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    lucyoncolorado

    Fifty-Two

    by , 01-06-2012 at 06:13 PM (575 Views)
    Epic, exhausting and vivid dream last night. Took me half an hour to type it up!

    In which we flee a tornado and lose ourselves in a neighbor's house...


    We were on a family vacation in a forest. A path led from our cabin to a clearing where there were tennis courts and a soccer field that had been converted into my real life garden. I was inspecting my new irrigation system and talking to my Aunt C about my brother. She was complaining about how he still lived with our grandmother and had never moved out on his own and I was defending him. I was telling her how much he works, how much money he is making these days, and how my grandmother enjoys having him around. She’d decided that it would be better for him if he took an opportunity to work with a builder who was constructing her new house. She kept talking about how much better it would pay and how stupid my brother was for refusing her offer. I told her that he was thinking long term. His current job would continue to give him opportunities beyond the time it takes for her to build a house, and besides, he does not work in construction. I tried to explain how much more potential for future growth there is for a young man who is a foreman’s helper than one who nails shingles into a roof. It became obvious that she was convinced she was right and would not consider the situation from any point of view than her own so it became futile to argue with her. She was more interested in building her house than in my brother’s future. I passively agreed that I would talk to my brother about her suggestion, then headed back up the path to our cabin.

    On the way, I looked out at the sky and noticed a band of blue sky layered upon the grass above which there were elaborate and colorful cloud formations. They swirled around near the ground, then came together in an expanse that billowed far up into the sky. I was transfixed and awed at first, but then I snapped out of it and realized they were about to form a giant tornado. I shouted for everyone to take cover, and I started to run back to the cabin, calling for R. At the edge of the wood, I glanced back at the sky one more time. The clouds had all combined to create a wall of bright white that spiraled together around a thick, central tunnel of blue. I could look down through the tunnel, as if I were hovering above a hurricane and looking directly down into the eye. Sunlight shone through the other side. I turned back towards the woods, which had grown thick and dark, and ran inside the trees.

    All was suddenly quiet and dark. The panic had subsided and there were no fleeing people in sight. I shouted for R once again and he came running from the cabin.

    “Where is everyone?” I shouted.
    “They’ve all taken cover.” He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me faster than my legs could carry me.
    “The dogs?” I asked.

    We started shouting for the dogs to come. I could not raise my voice above speaking. I tried to whistle and failed. By now, the winds had started blowing hard and it was noisy again. I couldn’t speak loudly enough for anyone to hear me. I called for Lucy and Mott, but I knew they couldn’t hear. I kept telling R to call for them and whistle, but he simply dragged me to the porch and then darted back out into the woods. I tried to yell out at him because I could not understand where he was going and why he wasn’t helping me find the dogs.

    The wind was blowing so hard by now that leaves, dust and debris flew around so thickly in front of the cabin that I could not see the trees. I was safe standing on the porch, but I knew that if I stepped off it, I would be blown away. I saw Lucy out in the yard but still could not call her. Instead, I acted like I had a treat in my hand and she came to me. I grabbed her by the collar and pulled her onto the porch. I was going to lock her in the cabin and continue to look for Mott but then I saw Nac sniffing around in the dirt just below the porch. For a second, I considered leaving her behind. Nac is a young puppy and I haven’t spent enough time with her to be fond of her. I didn’t want to risk Lucy’s safety to rescue Nac. I held tight to Lucy’s collar and tried again, pathetically, to call for Nac. She could not hear me. The storm was picking up and I wanted to get Lucy inside. Keeping one hand on Lucy, I tried to reach from the patio as far as I could to grab Nac, but the puppy thought it was a game and remained elusive. To reach her, I’d need my other hand free to hold on to the railing of the patio and use the other one to stretch out as far as I could to grab Nac. Again, I almost deserted the puppy but then I thought of how devastated my mother would be to hear that she had lost both Mott and Nac. I let go of Lucy and told her to sit and stay, then as quickly as I could, I stretched out and grabbed Nac. As soon as I got Nac back on the patio, Lucy jumped off it and ran out into the storm. Defeated, I sat back down on the patio and cried, holding the wiggly ungrateful puppy in my lap.

    I felt so alone and frightened that the emotions were unbearable and my brain switched into survival mode by searching for a way out of the stress. I realized that nothing would happen to Lucy because nothing ever happens to Lucy in my dreams. I did not become lucid and the circumstances of the storm were still real enough, but I recognized on some level that Lucy was not really lost. As soon as I thought this, I saw R running back towards the cabin. He had my step-sister’s children, T and D, with him- one tucked under each arm as if they were footballs. Lucy and Trig ran behind him. I was astonished that the boys had been left out in the woods, but the tornado was at their heels by then and there was no time to discuss it. I rushed the boys into the house with the three dogs and pleaded with R to call for Mott one more time. I felt empowered by the new understanding that somehow nothing bad would really happen, so I was sure that if he called for her, she would come. To my horror, she did not. We shut the cabin door and left her out in the woods to face the tornado alone.

    I wanted to cry again, but the children were here now. They were scared and needed us to be strong. I couldn’t remember how one is supposed to take shelter during a tornado in a house without a storm cellar, but I recommended that we make the boys lie down in the bathtub or else curl up in the closet. R and I started down the hall of the cabin to look for these places, but then from the window we saw the massive tornado, a swirling wall of wind and debris, coming toward us. There was no time to find a closet or a tub, so we stripped the cushions off the couch, made the boys lie on it, and then we covered them with the cushions. R and I sat on the floor beside the couch and watched the tornado from the window. It roared right past us, only a few feet from the window, devouring the trees and cabins in its path. At one point, I saw the four legs of an animal sticking up in the air and spinning around in the twister. Because the legs were white, I cried out that it must be Mott, but then when the animal circled around again I was relieved to see that it was a cow. When it was finally clear, we saw that the cabin that had been nextdoor to us had completely vanished. No closet or bathtub could have provided adequate shelter, and the cushions piled upon my step-nephews seemed ridiculously inadequate. We were alive by chance alone.

    We stepped out onto the patio again to have a look around. Everything to the right of us was destroyed; there was just a barren patch of dirt covered with nothing but fallen trees and limbs. To the left, the woods and cabins were exactly as they had been. We were eager to run out and see who had survived and who needed help, but in the distance we saw my neighbor J step out of her house and wave at us, urgently. She was pointing back up in the sky, and we saw that a second tornado was coming. She beckoned us over to her house, and we saw that dozens of people were running to her home to take cover. We gathered up the kids and dogs and joined the mass. By now, the second tornado was closing in. The moment we took refuge at J’s patio, we saw the new tornado consume the cabin we had just fled.

    J was in cheery spirits and offered us some tea. People wandered about her house stunned but calm. I searched their faces and did not recognize any of them. I was concerned about my family and wanted to know if everyone had indeed taken shelter as R had said. But J did not seem bothered by it. She explained that her house was a safe haven which no forces of nature could destroy. This seemed impossible to me, and I worried that the next tornado might take us all down. I wanted to move on and get out of the woods, but J insisted that I come into her living room and sit on her couch and have some tea. She was all smiles and her face was bright.

    J’s living room was neat but cluttered and dark. She had decorated it in the style of frumpy but content housewives. The walls were covered with dark faux wood paneling with inset bookshelves on which myriad knick-knacks sat instead of books. The room was carpeted, and there were more carpets spread out on top. Scattered about the room were ornate coffee tables and end tables with low lamps glowing dimly beneath dark shades. Magazines, potpourri dishes, candles and fake flowers in large vases filled the room. The floral patterned couches were thickly cushioned, and it was into one of these that I sank at J’s insistence. The house appeared to carry on, one room connected to another in a maze, and I’d lost track of R, the children and the dogs. I was concerned about them, but J and the strangers in the room assured me with their friendly faces that there was nothing to worry about.

    J is a musician, so it seemed appropriate that a grand piano sat in the room. I was not at all alarmed to see myself as a young girl playing Jingle Bells, poorly.

    “This is just like the piano that I played at the Butler’s house the day my mother hurried us over there so that she could rush my father off to the emergency room when he cut off his thumb off with a table saw,” I explained to the others in the room. They all smiled, and we had our tea.
    maboroshi likes this.

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    Updated 01-06-2012 at 06:25 PM by 38879

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    1. maboroshi's Avatar
      That's a really incredible dream.