Ever woke up in the middle of the night with a dream you just had to jot down? Mine wasn't particularly interesting (although certainly vivid) or scary--but there was something about it that actually made me get out of bed to write at 4:30 AM. It's probably my subconscious screaming at me again.
I found myself in a wide-open grassland with a merciless sun. A copse of trees dotted the far background. I was on a golf course.
There were two golf tournament coordinators: a man with a slick salesman smile named Hansolm and a con-woman whose alias was Soface. Hansolm was giving my group a tour of the first hole while a woman in my group (who happened to be a professional golfer) was counting up the adults in the group. I was at the end, behind four kids, and was labeled the thirteenth adult. The professional golfer then dominated Hansolm's attention by telling him that she was using the tournament to exercise her elbow.
After the tour, we flew back to the hotel in Hansolm and Soface's private jet. We passed over a shopping center which consisted of a 24-hour Wal-Mart and an abandoned warehouse that used to be owned by the tournament coordinators. My hotel room was painted-on beige stucco. Cheap. There was a single flimsy curtain on the window which I pulled away to reveal a scene of the street below, the office building next door, and an Arby's. Room service gave me shrimp and mashed potatoes for dinner which I ignored. Someone had put a leather couch in the bathtub.
The next day, I met up with other people in my team and we picked up baskets with colorful golf balls. But they weren't golf balls. They were plastic Easter eggs, and a chunky angry-jowled woman (who was apparently our coach) told us to put them back. Soface asked us what song we should sing for the Easter egg hunt and one guy replied, "Hail to the Queen." Instead, a fresh faced six-year-old girl danced around Soface screaming, "Hop, hop, hop!" while twisting her arms together. Calmly, Soface told us, "She can also frighten her own classmates."
