The book of mars

Shared Dreaming

Halloween Party

Heather, Tyler and I live in my old house. It’s early morning, like three a.m. or so. Tyler and Heather decide to go outside for a walk and a little adventure. I am getting some layers on because it’s cold out but they’re already out the door. I yell at them and they don’t stop, so I have to run up to them to catch them.

We are walking around and it seems to be Halloween. There are kids everywhere and a stop sign has a plastic decorative ghost-stop sign decal taped over it. I want to make the O of it into an eyeball, so I take a permanent marker out of my pocket and “grow” tall enough to vandalize it quickly. I can’t “ungrow” so I’m tall for a long time. (Heather dreamed that there was a person that was very tall all throughout her dream).

We discuss which way to go and we think about downtown which in my dream-mind’s eye looked how it does when I dream of it, as if the area is semi-static on the dream plane.

There is no transition that I remember, though both of these fragments "feel" as if they are part of the same dream.

I am dumpster diving behind Tyler’s apartment with Marilyn Manson as a teenager. We go through one of the back doors of the restaurants that line the brick wall of dumpsters. On the other side is a big house party. I feel completely lost among Marilyn Manson fans and gothic kids. I walk around the place and the living room is Heather’s living room.

Heather is laying on her couch taking up two spaces; Adam is sitting on the third space. I go over and lay on Heather, so relieved to have her here when I thought I was alone. She gets red and starts getting up, pushing me off of her. She’s embarrassed to be with me in front of Adam.

I’m sick of that feeling so I walk into the kitchen and start eating cupcakes. Dylan, my ex-boyfriend is at the party. I decide to take revenge on Heather by telling him we can go out again. He is ecstatic, to a point where I am annoyed. It’s not worth it. The whole time I am at the party, he’s trying to say things to me to make me really love him again.

I take him outside, where it’s still dark out (though hours have seemed to pass).

“I can’t two-time Heather like that,” I say. I try to break up with him and it’s really difficult, only because I know that he will feel like shit after I do. I realize he’s in college and get weirded out for some reason, so it’s easier. I break up with him again and go back into the party.

It’s mostly over, as if I had been gone for a long time and it’s now morning. Almost everyone’s gone. Marilyn Manson is yelling at his mom, and I give her a sympathetic glance. I “know” that he used to be nice to her but started to be mean as his persona grew.

I walk over to the second living room (not Heather’s). There are giant seats that sink in a lot. I sit in one and find a gold key that Heather wears. Instantly, I know that Heather made out with Adam in this chair. I text her “found your key”, which will let her know that I know what she did. I’m upset.

I look around the room. Everything is being picked up. A girl is throwing these giant cellophane carrots away. An extremely young version of my grandmother is picking up most of the trash and stuffing it in a trash bag.

She gets really upset that the girl is throwing the carrots away and starts yelling at her because they are full of “goodies”. I remember that my grandmother is a highly spiritual person and wonder why she is getting so upset, losing her temper over a trivial thing. She goes into another room to clean up there.

A few guys sitting around the breakfast table are talking about the newspaper mascot, Happy. It’s a black dog who is severely depressed.

“Never try to make Happy happy. Everyone knows he’s sad so it’s insulting to him,” one of the guys says. He gives me a page of the newspaper. I held the paper out about a foot in front of me. An article had been strangely bolded and unbolded and when you can see all of the words, the boldness of the letters reveals a black ink dog made of words. His tail was the darkest part.
I throw it into the trashbag. I see a few Jenny Lewis calendar posters, really quality black and white, thick paper. I start taking them out. A woman sitting in one of the deep comfy chairs starts talking to me about Waterville’s mascot, a parrot named Waterlou. (Heather had a dream about mascots.)

My grandmother walks out of the room and smiles at me. I see that her temper was very in the moment and she was easily brought out of it.