none other than Richard Ramirez, the 70s LA serial killer known as the Night Stalker, his signature curly hair and scowling, devilish facial features untouched by age.  

"Hey, you're Richard Ramirez!" Ange said to him, surprising me with his fearlessness and his knowledge of 70s crime trivia, both of which seemed unlikely for a millennial.

"I get that all the time," the Night Stalker replied, "because I AM Richard Ramirez! Bitches!" He flashed us the "Hail Satan" sign, made his purchase at the pharmacist's window and strode  past us, down the aisle and out the door.

Soon, Ange and I were back on the road, headed for work. This time Ange was driving, and I was alone in the back of his Jeep. We were traversing a very steep, treacherous mountain pass, a narrow one-lane road with a sheer rock wall on one side and the infinite abyss of a bottomless canyon on the other. The road was covered with a mixture of melted snow and ice, and the tires made a crinkly, sloshing sound as we made our descent. I wasn't happy with his choice of routes, and I told him so.

"This is the road we are going to die on," I said, terrified.

"No, it isn't," he said calmly, looking back at me as he proceeded down the hill, taking corners too fast on the icy, slushy pavement.

We reached the bottom, and he decided that this wasn't the way to work after all, and we had to go back up the way we came. The road was too narrow to turn around, so he backed up the hill in reverse. Looking over his shoulder, he grinned at me maniacally, driving in the same carefree, casual manner as he'd done on the way down.

Back in town, we were almost near the dealership. I was getting nervous about the time. I'd been due there by 9:00 AM and it was now 10:30. I wondered it I could just round it out to an even eleven, and perhaps they'd overlook it. I grabbed a Pepsi from under the seat and cracked it open.

"You're going to drink THAT now?" Ange asked incredulously. After all we'd been through, the ice road, the weed shots and meeting a serial killer at the pharmacy, this was what he found shocking?

"You bet," I said. "I might as well make a complete fuck-up of my first day back at work." The effects of caffeine and weed are exponentially greater when taken concurrently, for me at least. We kept driving, but we never actually arrived at work. 

----

I woke up, having the compulsion to pee and to write this down, in that order. Now that I think about it, there was another tidbit from the night before that I may as well jot down:

I dreamed that my lady-friend Denise, had brought me a baby Christmas tree in a pot. We were in the horse pasture, looking for a place to plant it, somewhere on the east side of the property, when a giant wind came and whooshed the little tree away like a tumbleweed in a tornado. I went after it, but the wind was too strong. It picked me up off the ground and hurled me through the air like nothing. 

Fearful for my life, flying through the air with uprooted trees and pieces of wrecked homes swirling in a giant vortex that was possibly a mile wide or more, I soon woke up, panicked. Later that day, we decided to plant the tree in my front pasture. I know the difference between dreams and reality, but I wasn't going to take any chances.