Doomed by the Bell

My dream last night began with the distinctively crisp, clean, cool smell of early morning, autumn air, and the ominous chiming of a school bell. It might have been the bell in the school's chapel, or the one hanging in the school's clock-tower, but it was, in fact, a real, swinging, reverberating, larger-than-life bell, ringing darkly through the entire historical school.

All of the girls residing in this boarding school, including myself, knew to gather in the open courtyard upon the first bell's chime, and to be waiting in silent, still, geometric rows by the time the second bell sounded three minutes later.

For whatever reason, the visual scheme of this dream carried an oddly darkened hue, and consisted only of neutral colors: each girl wore a black blazer with black shoes, a deeply dark brown skirt and matching tie, with a white shirt and knee-socks. The stone walls and flagged floor of the courtyard were all a glistening gray, still betraying vestiges of morning dew in the dim, yet clear, sunlight.

(Artwork by Otto R. Eggers)

Each foot step upon the stony courtyard floor resounded almost as loudly and ominously as the bell had done, as the school's black-clad Headmaster, Housemasters, and Lesson Masters came striding out into the morning air before the rows of waiting pupils.

I didn't know for sure why all of us were assembled there in the dream, but it felt like a morning ritual of some kind... one having to do with a preliminary inspection before the first meal of the day. I was acutely aware, however, of the fact that I stood in the very first row, and that my unusually late start that morning had left me standing helplessly at the second bell with my tie not fully done-up to its expected standard, and my shoes as yet unbuckled.

Unable to move a muscle amongst the sea of stiffly silent, pale-faced girls, I could only swallow hard and pray that the Headmaster didn't notice either slip in my normally pristine uniform...

Of course, as the sound of his shining black shoes on the old stone floor grew steadily louder, closing in toward me with each approaching step down the first line of girls, my heart began to race, and the dream began to fade...