lucyoncolorado

In which I'm a social worker with a case load that includes two teenage runaways, one of which is a savant...

I'm a jaded, middle aged social worker- overworked, overweight, male. My case load includes a girl who has lived between the streets and the foster system most of her life. She is coming of age this week, and many of her services will end. I'm meeting with her to explain about how she needs a job and regular rent. She's vulgar, stupid and stoned. I think she's a waste.

She has a new room-mate, a girl about her age who has always lived on the street until now. Between the two, they can afford the rent if they both work. I help them get a job at a restaurant.

About a month later, I do a follow-up visit to the restaurant. There has been an accident and the room-mate has lost her hearing and her voice. She is now deaf-mute. My case continues to be vulgar, stupid and stoned. The boss tells me that she's a lazy worker and likes to start drama with other workers, but that she keeps her on because her room-mate is such a gem. I ask how the room-mate can wait tables when she is deaf-mute. The boss explains that she does the horse tricks show down in the beer garden. My stomach sinks, and I think of the donkey shows in Juarez. But I agree to have a look.

The beer garden is set up like a horse agility competition, and my case's room-mate is dressed like a jockey. She and the horse leap over obstacles and trot over bridges. It's clear they are well-bonded to one another. I'm impressed. After the show, I ask the girl how she learned to do these tricks. Then I remember she is deaf-mute. The girl waves over the boss. They begin to communicate in sign-language. I ask my questions about her equestrian skills, and she answers that she just picked it all up this last month that she's been working at the restaurant. Likewise, she's only just learned sign-language in that time as well. I find this amazing and realize she must be some sort of a savant.

I ask her what she wants to do with her life, and she answers that she'd like to attend some proper horse training school. I tell her I'll help arrange resources to fund her tuition.

In which the horse riding savant climbs a beanstalk and falls to her death, and I have panic attacks...

It's time for winter holiday, but our deaf-mute equestrian savant won't be leaving horse-school campus as she's a runaway street kid with no home to go to. The school madam leaves her with the keys to the stable and the dorms, and she is left all alone while everyone else leaves.

I'm not present, but I'm inexplicably watching her as if she were in a movie. I see from the middle of the stable field. The doors to the stable open and the girl comes out, again dressed like a jockey. There is a small covered patio off the stable gates that steps down onto the field. The girl pauses on the patio to look down at a ceramic pot. Suddenly, a cartoonish green and yellow beanstalk rises from the pot, upwards straight towards the sky. From my nowhere vantage point, I feel myself screaming inside for her to stop and leave it alone. But of course, I'm not there and can do nothing but watch the events unfold.

The girl sets down her jockey's whip and grabs hold of the stalk which has now stretched itself up far above the stables and disappeared into the clouds. Gripping the stalk above her head, she finds a firm foothold for her first rise, and then slowly and methodically follows for two or three more steps. She's forced to angle the tips of her shoes into the tiny holds made by the stalk buds, and it's obvious to me that she'll never make it.

Once she's climbed to a level just above the stable roof, she missteps and falls to the patio ground. The beanstalk vanishes and the ceramic pot is once again empty. The girl's body is a twisted mess, and she can't shout for help. She lies on the ground, paralyzed with mangled limbs, and stares up at the underside of the patio roof. I know it will be two weeks before anyone returns to campus.

Her eyes move about, so I know she is aware of her fate. When the dehydration starts to set in, four small cartoonish looking angels appear in a row just below the roof. She fixes her line of vision on them. They taunt her and laugh. They tease one another and wave wands that do nothing at all. They fly around above her head in swirls laughing and poking and annoying her as she struggles to breath and feels her blood desiccate. Then her heart explodes, she dies and the angels all vanish, just like the beanstalk. There is nothing left now except a twisted, bloating corpse.

I'm me now, no longer a middle aged man, but still a social worker. I sit in a cubicle under soul-crushing florescent lights and stare at a computer screen. I check the date and realize that the school madam would be coming back to campus and would soon discover the body. I wait until just before noon to give her enough time to walk out to the stables, and then I phone her.

I make a nonchalant query about her holiday. I don't want her to know why I'm calling because I'd have to explain how I knew the death had happened when I don't understand myself. No one would understand that I could know about it and see it and not be able to do anything about it. I'm helpless.

The school madam explains that K has died. That's not right, I think. It's not K.

But the school madam says it is. I don't feel grief or horror or surprise or much of anything. I just think to myself, no that's not right. That isn't what happened. But I can't argue about it because I'd have to explain that I saw the deaf-mute jockey girl die. Then I realize that this doesn't make sense either. How could I have watched her die? Why didn't I do anything to stop her? It's very distressing, and I start to panic. I'm heaving and gasping for air in the cubicle, and I need to get off the phone.

I ask the madam when the funeral is. She tells me, and I pencil it on my calendar. It's K's funeral. I stare at what I wrote and think that my two best friends are now dead. K's dead body is in the stables and H is on the couch, and they are paralyzed and they know they are dying and I feel like I should've stopped it and I can't explain why I didn't. And I panic and gasp for air again.

The gasping wakes me up. I walk into the kitchen and look at the picture of me, K and H on my fridge. I think to myself, damn, my two best friends are dead. Why didn't I stop it? Then confusion again, and I realize I'm still dreaming. It's not right. K's not dead, I think to myself. But H is, and I can't wake up out of that.

In which I'm a teen runaway in a boarding school that is attacked by a storm of flying cedars trees...

I'm an underage runaway gal who has been arrested on the streets and brought to live in a locked-down boarding school for wayward teens. The building's main entry is a security gate with xray machines, only accessible by employees, that leads to an imposing and high front desk like one you might expect in a hospital waiting room. Behind the desk is a narrow hall of half a dozen small classrooms. To the right of this main corridor is a pair of locked glass doors leading to dorm facilities where we sleep in rows of white sheet beds without privacy. To the left is a similar pair of doors, unlocked this time, leading out to a concrete courtyard called The Exercise Grounds, surrounded by a tall iron bar fence.

After a morning of math and reading classes, we have our lunch in The Exercise Grounds, after which we are supposed to continue on to "specials", dull art appreciation classes back inside the building under depressing, buzzing tube lights. Today, however, the courtyard monitor is distracted, and no one tells us to go inside at the correct time. I look at the clock and begin to ask if we are on schedule, but other teenagers immediately shush me and I realize how stupid I can be. We enjoy several more minutes out in the sunshine and fresh air when the sky starts to look dreary and dark, and a strong cool wind starts to blow indicating an in-coming storm. This gets the monitor's attention, and she starts to tell us to head back inside, but at this point the other residents are starting to run around madly and they do not listen to her. The start running circles around the courtyard, kicking up the fence and knocking hats off one another's heads while hooting and flapping their arms. "Hoodlums," the monitor says dryly and then looks at the sky which is growing darker.

Then small eastern red cedars start to fly in with the storm. They are only about four feet tall, and at first they levitate in slowly and in an upright position. They look as if they've been cut off at the trunk, just before it meets the ground. They pass through The Exercise Grounds in this way, gliding over the fence and hovering over the concrete for a few minutes before continuing on above the roof of the building. We are stunned and do nothing but stare at first.

The monitor then comes to her senses and yells at everyone to come inside immediately. The pair of doors opens up from the main corridor into The Exercise Grounds, so they provide an obstacle to the mad rush of scared teenagers who bottleneck trying to get back inside. Meanwhile, the sky has become very dark and the strong wind is now full of debris; through the iron bars of the fence, I can see a billowing black mass on the horizon, growing larger. I'm reminded of old photographs of the dust bowl.

The cedars are flying faster now, still upright. They swarm in and sail past us, just above our heads, and sometimes the bottom of their trunks smash into the side of the building we are fighting one another to enter. For a moment, I think I will panic, but then I look over at my friend, Rupert Graves, who is smiling calmly and taking pictures of the trees. He looks up from his camera at me and says, "Incredible!"

I'm instantly calmed, and I make my way through the crowd back out into the storm winds towards him. He's sitting on the concrete now, aiming his camera up at the trees. It really is amazing. For a moment, I wonder how this is possible and why it is happening. Something seems just not quite right...

But then the trees turn on their sides. Now the tip of their canopy is pointed towards us menacingly. This improvement in their aerodynamics allows them to fly faster, and they shoot towards us like missiles. I'm starting to become afraid again, but Rupert Graves is still on the ground, his camera pointed up at the cedar projectiles, laughing maniacally and snapping pictures. The tips of the cedars penetrate the side of the building like arrows; their trunks stick out like shafts. It's a surreal sight, and while I appreciate the absurdity of the scenery, I start to worry that they are whooshing just barely above our heads at a dangerous speeds. We are ducked down on the ground, and if we stood up, we'd surely be decapitated. I urge Rupert Graves to come inside.

The rest of the wayward teens have already made it to safety, and now only the monitor stands at the door. She is holding it open and screaming for us to come in. We can see alarmed adults at the main desk, all shouting at us to stop our foolishness. I grab Rupert Graves by the shoulder and pull him along; he never stops laughing.

In the main corridor now, it is business as usual. The adults behind the desk start to pass out plastic bins full of our bedding and pajamas. They bark orders at us to stand in line, keep quiet, control our limbs. We are to get ready for bed. Rupert Graves is in line just in front of me, grinning cooly, amused and fiddling with his camera. It's an old school 35mm and he has used up all the exposures so he is cranking up the film. He keeps repeating how incredible it is.

When it's his turn to receive his bin, he takes it sluggishly without looking up at the adult who hands it to him. He's too distracted with his camera. She chastises him for his indolence. Then she turns to me and asks why I'm just standing there. I answer that I don't have to stay the night there as I only purchased three nights and could now return to the streets. She laughs that it doesn't work like that, and she hands me a feather pillow.

Some other dreams I've had in the ten months since H died...

1. H laughing at us. I asked her why. She said we were all stuck in traffic. Nonsense dream; I’m sure I was worrying if J would make it home OK since I didn’t get him up on time, but the smile and big sunglasses and laugh were so real.

2. Next H red and bloated like she was at the viewing but laid out on a piece of ice- how it is done in India. The ice cracked when I walked into the room.

3. I was washing dishes and washed the red goblet I took from her apartment and noticed it was cracked all the way around so I had to throw it away.

4. Dreamed that it was all a huge misunderstanding. I don’t remember the logic or much about the dream except that at one point K and I were in a room with H. Everyone shocked and surprised to see her. H walked with some people in front of us into another room and I turned to K to smile and exchange a look of “how awesome is this”- sort of punching the air with our fists.

5. Usually something shakes me awake right as I fall into sleep. Some sound or thought and I’m up in a panic. H’s voice calling “her daughter's name” as clear as if she were right next to me.

6. H was brought back to life but also put under arrest for suicide. We were allowed to visit her one by one in a small room where she sat in a chair to receive us. B went in first. Then it was my turn. I tried to tell her I was sorry I took her for granted, sorry I wasn’t there, wanted nothing but to help. She was smiling, but fake. She was cold and fake and superficial, almost cruel. And it didn’t look like her. I was suspicious that it was not really her. Still, I hugged her anyway and told her I loved her. She took it like a stranger, smiling fake. In the hall again, I found B and asked her what she thought. B said she thought she’d suffered brain damage- body here but different person altogether. So either way, she’s gone.

7. I was sitting on the toilet taking a dump when suddenly I delivered a baby. I caught it right before it hit the tile so that it didn’t bust open its head. I took it immediately to the hospital because it didn’t cry. It had blue eyes. I told the doc I couldn’t really have had a child. He argued with me that it had, in fact, happened. I outlined my points. First, I was never pregnant. Second, there was no placenta. Third, there was no umbilical cord. Doc just shrugged; it happens sometimes. Frustration and confusion. I call K to tell her what happened. She tells me that H has not been cremated yet and is still on ice. For a moment, I think that's not possible. I start naming reasons it can't be true. I realize the only explanation is that I'm dreaming. Which is a relief because it means H isn't dead. But I wake up and she is.

8. I'm in a classroom and H is at the desk. It is in the past. I tell H that she is going to kill herself. I told her so, and it was hard to tell her, and she took it decently well enough- didn’t seem as surprised as you’d expect. I tell her she's already dead where I'm from and she doesn't understand how much I miss her and how desperate I am to talk to her about it. She doesn't have any answers; she doesn't take it seriously and she just laughs. I give her a hug and she laughs and laughs. It's like having my guts ripped out.

9. We are at her house. It's the past again. She's online looking something up on Pinterest. I was trying to hide her online obituary from her, but when she wanted to know why I kept taking over the computer, I just told her that she was going to die, and she just accepted it. Not me, but for her. I tried to grab her by the shoulders and make her look at me and fight it. I told her if I could just get her to fight it or really think about it then it would change but she just accepted it and her eyes were dead already.

10. We are at the dive bar on the bay in my home town where we used to hang in high school. I was with R, K, L, C, B and H was with me. She was dead. She knew it. We all knew it. I told her that it was cool to dream of her dead and normal because usually in my dreams she's a zombie or she's not dead yet or she's just out of reach somehow. She looked at me in that annoyed with love way that says I'm being foolish and she is just tolerating me. Then she laughed. Strange how live and real her voice and her laugh were. She told me she visits people in dreams all the time and that she has visited my dreams a number of times and that if I'm having nightmares, it's me and my issues and not her ghost. I have mixed feelings about that, and I started to argue with her, but instead I decided to try to be open and sincere and embrace the moment for what it was and I tried to tell her what she means and how sorry I am for taking her for granted. There was real love and vulnerability- I felt blown apart. We had this chat in a car (whose?) with H in a front passenger seat and me in the back behind her- she was turned around to look at me and she looked fresh, healthy and happy. I kept telling her how weird it was that she is dead, and for a moment it scared me and I started to fear that surge of passion and panic a bit and think about that really awful evil energy from the night she died but she didn't turn into a zombie and just looked at me annoyed about my change again and I checked myself and tried really hard to be brave and open and trust. That was the meat of the dream, but also there was some silliness. Earlier (before we got in the car), we'd all been thrown out of the bar for getting into a wonderful brawl and someone had punched out H's car window. Or maybe she had punched it out herself- I can't remember. It was all lively and ridiculous and we kept laughing.

In which I have a dream within a dream...

I'm sitting in the dining room of my childhood home. Mom is in the kitchen. I ask what's for dinner. She says I'll have to get one of my hens from my coop and bring it to her so she can chop its head off, clean it, and cook it for dinner. I argue that we can eat without killing one of my hens, and anyway it would be really messy to do that.

I try to make an analogy, so we go upstairs to my bedroom. I say, “so you are telling me that if I want a pair of jeans, I have to open this drawer and take R out and you’ll cut his head off and take the jeans off him?”

She says, “yes, that's exactly right." I open the drawer, and R is inside like Flat Stanley, folded up like a towel. I pull him out of the drawer and grab him by the shoulders as if he were a sheet and pop him open in the air where he inflates back to a normal person. He's normal sized R, wearing nothing but my jeans which are too small for him, but he's sleeping.

Then Mom and I are back in the kitchen with R sleeping on the table. I feel violently angry so I get right up in mom's face and scream, “Do it! I dare you to do it! I want to see if you’ll do it!”

She has a big knife in one hand and a giant grape in another. She bites the grape in half and then shoves the other half into my mouth, saying, “This grape tastes just like Smuckers Grape Jelly!”

The grape grows in my mouth until I can’t talk anymore. Mom is still laughing, knife in hand. I can't talk or scream.

All of a sudden, I hear the opening guitar licks of Ziggy Stardust, and I say to my mother, “K's calling- that's the ring tone I've set for her. I’m asleep”.

Everything in the dream pauses like it's a movie. I walk past my frozen mother and sleeping R, and I look out the back door. Our house is now up in the sky- there are only clouds beyond the patio. I step to the edge of the patio and look down to see myself sleeping in my adult bed in my adult house with my cell phone ringing Ziggy Stardust next to me. I try hard to will myself to move and wake up, but I don't move.

So, back up in the dream kitchen, I grab an Alphorn (one of those long Swiss pipe instruments that are curved up at the end) and I stick it out the door of the dream kitchen, across the patio, through the clouds until it stretches down down down into the my adult bedroom where its curved end rests next to my phone, right beside my sleeping body.

“Hello? K?” I shout into Alphorn, and this somehow enables me to answer the phone and we are able to talk. K tells me it is a bad connection and that she can barely hear me, and I explain that this is because I’m answering the phone from inside a dream. Then she explains why she called.

Apparently I had “liked” on Facebook a certain picture of her son EC that was taken over a year ago at her aunt's house. The problem with this is that she had lied to everyone in her family about having visited the aunt, and somehow my liking the picture made it visible and exposed the secret. So she wanted me to log on and comment on the picture something that indicated that I had actually taken EC over to aunt's house that day, not her.

I agree to do this from inside my dream, and I log onto Facebook but I can’t find the picture in question. Then K explains it was on a special Groups page on Facebook, not on one of our profiles, and that the group was a merged page of mine, hers and H’s. We had created this page that night we all three talked on the phone last year because (in dream logic) having a group Facebook page is the only way to have a three-way conversation. In the dream, it doesn’t occur to me that H is dead.

I find the picture of EC, but I can’t make a comment without first entering a password. K tells me that the password is The United States of (her name), and I tell her that's a stupid joke. She answers that she was stoned when she came up with it. I respond that I'm on Benadryl because of my allergies and that this is why I'm probably having such a weird dream.

Suddenly I'm holding that big empty plastic bottle of Benadryl from H’s house, and this scared the shit out of me and woke me up for real.

In which my backyard is full of snakes...

It's early morning. I step out my back door and notice a giant red and yellow striped snake slithering around near my wood pile. I run back inside for my camera and snap a picture. I stare at the snake to try to identify it, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before.

As I'm studying the snake, I hear E scream from across the fence. I run over to see what's the matter, and I nearly trip over a huge rat snake along the way. I don't want the red and yellow snake (whatever it is) to kill the rat snake since I like to attract rat snakes to my property. So I bend down and pick the rat snake up and carry it with me over to the fence to see what E is screaming about.

When I get there, I see that E is standing on top of a picnic table. There is an impossibly large cotton mouth wrapped around the table's legs. It is at least 30 feet long, and it surrounds the entirety of the table. Its head is raised up in striking position, and E is standing very still hoping it will not strike her. I see her dilemma, and I run back to my shed to get my shot gun. I rest the barrel of the shotgun on the fence and aim at the cotton mouth; I still have the rat snake in my left hand. I pump the shot gun, but the cotton mouth recognizes the sound and it unwinds itself and hurries off out of E's yard and into the field behind our houses.

E comes down from the table and walks over to the fence. I tell her about the unidentified red and yellow snake. She says it is probably a coral snake. I reply that it's far to big for that, that there is no black on it, and anyway, its stripes are longitudinal - head to tail stripes- not rings. She then starts to laugh at me for saying longitudinal. I think about it for a second to see if I've mixed up the word, but no I'm talking about longitude and not latitude. I tell her this, and she laughs at me even more. She says that I mean horizontal, not longitudinal, because we are talking about a snake- not the planet.

Then E asks what I'm holding in my hand. I say that it's a rat snake and that I want to place it in my garden behind the shed so that it will eat mice. But she just laughs again and says that it's not a snake at all. She's laughing so hard there are tears running from her eyes and she can hardly breath.

I look at my left hand and see that she's right. I'm no longer holding a big rat snake. Instead, I'm holding a giant penis.