Pandora's Clamshell

[It's been a while since I've written a dream down, but this is just too weird not to.]

I was outside of Weyers Cave Elementary School near the gymnasium entrance.  It was pretty early in the morning, and it was chilly out with a tiny little bit of fog or haze.  Even though it was mostly light and the sky was bluish gray, the sun was not yet out, street lights were still on, and the stars were visible in the sky.

I was standing around and talking to a few people.  I was mostly chatting with kids who were either going into the school or older kids who were waiting on the buses to take them up to the middle school or high school.  Em, my wife, eventually showed up, as well as a few other adults, and we were all just standing around outside and talking in small groups of two or three.

While Em and I were talking, I thought I noticed a shooting star out of the corner of my eye.  I turned and looked at the sky and saw another, with another quickly following.  Then there were two or three at a time, and they just kept coming, picking up in frequency very quickly, and all moving downward, almost as if they were rain.  After about ten seconds, every star looked like a shooting star, and the lavender colored sky was full of nothing but white streaks.

Suddenly, an area of the sky off to the left emptied of all stars and shooting stars, and a giant red and orange cartoon image of a clam shell with angry cartoon eyes showed up in that empty area of sky.  The thing was so big that it was as if I were holding a letter size piece of paper at arm's length, yet I knew it was "in space."  While it looked around, the falling stars continued. 

Then, out of nowhere, what looked like a giant square wooden frame, like a rough picture frame, faded into existence around the angry clam shell.  Then from above and behind the top of the frame, a giant door swung over and around, slamming down on the rest of the frame in front of the clam shell.  Instead of a thunderous boom that I had expected, I heard what sounded more like a hollow "thunk".  The door flapped up and down several more times, giving out a hollow thunk each time it slammed down over the clam shell. 

Somehow we all understood this wooden frame and lid to be part of the clam shell's display of anger rather than something that was happening to the clam shell.  It terrified everyone, and at that point we all started to run. 

I ran off towards the left first, which was across the narrow road/parking lot that looped around the school.  There was a house across the street, and I was trying to hide on this side of it since the clam shell was in the sky on the other side of it.

Almost as soon as I got there, I forgot about the giant angry cartoon clam shell in the sky with it's display of angry box power, and I looked off to my right.  The main road that went in front of the school was there, and as I watched, several cars were coming down the road and driving by the school.  At first there was nothing unusual about this, but then I realized that none of the cars had drivers in them.

At first I wasn't sure that anyone was controlling the cars, but I came to realize that there were people that were mentally controlling these cars from somewhere else.  It was as if everyone was sitting at home and sending their cars out to run errands for them.

I thought to myself, "Well, if that's the case, then I bet I can use my own mental power to push the cars off the road."  I picked the next car that was coming down the road, which sometimes appeared black or gray and sometimes appeared red, and I focused on it.  As it got closer, I started mentally pushing it's wheel to turn it to the left, away from me, and into a fence or ditch across the street.  Sure enough, it worked!  I did it with three or four more cars, too, and at one point I wondered if any of the people controlling these cars would wonder what was going on with them, or if they would just notice that they didn't come back and not worry about it too much.

With one or two cars after that, I think I made them take off down the road really fast, but then right after that the dream ended.