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In which I try to go to the beach with the British royal family...

Prince William texts me that he'd like to spend the day at the beach. He sends me the address, and R enters it into his phone to get directions. We are led to a narrow island and are eventually driving down what appears to be nothing more than a sandbar. The sand is thick and dry, but we carry on because the phone tells us to. I argue with R that he's being foolish, but he claims that the phone would not send him down this far if we aren't supposed to drive here. Of course, we eventually get stuck in the sand. The tide is rising, and the car will soon be swallowed by the sea. I use this moment to tell R how much his reliance on his cell phone annoys me, then I slam the door and start off back towards the mainland on foot.

I'm struggling to walk in the sand. Each step I take feels like I'm pulling my foot out of concrete, and my breathing is labored. I'm short of breath, dizzy and nauseous. R asks what's wrong, and I explain that we drove so fast out on the beach that we didn't have time to acclimate, and now we'll have altitude sickness. He argues that we are at sea level.

I stop. I look around. He's right. I couldn't possibly be any more at sea level than this. When the tide comes in, it pulls sand out from under my feet. Something is wrong. Something is not right.

R tells me to hurry along. The royal family is waiting for us. I start walking again. Now I can breathe freely and no longer feel nauseous, but still I struggle to pull my feet out of the sand after every step. I look ahead towards land and see that, at this rate, it will take us hours to cross the beach. We will miss our appointment for sure.

Now I'm having trouble walking at all. My knees keep going weak and I keep falling over. I try to crawl, but even that seems impossible. I complain to R that I hate walking on sand. It's so difficult!

But then I stop again. That's not right. Since when do I hate walking on sand? I love walking on the beach. I walk for miles on the beach. And this close to the shore, where the sand is firm and wet, I even jog on the beach. Why in the world can't I walk normally now?

I think to myself, I've felt this before. This has happened to me before- that my legs have gone limp and I've been unable to walk. Normally, I think, this happens when someone is chasing me.

I look behind me, but there is no one there.

Then, suddenly, we are back in town. We are walking a long the seawall, and a film crew is up ahead filming Prince William and Queen Elizabeth as they take one of the little kids for a stroll along the beach. It's crowded, and people sit around under umbrellas watching the royals.

I approach William to apologize, and I ask him how late I am. He responds by showing me his watch, but I notice that it is a vortex manipulator bound to his wrist with a thick leather strap. All three of them have one on their wrists. Oh, I tell him. If you can time travel, then I guess it doesn't matter if I'm late. He looks at me as if I'm crazy. I look at their wrists again and see that actually they are all wearing fit bits.

Prince William explains that they are all ready to go to another beach as this one is too crowded. He asks me if I will bring the car around to pick him up, and I agree. I walk back to the seawall, and I see that there is bumper to bumper traffic ahead. It will be hours before we can get to the next beach. If we keep moving about like this, I'll never get to swim or enjoy myself.

I think to myself that this is just like club-hopping with M when I was in high school. She'd demand that we visit so many different clubs or attempt to meet up with so many different people that we never actually got to hang out in any one place and enjoy ourselves; we were always moving on to the next thing.

In which Snowden leaks reveal G's secret identity...

The most recent Snowden report reveals that the NSA is monitoring G due to his alleged involvement in terrorist activities. I consider canceling our trip to Kazakhstan to visit him. The scoundrel! He has a double life!

But I decide instead to warn him that he's being monitored and to express my disapproval. We Skype with him, but he is laughing, drinking and holding his baby daughter who coos cutely and tries to grab our noses through the computer screen. I tell G that I feel like a fool. We've always known he keeps some of his life private, but we feel foolish for thinking he was our fun-loving friend when really he is a hardened criminal. I know people are complex, but it makes me feel very naive. Lately, I've been feeling that there are very few ethical people in the world.

G is adamant that his behavior has been in the service of goodness, and when I respond that working for the secret police does no good for anyone except for powerful regimes that want absolute control, he looks baffled. Then he laughs and explains that the "terrorism" that he is involved with is actually just guerrilla style Facebook posts. He terrorizes our Facebook newsfeeds with the ugly facts about the violence to animals done in factory farms. Oh.

In which I'm caught up in a war in various Asian countries...


I'm in the gaudy lobby of a five star hotel in Central Asia. The floors are gold marble, and they shine with reflected light from chintzy chandeliers hanging high up in the ceilings. R and I are standing in a large open hall before a broad cedar front desk behind which is a seating area with heavy hand-carved adirondack chairs on thick green carpets placed before a roaring fire. The clientele is clearly international. Some stand near us with their luggage, others are thumbing through magazines in the seating area.

I tell R that the hotel can't seem to decide if it wants to be the Ritz or a mountain lodge. A woman standing next to us responds that the nouveau rich of developing countries never know how to decorate a place, then she leans closer and says that the building isn't structurally sound either. The whole thing will crumble in a decade.

People around us start to stare and point at the woman. I think that it is because they can hear her complaints, so we step away to make it obvious that we are not together. But she gathers more attention so I look at her more closely. She is dressed in a long billowy black frock and a black ski mask. She wears black leggings and combat boots beneath her skirts, and she carries a black backpack. Somehow, I realize she is a Chechnyan militant, but before I can react, she opens her frock to reveal a belt of guns and bombs. She tells us all to drop down to the floor.

I'm lying prone on the cold marble, as are all the other guests in the hotel. Young men dressed in black run about with tie wraps binding our wrists behind our backs while the woman stands in the middle of the lobby shouting her demands. We are her hostages. She wants to negotiate with Putin. He'll raid the place and we'll die, I think to myself. I'm less afraid than I am astonished that this is actually happening to me. I'm actually a hostage to terrorist rebels calling for negotiations with Putin. Then I reflect on my astonishment. This sort of thing happens to people; the history of the world is full of regular folks having their lives destroyed because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Violent political turmoil, global warfare- why did I assume I'd be safe?

But then, someone comes up to the woman with a pink slip of paper. The woman glances at it and then calls my name. I do not respond. I do not know what that piece of paper bodes for me, and I think it is better to take my chances with the rest of the bunch. She calls my name again. I remain silent. Then she walks over to me and asks why I'm ignoring her. I see that my name is on my luggage. She must have read it while we were discussing the hotel decor.

I stand up and look her in the eye. She asks again why I ignored her. I respond that her accent is so heavy that I didn't understand my own name. She tells me that I'm wanted in the office and hands me the pink hall pass. She tells me that R can come along too. It's so strange that at first we just stand there dumbfounded. This must be some sort of trick?

No, she answers. We have been called down to the office where we are to begin negotiations for the release of the hostages. Did we listen carefully to her demands? I did not. I walk to the lobby desk and take out a pencil. I try to write down the demands that she is dictating, but it's no good. I can't form letters, and every time I think I've written something correctly, it changes when I look back at it. I lie and tell her that I'm writing down what she says. I hold the paper so that she can't see it and pretend to understand.

We exit the lobby with our pink slip and my scribble paper and enter a labyrinth of empty halls and escalators. We wander around lost for what seems like hours. One of the escalators descends to a giant fountain around which people are gathered; when we come across it for the third time we realize we are going in circles. We stop to look at the window, and we see Russian fighter jets flying over head. We know that the hotel will soon be under siege and that there will be no negotiation so we abandon the other hostages and run out towards the parking garage.

R and I are driving in the front seat of our car with my grandmother in the back. We are driving as quickly as we can away from the hotel which is now taking aerial bombing as well as internal explosions. It's in flames behind us. There is debris and military vehicles all over the roads. We know we must head straight for the freeway, but the on-ramps and overpasses are treacherous. We realize now that we are in Afghanistan, and that the infrastructure here was shabby even when it was new due to the corruption and graft involved in construction contracts and funding. We'd rather not drive on those roads, but at this time we have no choice.

All around us, the countryside is burning. Bombs are falling from the sky and explosions fill the space behind us. The freeway is even more chaotic than usual. Cars, oxcarts, military tanks, pedestrians, rickshaws and livestock fill the roads, traveling in all directions. Meanwhile, vehicles are exploding all around us either due to bombing or landmines, we can't be certain. We have no choice but to continue to drive straight forward, but all in front of us we see cars exploding and people being shot. A big rig in front of us suddenly explodes and the freeway fills with fire. It's like a summer blockbuster popcorn movie, only it is happening in front of my eyes.

My grandmother and I scream at R to turn around, to not drive towards the violence and fire. He responds that we have no choice. It seems unlikely that we could carry on through such a thing and survive, and I think to myself that I will probably die here. It's such a reckless thing to do, but deep down I cling to the possibility that we will make it. Statistically, some of us will survive, and I wonder what the chances are that it will be us. Everyone must think this way. I also consider how terrible it will be to burn alive, and I wonder if the impact will kill us before the fire does. With horror, I imagine being mangled and trapped inside a wrecked car, slowly burning to death.

But we do make it, somehow. Next thing I know, all three of us are hiding in the trash-strewn dilapidated courtyard of a Soviet style concrete apartment block. A dirty-faced child with long stringy hair and a torn woolen sweater motions at us to follow her. We approach her, and she pinches the inside of my arm. The skin briefly turns pink then fades. The child laughs and says, "your skin is like chicken." She tells us she will take us to where the white people stay. It seems an odd thing for her to say, especially considering that R is not white, but I look around and see that we are now in India where the people are generally obsessed with white skinned Westerners and where simply having white skin entitles you to access the bubble of fancy air conditioned malls, hotels, sky rises and servants that make up the daily life of most Western expats living there. Fearing the explosions and violence surrounding us, I'm grateful for the privilege. It might well save us.

We enter a second apartment block, this one full of overweight and middle aged Westerners, mostly Brits but some Americans as well. They are all sheltered in a large dark room, sitting in chairs that they've pulled together to form a circle. They are having tea, and my grandmother takes her place with them. They are clearly all afraid, and they interrupt one another discussing theories about how they will get out of here. Maybe a helicopter will save them. Maybe the news media will learn they are here. Maybe they can bribe a warlord to give them passage.

I walk across the hall to the bathroom and look at my reflection in the mirror. My eyes look dead. They always look dead in my dreams, I think. Oh, then. I must be dreaming. This calms me down considerably. I walk back into the room where the frightened Westerners are gathered. I tell them that I am dreaming. They have nothing to be afraid of since this is not real.

I'm standing before a set of heavy double doors. There is wooden paneling on the doors about three quarters of the way up, but the top of the door is divided into small square windows. A middle aged woman walks over to me. She has her hair piled up on top of her head and she wears several necklaces. She is wearing a lot of makeup, and all of her accessories match. I wonder how long she spends getting ready in the morning. I look into her eyes and can tell she is terrified. I tell her that she isn't real. She opens her mouth to answer, but instead she just makes a strange soundless movement with her jaw. I laugh at her. None of this is real, I tell her. We don't have to figure a way out of it. I'll wake up soon, and it will be all over.

In which Igor Stravinsky attempts to escape from my chicken yard...

I'm inspecting the run of my chicken coop to discover how an opossum is entering and eating the eggs. I raise the flap to the veg garden and Igor Stravinsky sticks his head out. He can wriggle himself out of the opening enough as far as his waist, but he can't yet free his arms or climb out. He is shirtless and angry, balding and dirty. He keeps opening his mouth to scream, but no noise comes out.

I look at the chicken wire and see that he will shortly break his way free. I run.

I'm in the yard of a prison. I'm running towards the building. The door is locked. I run through covered outdoor corridors and up and down stairs trying all the doors. Finally I find one that is open. I enter the building and shout at employees to secure the chicken yard before Stravinsky escapes. They look up at me but do not move or speak.

I try to run more but my legs stop working. The best I can do now is kick my legs up so that my elbows contact my knees as if I'm doing an aerobics workout.

In which a crater in my face is a wasp nest.

There is a small crater in my left cheek. It looks like a belly button: an indentation in my face with folds of skin inside. Something is stinging me from inside. I put my fingers on either side of the crater and pull it open to its widest. There are wasps burrowed into the folds of skin. I grab one with my thumb and forefinger and pull it out by its wings, but the wings break off and its body burrows further. It continues to sting me. I grab it again and pull it out. It hurts, but I also feel an immense relief, as if I've released pressure from a boil. There are too more wasps in the crater, and I remove them also. Then I look in the mirror and see that the crater is a nest that they built in my face as I slept.

In which H isn't dead...

Another dream about H. We are at a house or a very nice hotel lobby perhaps. C is there. H has cooked and we are eating dinner. She is not dead. It was a misunderstanding of some sort. Every now and again I think of how this doesn't make sense. Once I wonder if she was really put in at the morgue or what body I saw at the viewing, but the truth is right in front of me- there she is, not dead. We talk a bit about the funeral and the fiasco around it. She asks about a ring her mother gave her. I can't remember most of what we talked about. Mostly, though, we just hang out and talk. I think of how there are loads of things I want to tell her, but I don't, and instead I mostly just enjoy hanging out with her and talking with her. At one point, I start to think about it, and I have a little panic attack, but then it recedes and I come back and we hang out again. For the most part, it is very calm and comforting and feels very natural.

In which C and B are building extension houses in my back yard...

I'm calculating how much it's going to cost me. At 26 dollars an hour for a 5 hour work day (because they start late) for 5 days a week for the next six months, it will cost me 250 dollars. This is dream math. I look at the figure on my calculator and am very surprised how cheap it is. I feel that we must be ripping C off.

I show him the figure. 250 dollars? Yes, that's accurate, he nods.

Suddenly I feel like a benevolent patron. I tell him that I'll double it. I tell him that I'll pay his assistant, B, 250 dollars also, that way he doesn't have to take B's wages out of his own pay. Then I think to myself, gosh I still haven't even broken a grand. I tell him there will even be a bonus if the work is complete on time.

They are building two guest houses in my backyard. They are both under the square footage required to necessitate a permit, so they've just started on the construction without much planning. I'm a little nervous, but I trust them. They've done this before many times.

The first tiny house is one open timber frame room. The woodwork will be seen from the inside, and they've chosen some beautiful red cedar logs. I'm really impressed with their craftsmanship. They've even been clever enough to extend a patio beyond the allowed square footage so that the outdoor space will increase our living area. I think of how I'll landscape a walking path and fire pit area between the extension patio and my main back deck.

The second house turns out to be a giant purple RV. I think that it looks tacky to have this monstrosity sitting in my backyard. They are building a cover over it so that it lasts longer and won't deteriorate after constant exposure to the elements. They tell me not to worry, that I will be pleased with the final results.

I board the RV to look around, but as soon as I enter, I'm faced with a tall climbing wall. Since it is still under construction, it is covered with a tarp. I forced to find my footings through the cover. To my relief, about half way up, there is a slight metal ladder, and I grab the cold rungs and travel vertically up the wall. I know the trick is to just keep my attention focused on each step that I take but not to hyper focus or over think either. I need to just stay calm, make a steady pace, and don't look around too much. I take a deep breath and continue. The horizontal rungs are actually small round metal bars, about the diameter of a standard piece of construction rebar but without the texture grooves. They are iced and muddy, and I think how easily my foot could slip. I grab the front rails tighter, but I cut my hand on a rusty part. I notice that the area where the rungs are welded to the front rails is starting to rust apart. I try not to think about it.

When I reach the top, I realize that I'm standing on a narrow ledge encircling the deck of a ship, and I look down to see I've just climbed a magnificently tall gangway. I must hold on to some ropes and make my way around to an entrance, and then I'm standing on the deck.

The ship is a school. There is a mess hall in front of me and two passages of classroom quarters off to my right and left. It's an excellent idea, I tell C. We need a private school here in my town, and in the warmer months, we can take the school sailing, a semester at sea.

A pigeon-sized white bird lands on a rail next to my hand. It has a red breast with red streaks radiating out and circling around its back and wings. "It's a Japanese Imperial Bird," a child tells me.

The bird begins to strut up and down the ship railings, chirping and clicking out a dance beat. The child who identified the bird adds a bassline and I throw in a melody. "We're ready for lyrics now," the child tells me, but I argue that we must practice the tune longer. He says he's got it, but I respond that I need to really focus on it or else I won't remember it when I wake up. It's a great tune, and I try really hard to keep it in mind.

Then we work on the wordplay, but for some reason the words come out as nonsense. The child is delighted with the nonsense song, but I am hoping for something that feels less forced. We rhyme "Japanese Imperial" with "breakfast cereal". The child laughs.


In which I meet some conservative news pundits...

I'm standing at the side of a stage near the curtain, out of view from a loud audience. I must make a speech. I must address an assembly gathered in an auditorium. I can't remember why. Have I won an award? It seems this is likely.

Then I see Bill O'Reilly, and he is wearing a form-fitting sleeveless and low-cut green dress with some tacky costume jewelry and a delicate lace half jacket over his shoulders. I panic. I'm in a play with Bill O'Reilly, and I've forgotten my part.

But he is casual. He shakes my hand. He tells me he likes my work. He is being professional and polite. I decide I must be mature. I smile, thank him, then return my attention to the crowd just outside the curtain. I hope that he will leave me alone. He persists. He tells me specifically what he likes, and I recognize the sincerity. I'm a little disappointed that he's a fan and annoyed that I must talk to him.

I turn to face him and instead look at the V-neck of his dress. It reveals the wrinkled and loose skin between his sagging pectorals and a spot of wild gray chest hair. I reach up and touch the edge of lace between my pointer finger and thumb, and I gently pull it over his chest. I smile at him ironically and tell him that a man such as himself should be more modest.

Somehow, I expected that he would laugh, but he did not. He is crestfallen. Right away, I see my mistake. He's not dressing a part. Bill O'Reilly, in his private life, is a transvestite. I feel like a bully. I tell him it's a very pretty dress. I'm not very convincing.

Then Ann Coulter arrives, and I start to think I'm in the wrong place. It's sometimes difficult to hate a human, especially one that is standing right in front of you, even though it is very easy to hate a personality. I consider Bill O'Reilly's vulnerability in that moment, but it is already gone. They are jovial together. He is loud; she is mean. I want to leave.

He asks me if I know her. I say I do not, and then I tell her that she is a liar. I felt a lot of things that I would like to say, but as usually happens when I'm upset, I am not able to say any of them very well. I verbally attack her. I say some pretty mean things, and again I think to myself, I feel like a bully. I justify it to myself: she deserves it.

She responds that she will write a limerick about me and scribble it on a bathroom wall for all to see. This actually intrigues me, and I ask her for the first line. She gives me, "There once was a woman from Texas" and I'm immediately disappointed. I start to be distracted by the crowd once again. They are chanting Bill O'Reilly's name. Surely I must be in the wrong place? Surely there is no reason for me to be there. I start to walk off backstage.

Ann Coulter calls me back. She is saying something, but I can't hear her. I think she is asking for a rhyme. "Nexus," I shout at her. "Solar plexus!" I start composing the limerick in my mind. "Drives a lexus". "Likes to sex us". "Welds a Czech truss".

Welds a Czech truss.

I remember the backyard construction. I run backstage. Ann Coulter runs behind me. She chases me into the locker room. I must open my combination lock, but I can't remember the digits.

Ann Coulter recites her limerick. "There once was a blonde girl. She made me hurl. She is a fat girl."

I'm staring at the lock, but I can't remember how to turn it. Is it left first and then right? When do you go around and pass zero?

Ann Coulter keeps laughing and taunting me with her limerick. "There once was a blonde girl. She made me hurl. She is a fat girl." She sings it over and over again, shaking her hips and pointing at me.

I can't concentrate with her there. I slam the lock into the locker door and sit down on a wooden bench with Ann Coulter. I tell her that it's not a limerick.

She throws her head back and laughs. She sweeps her hair from her face. She leans back on her arms and crosses her legs like a bad impersonation of a supermodel. She is not at all attractive. I think that I will tell her this, but then I realize how unfair that is. Why am I so petty and mean today?

I tell her that her song is not a limerick. She laughs some more and thinks that she has insulted me. She thinks that my feelings are sore.

I explain that, no, I don't care what she says about me. But that it's just not a limerick. And it's not particularly funny.

But she doesn't get it. She laughs again and says that I'm a big baby. I think about hitting her.

Instead, I pick up my keys and begin to carve a limerick into the bench. To show her that I'm not sore about it, I use all three of her lines- but I leave space in the middle for the third and fourth line and make her third line the fifth. I explain to her that she needs another rhyme for the two missing line, and I ask her for a suggestion. She suggests "dork" and when I ask for a rhyme, she suggests "dumb". I sigh and get that sinking feeling - this lesson is not working. I write her dork line and explain that we need a rhyme with a similar ending. Can she think of any words that end in "ork" sounds?

But she has stopped trying to understand. She's back to laughing at me and saying that I'm butt hurt about her insults. I tell her that I'm not offended, I'm just trying to point out that she has not written a limerick. It's a simple fact, but she says that I can't dismiss things just because they hurt my feelings. I tell her that it's also not witty, not amusing, that she used the word "girl" twice and that I'm not fat. I'm not even overweight. Also, I'm not even blonde. Then she tells me I'm being a snob. She touches her finger to her nose, pushes it up in the air, and says "look at me! I'm a snob!"

Suddenly I realize that my combination is the terrible Ann Coulter taunt. I enter it into the lock. Girl, Hurl, Girl. It opens. I crawl inside and wake up.

In which there are snakes in my yard, again...

I'm in my backyard. There is a long, fat snake slithering around near my wood pile. It is bright green and yellow with a conical head. It's at least 8 inches in diameter. I know what sort of snake it is (in the dream) and I know it is not venomous. I'm not afraid of it; I'm just amazed at how fat it is.

My mother is standing near the deck spraying dirt away with the water hose. I shout at her to come see the snake but she can't hear me. For some reason, I can't shout at her loudly enough for her to hear what I'm saying. She looks at me confused.

I point to the snake. It is starting to move into the wood pile, and I'm afraid she'll miss it. I wave my hands and shout at her to come over and see. I move my arm in a slithering sort of way to represent the snake and I gesture towards the wood pile. She just stares at me in a way that shows she does not understand.

I take a deep breath and scream as loudly as I can for her to come over there. My voice is booming, but still she can't hear. I wave her over, but she just stands there.

So I abandon the snake to the wood pile and walk over to her. She's only a few feet away so I'm astounded that she can't understand me. I tell her that there is a huge brightly colored snake near the wood pile and that she should come see it. Then I turn and run back to the wood pile. She sets the hose on the grass, and there is an extremely small coral snake nearby.

She points to the coral snake and says it's not so tiny. From the wood pile I shout at her to not pick it up! That's not the snake I mean! I wonder that she could be so reckless as to pick up a coral snake! But I watch helplessly as she bends down towards it, reaches out for it and picks it up.

Luckily, it doesn't bite her because it's mouth is so tiny that it can't get a good grip. By the time I run over to her, she has already dropped it.

Are you crazy? I shout at her. You picked up a coral snake! That's insane!

She responds that she wanted to see if it was red touch yellow or red touch black. Only the red touch yellow is the venomous coral snake. Red touch black is just a harmless king snake.

I know this of course. I tell her I know this. I tell her that the point is that she can't bend down and pick one up first and try to identify it second as it would be too late by then. And anyway, the particular snake in question is a coral snake. It's red and black.

She answers that she had no way of knowing it was a coral snake until she looked at it carefully. I start to get very frustrated. I respond that this is my point exactly. She needs to err on the side of caution. She argues that it didn't matter. It was too small to bite her anyway.

I decide to let it go. I turn the conversation back around to the fat brightly colored snake in the wood pile and ask her if she wants to see it. She says yes, and as we turn to walk towards it, we see another red, black and yellow banded snake. This one is bigger.

Mom asks if it is red and black or red and yellow, and she bends over to pick it up. I grab her by the arm and stop her. I start screaming at her. Doesn't she understand that she needs to stand back and assume it is dangerous? This one is big enough to bite her. A coral snake can kill you!

She laughs at me, but she relents. We walk towards the wood pile. The snake is already gone. I tell her how brightly colored it was and how big it was. She says probably I saw the same banded snake we just left in the grass. I tell her it looked nothing at all like that one. She laughs at me some more and tells me that probably my phobia of snakes just made it look different in my mind. This is not true, I argue. I'm not even particularly afraid of snakes. I just believe in being cautious around potentially deadly ones.

By then I'm just a big mess of frustration.

In which C almost drowns in a flood...

I'm in a food court with H's daughter, C. We are sitting at a high table with bar stools near a concrete pillar. The floors and walls are concrete also. There are huge rectangular windows lining the walls similar to the old roller rink, only they are enclosed with glass. We are waiting for food. I'm holding my swimsuit for some reason, and I nail it to the concrete pillar near our table.

Our number is called. I walk to a counter to retrieve our food when suddenly we are hit with the force of a giant wave. The entire food court is immediately submerged under water. I hang on to the counter and hold my breath while the wave passes. Then I'm able to get my head above the water and look around. The water is still now, but nearly touches the ceiling. I swim over to the windows and open them. The water rushes out.

I look for C and find her on the ground near our table. She is a reddish blue color, still and slightly bloated, her wet hair spread out on the ground around her head. It's H at the viewing, of course. This doesn't make sense to me, so I shake her by the shoulders, and it's C again. She sits up and vomits water.

Suddenly she's herself again but she retains the reddish blue skin color. She's laughing, nonchalant about what just happened. I tell her that we need to get out and see if everyone is OK. The force of the water was unbelievable, and I'm worried others might need help. She's laughing and unconcerned. She's talking about how she thinks her new skin color is punk rock. She says she's just like Mystique from X-Men. She wants to take selfies and put them on FB. I'm annoyed with her, but I can't leave her there alone.

I need to remove my swimsuit from the pillar. The area around the food court is covered in water still, and to swim around helping people, for some reason I must have my swimsuit. I'm trying to pry the nail out with my hands, but it won't budge. I go back to the food court counter and ask the employees for a hammer, but they say it was pulled away with the receding wave.


In which I have an argument with my mom, visit a waterpark and cannot kill a boy...

I'm riding with my mom in the car. She asks me if I ever hear a chiming sound from inside my head. I know exactly what she's talking about. (In the dream), I had just posted on an online medical discussion board about hearing this sound. It's a common symptom of a disease that I'm worried I have. I don't want to discuss it with my mom.

No, I tell her. I have no idea what you are talking about. I hope this will end the conversation.

Instead, she glares at me. Oh really? You've never heard that sound? I guess you never have a trembling sensation in your neck right before the sound either?

She's being passive aggressive, and I hate that. I just repeated my answer. I have no idea what you are talking about. I want her to shut up about it. It's none of her business what I search for online.

I happen to know that you are lying to me. I happen to know that you go online discussing these symptoms with people.

At least now she's being openly confrontational. I start to see red. How do you know what I discuss online?

You logged into that discussion board on my phone and I saw it there.

I know this is a lie. I would never use her phone to do anything I wanted to remain private. I told her she was lying.

I know exactly how you really found out. You looked at my phone while I was using the restroom.

She admitted it. She's angry. She wants an explanation for what I'm discussing online.

I tell her she has no right to snoop. I tell her that it's abnormal and unhealthy for her to snoop around like that. I tell her that if she's angry, it's her own fault. It was none of her business in the first place.

She argues that, as my mother, she has every right to snoop on me. I respond that this might have been true when I was a child, but it is certainly not true now that I'm an adult. As an adult, I can discuss whatever I want online, and she has no right to snoop around in my life and that I do not have to explain anything to her.

Then, I lose it. The emotions that came up were intense. I tell her that even when I was child, the way she snooped around and never directly confronted me about anything and the way she showed my personal items to other people and all of that made me hate her. I told her that it was damaging and shameful and that it made me rage.

She responds by throwing some of my adolescent behavior up in my face. Some of it is really embarrassing, and I'm not sure why I did the things she mentions. It makes me feel ashamed, and for a moment I'm terrified and guilty and exposed. But then I remember that I'm not a child anymore and that none of this stuff matters anymore and that I can just leave.

So I do. I walk off. I walk into a waterpark. There are no other people there. At the center of the waterpark is a 30 floor high tower from which five or six waterslides descend. I run up the stairs as fast as I can. I'm so angry that I want to smash things and destroy something. I'm stomping and shouting the whole way up, and it feels good to feel my heart pounding and my blood pumping. I'm crying with rage. I get to the top and immediately jump down the slide. It is a very good waterslide- very fast with lots of turns and thrills, but I hardly even notice where I am or what I'm doing because I'm so angry. I pass under the camera that takes pictures of riders, and I scowl. I think how stupid it is going to look later.

I land in the pool of water at the base of the slide and immediately run up the stairs and do the ride again. Since there is no one else at the park, I do not have to wait.

Then, I run up the stairs a third time. The stairs are very steep, and there are 30 flights of them. I take them two or three at a time. I can feel my body working efficiently now. I'm in a zone. I think of how good it feels to be alive, to be in shape, to get your body to the point that you can nearly effortlessly achieve an athletic feat. I wonder why I let depression knock me down when it feels so good to be so strong. I shouldn't be lazy. I'm a badass when I want to be.

I get to the top of the slide a third time, but the ride is closed. I'm calm now. I stand there and look out over the park. I count how long it takes my heart to return to its resting rate, and I'm satisfied with how efficient it is. I turn around to go back down, but I somehow take the wrong stairwell. I'm now standing at the back of a huge auditorium. There is a ramp descending from the doorway with rows of auditorium seats on either side. In the central main seating area, there are a dozen or so middle school aged kids. An adult sits on the stage in front of them. He is sitting casually on his bottom with his legs dangling over the stage. He has a water bottle nearby and some papers in his hands. A few lights are shining on him. He is obviously some sort of theater teacher.

The teacher looks up at me and smiles. He waves me towards him. The kids all turn around and watch me walk down to the stage. The teacher stands up and shakes my hand. He's about my age. He's very calm. He explains that the stairs I was looking for disappear when the water park closes, and I'll have to spend some time in the theater now. He smiles at me again, and I realize it is a trap. All the kids smile at me as if they are expecting some sort of show.

I turn and run backstage. I climb the ladder up to the catwalks and sit up there trying to figure out what to do. I start to rage again. I'm frustrated at how quickly a day can go bad. I don't know how I'm going to get out of the theater.

The teacher calmly climbs up towards me. He doesn't completely ascend; he stands on the ladder but leans his elbows on the catwalks and casually addresses me. I'm screaming in a rage about all sorts of things.

He asks me what the anger feels like. I tell him it feels like I want to destroy things. I want to smash the theater with a sledgehammer. I feel like I could tear open someone's stomach with my hands and pull out their entrails or grab them by the back of their hair and repeatedly pound their skull into the pavement. I tell him in detail how angry I am and how much I want to rage and tell him to leave me alone. But he is very calm and just tells me to come down. He says he'll give me a sledgehammer or a victim or whatever else I want. I look at him and think he is disturbed.

I come down to the stage. The kids are all watching attentively now. The teacher and I are in the middle of the stage and the spotlight is on us. The teacher calls one of the middle schoolers, a 13 year old boy, onto stage with us. The boy lies down on the wooden stage floor at my feet. The teacher tells me to go ahead and rage on him.

I just stand there and stare at him. Come again?

Beat the kid up. Kick him.

OK. I pull my foot back to kick him, but I can't bring myself to hit him with any real force. I can feel his ribs against my feet. I think how easily they would break. I can't do it.

I sit down on top of the boy and wrap my hands around his neck to strangle him. He starts to gasp and turn colors, but he does not struggle or act disturbed. He just lies there and looks at me. I can feel the blood pulsing through his neck and he starts to turn purple. I think of how long it would take to cause brain damage.

I let him go and look at his neck. There are finger marks where I was holding him. I realize that I was not squeezing in a way that would efficiently block his trachea, so I reposition my hands so that one thumb is pressing firmly into his tracheal airway and the other is pushing in his tracheal cartilage. I have a good grip on him now. The teacher is now squatting down next to us, watching. He seems to approve of my repositioning. The boys' cartilage feels bumpy and fragile under my thumb. I can't make myself apply any pressure at all.

I tell the teacher that I can't intentionally damage someone like that. The teacher asks me how I feel. I tell him that I feel pretty calm.

He takes me out the exit of the theater from backstage. I have to take another waterslide back down, but because the park is closed, the water is not running. I try to slide down the slide, but I keep getting stuck in the turns. Finally I stand up and try to walk down, but the slides are shallow and turn at sharp angles. I have to sort of crawl and crouch my way down on my knees with my hands holding the edge of the slide.

In which I attempt to fly in a lucid dream...

Lately, I've been "getting stuck" in the mornings as I try to wake up. This is what I've always called sleep paralysis. I remembered that it's easier to enter a lucid dream from this state, so I decided to try it. I stopped fighting the paralysis and let myself fall into sleep, all the while saying to myself, "I'm dreaming" until I heard the quaking, crashing sound that indicates I'm finally asleep. I stood up and felt light weight. Everything was shiny. I walked towards the front door of my house and, instead of turning the door knob, decided to walk through it. Then I was in the yard under the stars. I decided to try to fly. I flew up over my house and towards the field behind my house, but then I had trouble controlling the flight. I decided to try to fly all the way to the moon, but the flying became more like swimming. I was trying to do the breast stroke through the air and got tired easily. I let myself fall back towards the field behind my house and tried to think of what experience I'd like to have next. I tried wishing for things to see if they appeared, but suddenly I realized I was standing on my front porch again. I didn't remember getting there and realized I'd lost control of the dream. This woke me up.

In which I dream again about H...

H is upset with me over a misunderstanding with S. I go to her old house, which is actually at K's mom's house in our home town. I walk into the house, but I'm standing in the foyer. I know she is on the other side of a wall with a baseball bat, and I know she is angry. I call into the house to tell her it's me and that I'd like to talk to her about what happened. I tell her it was a misunderstanding with S and that I want to make amends with her. I can feel her rage and it scares me so I step back out of the house. I shout at her from the lawn.

Then she calms down and says I can enter. I sit down with her at the bar. There are other people around. Her mom is there. I explain what happened with S and how the misunderstanding started. She understands and is no longer angry. We sit down to talk. Her hair is short and pulled back on the sides like it was when she was pregnant. I can't remember what we were talking about, but I realize she hasn't died yet. I tell her that she is going to find herself in a very dark place one day and that she is going to need help, and I beg her to remember to call me. I try to say all the things I've been trying to say over and over again. She looks at me straight in the eyes and tells me I'm being a liar. I'm not, I argue. I grab her upper arms and turn her towards me. I tell her to look at me and see that I'm being serious and sincere. I tell her to promise she'll call me.

Meanwhile, her mom is now sitting on the other side of me. She has an iPad, but in the dream, it is H's cell phone. She shows me how you can swipe through images on the phone that show incoming and outgoing phone calls on H's phone from the night she died. She hands me the iPad and we start scrolling through the numbers together. I'm terrified that my number will come up and we'll see that she did call me. But we are looking at incoming calls and not outgoing ones, and for some reason my number does not pop up showing that I called her back even though I did and I left a message too but I should've kept calling and I don't know why I didn't. I worry that her mom is going to blame me.

H asks what we are doing, and I tell her. I try to use the iPad as proof that I'm being serious and sincere when I tell her what is going to happen. Her mom asks me what I'm telling H, and I tell her that I'm trying to convince her to call the people who love her when she gets to that dark place. Her mom nods her head calmly and unconvinced and allows that this is an appropriate thing to say. I feel like I can't really get through to either of them and that it's all somehow my own fault. But I look inside myself and can't find anything else more sincere than what I'm saying, and if it's not a true feeling then there is just an emptiness behind it so I don't know what else to say.

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.

Long time, no post. I've had lots of interesting dreams, but I've just been too busy to write them down. This one last night is just too disgusting to not record!

In which I poop on a classroom floor and blame it on a student...

I've arrived to a school to work as an aide in a special education classroom. I'm early. The work day does not begin until 7:30, and I'm there at 7:00. I enter the classroom, but I leave the lights out so that no coworkers will know I'm here. I figure I will get more work done this way since no one will stop by to chat. I'm carrying my thermos of coffee, but before I drink any, I realize I need to have a bowel movement.

As if it is the most normal thing in the world, a toilet sits in the middle of the classroom. There are no walls or curtains or stalls enclosing it. There is just a toilet, sitting in the middle of the room, out in the open. This is perfectly natural in my dream.

I sit down on the toilet to pass a BM when I remember that of course this toilet is made for small children and therefore cannot hold my large adult-sized shit. This logic also is perfectly natural in the dream. Therefore, I reach behind my rear and grab the shit with my hands. I then throw it on the floor in front of me with every intention of cleaning it up shortly after finishing.

At that moment, my husband walks into the classroom. I'm surprised. What is he doing here?

He explains that he is there to check up on me and to make sure I'm OK. This makes me angry. Why should he check up on me? He sees the poop on the floor and asks why I've done such a disgusting thing as throw it there in the middle of a classroom.

Suddenly, the perfectly natural dream logic fades. Why have I just thrown my own feces into the middle of a classroom? I have no idea. It seems disgusting and humiliating. My husband is shocked. I'm mortified. I can't explain it. It seems insane.

I yell at him that he needs to leave so that I can clean up my mess before anyone else arrives to see it. He is shocked and upset that I've done something so disgusting. He keeps asking me over and over again what is wrong with me.

Then there is an announcement that I need to be in the office to escort a special needs student to the classroom. The child cannot walk unassisted, and I go to help him at once.

By the time I return to the classroom with the child, another teacher and several other special needs students are all in the room. The other teacher has discovered my pile of poop, but it does not occur to her that I'm the one who threw it there. She assumes that one of the special ed students has pooped in the middle of the room rather than the toilet. Several of our students are in diapers or cannot use the bathroom unassisted.

The other teacher is very angry. She's yelling at the students and blaming them for doing this. I start to feel really guilty. The students are mostly non-verbal and cannot defend themselves. I know that I will get away with it, and I know that it is horribly unjust to let a student take the blame for something insane and disgusting that I have done. But what else can I do? If I admit it, I will loose my job and be humiliated in front of all my coworkers. These students mostly do not have the awareness to feel humiliation, and they do frequently have bowel movements in places that are inappropriate. So in some ways it doesn't seem like too big a deal to let them take the fall this one time.

The ethical dilemma is weighing on me heavily as I take my thermos of coffee from my backpack. I try to pour some of it out, but nothing happens. The coffee will not drip out. I remove the lid to the thermos to see what is causing the obstruction, and it is clogged up with mud and live, wiggly grub worms. I scream in alarm and throw the thermos out of the room.

Immediately I realize how silly I'm behaving and I go out into the hall to retrieve my thermos. Surely the bugs just crawled in as I was gardening over the weekend, and a good washing will take care of them. But as I'm about to re-enter the classroom, I look around the hall and notice a hidden camera. I stand below the camera to see where it is filming and notice that it is pointed directly at the middle of the classroom. It is filming everything that happens inside the classroom.

It is inevitable, then, that someone will see the video and see that I threw the feces across the room. I did it, and the video will reveal that I let an innocent and vulnerable special needs child take the blame for my insane and disgusting behavior. I think about how much I'll be ridiculed and ostracized once this video hits YouTube and the evening TV news.

I try to think of an explanation that will make my case sympathetic, but I really can't think of anything. I just can't explain why I would do such a crazy thing. It seemed normal at the time when I was in the dark, alone. But now I just can't understand it. I feel humiliated, ashamed and confused. I just don't know what to do.