I dreamt that I was visiting what in my dream was called Prairie Camp, though it didn't at all resemble the Prairie Camp with which I am familiar in real life. David Badertscher was the caretaker there, and he gave me a tour of the camp upon my arrival.
As usual, the dream took place during a nighttime twilight. There were tons of densely packed trees with a few cabins seemingly arbitrarily built here and there. There were tons of huge pond-sized puddles from some bizarre acid rain that had recently occurred. There were a few tents and campers set up, but none of them seemed occupied. There was, however, a huge community playground where hundreds of people were gathered.
David showed me the cabin I was to stay in. It was weirdly long and narrow, musty and dusty, damp and dark. The carpet was black and the wood beams were painted red. He left me there alone as I started to make my bed (which was a bunkbed, and I chose the top bunk - see Dream #538 in which I also had a bunkbed). I was utterly freaked out by a pair of Scooby-Doo-sized insects that had chewed through the screen door and were making their way toward me. They were brick red and brown, had praying-mantis-like claws and dozens of legs. They had no visible eyes on their heads, and they had pincers in front of their jagged-toothed-mouths. In other words, they were horrifying.
I grabbed my pillow and shooed them outside, which was much easier than I had anticipated, to my relief. I watched out of the doorway as they made their way back into one of the acid rain puddles and disappeared.
I was soon met by a film director and his producer. They were apparently shooting a feature film at Prairie Camp, and wanted to set up a shot in my cabin. They asked my permission, and I agreed.
I watched as they and their crew set up the lighting and started blocking the scene. The lead actress, a few minutes into shooting, had a temper tantrum (brought on by absolutely nothing) and quit. The director desperately needed somebody to take her place. He walked outside and found my friend Carrie going for a walk and asked her if she would act. She told him that she wasn't very good, but agreed to do it anyway.
I asked Carrie if I could stick around and watch her perform, and she said 'yes.' To everyone's surprise, she was absolutely fantastic and gave an incredible performance. She acted out this weird and dark scene during which she poured black oil all over her head and walked about the cabin in a manic state, occasionally improvising and interacting with her environment. In the dream I never understood the context of the scene or the premise of the movie.
The character she was playing originally had just a small roll in the film, but the director liked Carrie so much that he decided to add more scenes with her. I thought that was a bit odd, but still pretty cool that she had that opportunity. I thought it would be cool if I could work on the film as well, so I asked the producer if they needed anyone else on the crew. He told me they already had too many amateurs. Ouch.
After everyone left, Carrie stuck around for a bit and I asked her how she liked acting. She said it was "awesome to be the best at something." It seemed to be getting to her head a bit, and she was treating me like I was some acquaintance from a former life. I couldn't really stand it, so I left.
I met up with my brother Mike and Kody Heffelfinger at the playground. Most of the hundreds of other people there were in a nearby field watching an extravagant fireworks show, though there were a few kids remaining playing on the jungle gym. I joined the kids and entered their imaginary game; we pretended that we were knights fighting evil invisible creatures with equally invisible swords. Mike and Kody were making fun of me, saying that adults can't play on the playground with kids who are also strangers. They were probably right, but I was having a ton of fun.
All of this was disrupted by the film crew coming and taking over the playground for their next series of shots. Carrie was there and had so much makeup and prosthetics on that I could barely recognize her (she almost looked like Shirley Temple, strangely enough). In this scene, she had to swallow some purple potion out of a glass bottle and pretend that she was transforming into a dragon.
It was kind of fun to watch, but I didn't want to be entertained by people who had insulted me, so I left.
I found a crazy middle-aged woman preaching to a group of adults from various walks of life. She had a built-in megaphone in her face (it was terribly disturbing) and she kept warning everyone of the sins of America. I noticed that she had a human heart in her hand, and she was squeezing it like a stress ball as she yelled.
Then I awoke.
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