Dolphin skinned ducks

I just rose from a dream. My head is still thick with a dispute with my landlord, who in real life is a difficult friend. I was a student and we had a quarter to quarter lease, I was having trouble coming up with my rent for the quarter and explained to him that by the end of the week he would be paid. I went out with friends and returned after a few hours to find that my room looked completely different, devoid of signs I'd ever lived there and was rented to someone else. I had come in out of a downpour and headed straight there to remove my drenched clothes, the new tenant had to lend me somethings to put on before I could go downstairs to confront him.

He had a flat beneath us, the wooden stairs that led from my room ended in a small space which was enclosed by a wall 5 feet in front of me, to the right a passage with a frosted glass paned window looking out onto the street, and to the left was his door. As I came to the end of the staircase I saw him sitting beneath the window on a nest of rugs and pillows with my longtime friend, who was apparently now dating him and had helped him to get rid of my stuff. I thought of my friend "Oh it's just like you to be that opportunistic" but instead addressed him.
"Where is my stuff?!" "How can you do that? Did you throw them away?"
He hesitated just to be difficult, then said slowly uninterested in my pique, "Where is my rent? You promised me I would have it on Tuesday"
"I told you you'd have it this week, how can you do something like that without letting me know?" "I'm not paying you now! Clearly I can't pay you rent for someplace I can't live. Please use my deposit, take what I owe you up to today and let me have the rest back."
"Fine." he said.
I turned to my friend who'd found the walls and whatever activity she should see on the street through the frosted panes riveting and said "You know that's not right, how could you let him do this?"

The dream is a little muddled after that, I learned where my stuff was but could not access it, I tried to steal towels from him to make up for the money he was holding for me, and followed him around to try and steal my money from his wallet. An old family friend, a man I often wished had been my dad came to speak with him about giving me my money back. Our apartment was adjoining a mall, and as we crossed the pathway to the mall to look for him we end up going in circles which lead us to a deeply sloped canal of moss green water that eased silkily between the walls and disappeared under a square tunnel.

There was a competition of two teams sliding down the canal, and we jumped in on the team against him. I slide down a narrowing lip that emerges from the right wall of the canal. I am afraid I might crash into the wall, but I am ok as the lip narrows to deposit me into the larger body of water, then reunites with the wall. We emerge from the canal on the street in front of our building. We have not found him, and somehow I am alone again. I feel as though I have found something of value of his to hold on to and now he is willing to negotiate.

He says, "Ok. You can have your money, how much do you think you should get back. I said "You'd said $40", I was optimistic though I thought he might only owe me $20. He looked at me as though he knew something I didn't. "Add the days of the quarter that have passed and let me know if I really owe you $40." I do the math and realise he owes me nothing.

We were sitting on the stoop capitulating and we looked up to see a glistening flock of mammoth ducks. Someone remarked "it looks like they just came out of the water". Hundreds of feet into the sky, they were featherless with thick skin drawn tight like a dolphins and so large we could see the coat of water that shimmered on their gun metal grey skin. As they powered in flight above us, we could feel feel the weight of them shift the air, and see the compacted muscles flex beneath heir glistening skin. Their back ends starting behind their wings were formed by whorls of skin folding around and around like a danish to form the shape of a turtles head. Their flight seemed to be held back by the brilliance of the sky, and looking up, the whole thing seemed framed in slow motion.