Writing Challenge 2016 #26 - Ritual

NWC #26- "Ritual" Nov 27th at 8am

CHALLENGE: Start your play with some ritual. It is not what it seems!

Include water or sacrifice or flame. Is this about purification? About coming of age? About gaining status or membership?

Into what? from what?

Make this something only you could write.

(It'll have to be something only I can write when I'm back home in my solitary house.  A house full of family makes for extra challenging writing challenge time... at least I have plenty of interesting challenges to use after the holidays...For now, this is what surfaced...)

DREAM PANTS

                          1

So you know how I almost never remember my dreams?

                          2

You remembered a dream.

                          1

I remembered a dream.  Well, parts of a dream.  Maybe the whole dream.  It's hard to tell with dreams because they so rarely make logical sense or have transitions or -

                          2

But what do you remember of the dream?

                          1

Someone left their pants.

                          2

Is this a post-sex kind of dream?

                          1

No, sadly, this didn't have any post-coital sort of feel to it.  I simply returned to my apartment -

                          2

You were in your old apartment.

                          1

Yes, isn't it weird that I didn't dream about my house.  I've lived in the house now for almost two years.

                          2

But you lived in the apartment for over 20 years.  It was bound to be leftover in your brain.

                          1

I suppose it'll be rattling around in my subconscious for a long time.  I didn't realize it was my apartment really until I was thinking about the dream afterward and figured out the location.

                          2

So, your pants then?

                          1

No, I got the distinct feeling they were not my pants, that the pants were a mystery that needed solving.  Also the apartment was completely empty.

                          2

Except for the pants?

                          1

Except for the pants.  Not even anything on the windows.  Whole place completely stripped.

                          2

Except for the pants.

                          1

Except for the pants.

                          2

What kind of pants, jeans?

                          1

No, more slacks than pants, I guess.

                          2

Khakis?

                          1

Yeah.

                          2

Are you sure they weren't yours?

                          1

Yes.  It was a knit belt, a cloth belt.

                          2

These were pants from the 1980s?

                          1

I know, right?

                          2

So, someone had left their pants, and their belt?

                          1

And their wallet.

                          2

So you did find out whose pants they were?

                          1

You'd think so, wouldn't you?

                          2

No I.D.?

                          1

Too much I.D.

                          2

How can there be too much I.D.?

                          1

There were multiple cards, membership, credit, etc., oddly no actually picture I.D.  All these cards, different names.

                          2

Like a spy with a whole lot of different passports.

                          1

Kinda.

                          2

Well, that's just weird.

                          1

See, I thought the whole "abandoned pants" in my empty old apartment was weird enough.

                          2

So are you trying to find the man who fits these pants?

                          1

They are fictional pants.  They are dream pants.

                          2

They are pants from your subconscious.

                          1

Sometimes dream pants are just dream pants.

                          2

It's like that Billy Idol song, Eyes Without A Face.

                          1

Except these are pants without a face.

                          2

     (sings)

Pants Without A Face!

                          1

Actually it's pants without an entire body.

                          2

But it's a man's pants.  All those I.D.s?  Men's names, right?

                          1

Yeah.

                          2

You're searching for a man, among men.

                          1

A man who can fit in the dream pants?

                          2

Why else would you dream about pants, and unfashionable pants?  At least they weren't clown pants.  Or were they?

                          1

No, whoever fits in these pants is a trim fellow.

                          2

So the pants are a clue.  Come find me.  Reunite me with my pants.

                          1

Again, these are imaginary pants.  These are pants which don't exist.

                          2

But perhaps they are pants you've met before.  Pants that were lodged in your subconscious mind, waiting to reemerge.

                          1

Tied somehow to my old apartment.

                          2

As all past men would be.

                          1

The pants that got away?

                          2

You got a better theory?

                          1

Maybe I shouldn't have remembered this particular dream.

                          2

But you did.

                          1

I did.

                          2

So it's significant.

                          1

Somehow.

                          2

Yup.

                          1

A man without pants is waiting for me.

                          2

You can only hope.