A dream I had last night…

“I’m looking at a scene. A quiet scene. Everything is quiet.
It’s a hotel lobby and my view is trained on the closed lift doors. These doors take up the centre of the lobby.
I guess it must be early in the morning. A night porter shuffles bags and a trolley. The man on the reception desk is almost drifting off to sleep, yet the lighting is not subdued. People may come and go all night. That’s their prerogative.
My position is filmic. I am like the camera, the floating ghost, observing the scene passively. My view rotates, eight feet above the ground.
A couple enters the building through revolving doors. I feel like I am in an elegant hotel - perhaps in Paris or London in the 1950s. The couple laugh between each other. The man holds his woman very close to him. They wear clothes (overcoats) to protect them from the wind and rain, yet they appear dry. It will not be raining now, perhaps it threatened earlier?
Nobody in the scene has noticed the lift’s arrow is counting down the floors to Ground, but I am somewhat aware.
‘Bing’ - the bell signifies the lift’s arrival and the doors slide open. A man in a trench-coat steps from the lift. His eyes are wild, he carries a shotgun which he is pumping.
Nobody reacts quickly to the situation. I hear the first shot fired and my position moves from observation to action. I swoop into the body of the young male in that happy couple, the man with the raincoat. And I feel the shotgun blast hitting me from just a few feet away.
Perhaps it is the extraordinary surprise of being thrown into the action so suddenly, but I seem to feel the huge force of the explosion, the heat and the pain (at least some of it).
Slammed hard into my chest, I am physically moved by the blast and I see the ceiling of the lobby thrown into view.
Time passes now in slow motion, I think it has done ever since the first shot was fired.
I’m soaring on a cushion of air and I am aware of the woman who accompanies me (she is my young wife) and can tell that her mouth is hanging open, in anticipation of the fall.
Confusion reigns, for her. Which noise, which impact came first?
As my head crashes headlong into the clean marble floor, my point of view switches to the night-porter and I am feeling the blast smashing into my chest yet again.
In all I am shot three times. The animosity then fades as darkness seduces.”