The Coupon

This has been inspired by a friend who got a coupon in a dream.

Faustus, standing next to a friend, looks down to what he is holding. "Which reminds me, I had this dream last night," Faustus said, while placing it on the conveyor belt.

"That reminded you of a dream?" she asks while tilting her head to it.

"Yeah," he responds. "It was quite a peculiar one."

"Tell me about it," she says, as the conveyor belt starts moving the item towards the cashier.

"I was at the mall, waiting for you. At one point I see two people in the distance. They were slowly walking, giving people something. I couldn't see what it was, but it looked small. Most people weren't paying much attention to them, but some took whatever it was they were handing out."

The item on the conveyor belt is half way between Faustus and the cashier.

"When they got near me, I tried to see what they were holding. One of them must've seen me looking at it, because she reached out her hand that was holding one of them. Smiling, I take it and thank her."

"That's not that peculiar. Random, sure. But peculiar?" the friend asks.

"The peculiar part is what came next," Faustus said. "I looked down at what they gave me. I was able to see it was a piece of paper of some sort, but I couldn't read it."

She has a puzzled look on her face. "Why not?"

The item on the conveyor belt moves closer to the cashier.

"It was blurry. I could make out that the top left corner had what looked like some sort of logo. The person who gave it to me told me that they hoped I would enjoy the product if I decided to use the coupon to buy one. And when I looked up to see both of them, I didn't get to see their faces, nor if they were wearing something with the logo of the product that was on the coupon."

"Were they blurry, too?" his friend asked.

"No. Well, I wasn't able to see them in time to see if they were blurry or not. There were a lot of people around, and it so happened that as I looked at them, the crowd got in the way."

"It's like it was a product placement, but the dream didn't want you to know what it was," Faustus' friend replies. "Was everything else in the dream blurry as well?"

"Only the coupon."

The conveyor belt comes to a stop, with the item next to the cash register. Through the corner of Faustus' eyes, he sees the cashier facing him, and greeted Faustus with a friendly tone while picking up the item and scanning it. "It will be five dollars and seventy five cents."

"I have cash," Faustus says while pulling out his wallet. Knowing that there are two five dollar bills in it, he pulls them out and hands them to the cashier.

Turning to his friend, he says "I don't know. That dream felt off. I really wanted to know what the coupon was for."

"Oh hey, you have the coupon in here!" the cashier exclaims, seeing the coupon in between the two bills.

Without thinking, Faustus tells the cashier that he would like to use it.

Looking up to the ceiling, Faustus tries to remember when he got that coupon.

The cashier scans it, puts the two fives in the cash drawer, and gives Faustus the change.

"Thank you," Faustus said, taking the change.

With the change in his wallet, he thinks back to the cashier bringing up the coupon. She didn't say that there was a coupon. She said there was THE coupon. She scanned it immediately. While he didn't look at her to see if she read it, he knew that the time between her comment and scanning it was too fast for her to have enough time to read it and check the expiration date.

He looks at the cash drawer. It's still open. He looks to see if he can find the coupon.

It's there. He can see it. It's blurry. He can't read the text, nor the logo in the top left corner.

"You okay?" his friend asks.

Once Faustus processed his friend's question, he realized how confused he feels. It must be visible for her to ask him that. "The coupon. It was blurry. Just like in my dream."

In the corner of his eye, he notices that the cashier is walking away. Realizing he didn't look at her face while they were talking, he looks towards her. He is able to see that she has started walking away with someone. He isn't able to see them because they got lost in the crowd.

He takes a moment. Thinking back to today's events: seeing the blurry coupon, not seeing how the cashier looks like. Is he dreaming again?

What's with the coupon? Why is he having a dream of something that is blurred out so that he can't read it? And thinking back to when he looked at the item in his hand before putting it on the conveyor belt, why doesn’t he remember what he was holding?

And who is he with? He knows that he's with a friend, but who? And why didn't he look at her to see who she is while in line to pay for the thing he doesn't know he was going to get?

He is completely immersed with thinking of all this that he doesn't notice another worker walking and stopping in front of the cash register.

Faustus starts to turn his head to his friend when the worker closes the cash drawer.

The sound of the cash drawer coincides with Faustus' alarm ringing, waking him up.