The Familiar Strangers

I made my way through the gathering crowd of people ready to watch the theatre performance I had bought tickets for months in advance. Navigating the growing crowd, I regretted not arriving sooner. 

The seat I managed to find was a little further from the stage than I want to sit but still provided a satisfying view. 

With just five minutes before the performance began, I reached into the bag of popcorn I got from the concession stand and let my eyes wander around the room. 

Seats were full from all sides and the last few people were just finding a seat. 

This was going to be an epic performance!

My wandering eyes shifted to the stage as a person came out on stage interrupting my thoughts.

"We'd like to thank everyone for coming out to see our performance! We hope you enjoy!"

Just when I was about to ease back into my seat to watch the performance begin, my eyes shifted curiously to the row of people sitting in front of me.

That was odd. They looked familiar. Like I knew them from somewhere.

Names and faces of every random person I knew ran across my mind. Family. Friends. Acquaintances.  

I shook my head. It would be a perfectly satisfying and rational explanation except for one thing. I was a hundred miles from home and this was the first time I had ever been to this city.

The odds of running into someone I knew seeing this same play in a town a hundred miles away was highly unlikely. 

Running into several and the odds of them sitting directly in front of me? Astronomical. 

I managed to shake off the odd observance and focused my attention on the play just when the performance broke into its first song.

I reached for more popcorn. It was probably just a case of mistaken identity. I'd only seen the backs of their heads after all.

About twenty minutes into the performance, the thought of how familiar those strangers looked nagged at me even more.

When one turned to whisper something to the other next to them, my attention locked on them immediately and for a fleeting second, I temporarily forgot all about the performance.

Seeing a glance of their faces only satisfied my growing suspicions. 

I knew them! They looked as familiar as the next door neighbor or the fellow regular customer at the grocery store I frequented once a week!

But that was impossible! There was no way I could know them. 

I forced my attention away from the people in front of me and back to the performance. 

I didn't think about the strangely familiar people that sat in front of me until much later that night after I had traveled back home and was in the comfort of my bed. 

Despite the eventful day and the bizarre circumstance that occurred, I managed to drift off to sleep with relative ease. 

Moments later, my eyes shot open from a startling dream. A tired, hazy glance at the clock indicated that it was only a little after midnight. Had I only been asleep for a few minutes? It felt like hours.

I grasped hold of the remnants of my dream feeling the memory already fading. One thing about it, however, had not faded.

The people.

Their faces were as clear as anything. 

Flashbacks of the people that sat in front of me as I watched a performance a hundred miles away intruded my mind causing me to sit up abruptly.

Now I knew why they looked so familiar! 

They were the same people from a dream. 

I've had this dream before!