I was coming home from somewhere and it had been snowing. As I approached our house, I saw that there was blood on our front lawn. But not just a light trail from a small wound; a ton of blood, all over, as if there had been a fierce battle there.
I went to the other side of the yard and saw that a giant hole had been dug there, a little over a yard deep, and wide, like a crater. My Dad was lying in it on his back, shovel in hand, blood gushing from a wound on his forearm. I understood that he had hurt himself, tried to ignore it, and lost enough blood to fuck with his brain function, so instead of shoveling snow he had just kept shoveling, in one spot, until he passed out.
I freaked out and brought him inside. My family had just moved to this house and it was old and wasn’t standing up to the weather; the moisture from the snow had caused some of the beams to crack and the roof to leak, and in two places, our bathtub and our piano had sagged and crashed through the floorboards to the story below. There seemed to be nowhere safe to put him.
I was panicking, and my Mom just wiped the blood off of Dad’s forearm and showed me that the wound itself wasn’t that big. As she did that, he snapped into coherence and consciousness, and they joined in making fun of me for worrying too much all the time. I was confused and trying to explain to them that I had a reason to be concerned with that much blood loss, but they waved me off and didn’t seem to notice that the house was collapsing.
I dreamt that I was in some kind of drugstore with a lunch counter, and I was in a long line to get my lunch. I was frustrated with how long it was taking, and the guy ahead of me in line was fratty and being a douche. He had a fancy athletic bag, and made some comment about the ugly backpack I was carrying, and when I rolled my eyes at him, he turned to his bro and talked about how fat I was. I ignored it and tried to focus on getting my lunch.
When I asked a question to the guy behind the counter about my order, the guy walked like two feet away from the counter and started talking to his coworker about me, calling me an asshole. I could ignore the guy in front of me, but this man was supposed to be serving me, and I wasn’t going to put up with it. I demanded to see his supervisor.
I saw his supervisor, who wasn’t helping, and then I demanded to see her supervisor above her (having much difficulty getting the workers to bring their managers). While they were making friendly jokes, they never really apologized or offered to do anything to make up for it. I was getting increasingly fed up; and that’s when I noticed someone in a hoodie and a weird face mask running toward the building.
I heard that person scream some kind of signal phrase, and at that moment about a dozen people in the building pulled out guns, some warning shots were fired, and they bellowed that this was a holdup. One of the people with guns was the guy who was in front of me in line, who had pulled out an assault rifle. I had slumped to the ground in fear, and he knelt beside me grinning evilly, and pointed the gun at me with the end of the barrel just inches from my face.
I had two thoughts: one, that the staff of the store might have had some inkling that this kind of attack was going to happen, and was trying to be rude to me to get me to leave quickly and without suspicion. In other words, they were trying to protect me, and I had been so huffy about the details that I couldn’t be saved. Two, that I had been so hung up on “standing up for myself” in a situation that SO didn’t matter, that I was never going to see my family again.
The last thing I remember was weakly pleading with the guy with the gun, saying, “Please don’t point that at me. You know I’m not going to run and I’m not going to fight. Shoot me if you’re going to shoot me, get it over with, but please stop pointing the gun at me. Please.”
I woke up bawling. I’ve had nearly 26 years of horrifying dreams, but I’m pretty sure that this was the first time anyone had pointed a gun at me so threateningly in one of them. It was so real, I woke up feeling like I’d been through an actual trauma.
that i was on a date with a bowl of pulled pork and we went out to dinner at outback and ate steak. it’s pathetic enough that i often dream about food, i really don’t need to start dreaming about DATING food.
“I just had the craziest Wizard of Oz dream. I got tired of walking down the yellow brick road so I stole a munchkin’s car.” — Chris Colfer
My absolute scariest dreams are ones in which I lose something, or can’t get back to someone I’ve lost.
Last night I had one of those dreams, and I have been avoiding sleep because I’m scared I’ll have one like that again. But I can’t keep myself awake any longer, so here’s hoping it’s all rainbows and unicorns tonight.
- walking around the upper west side with V
- helping her try on princess costumes
- being suspected of shoplifting because I put my items in my environment friendly shopping bag instead of a store plastic bag
- partying with a bunch of tumblrs
- sleeping with a tumblr crush I haven’t even met yet
- receiving homemade chocolate and candy from said tumblr crush as a post-coital gift
- finding same tumblr crush in a closet making out with another tumblr
- a beach outing with the six people from my trip to the Bahamas
- my former daycare director suddenly appearing
- realizing she had invited us, it’s her beach house, me feeling guilty for letting her go and surprise that she invited us
- at my suggestion, we all pay her a hefty sum as compensation
you guys, I really, really need to go back on vacation.
SPARKLE NEELY SPARKLE!!!: night terrors. -
i’ve been having these crazy vivid dreams lately. and i know people are like “omg whatever shut your pie hole about dreams no one cares” but the one last night was particularly haunting.
it involved being chased by a bunch of snakes. these snakes were in packs. and these packs were led by two…
she told him she was leaving and he effortlessly picked up the desk, threw her against the wall with it, and pinned her at her throat with the edge of the desk. he was suffocating her. she slowly was turning the most stunning shade of blue starting at the neck and growing like a mold up her face.
we all watched, attentively i might add, and said nothing. not because we were scared, but because we had come to accept this behavior as normal or par for the course.
well. thats the part of the dream that disturbed me the most.
5/11/10
Me: Do you know that you are from the future?
Don/Jon: I had a feeling.
Me: I’m not Sally’s age.
Don/Jon: I don’t believe you.
Me: Let me call my dad and ask him to bring my ID and I’ll prove it to you.
Don/Jon: I’d like to see that.
*THIS IS AN ACTUAL DREAM I HAD AND THE MULTITUDE OF DADDY/WORK/FANTASY/ANXIETY ISSUES IT BRINGS UP IS 2 MUCH FOR A SUNDAY AFTERNOON. *
So here are the snippets I can remember of the series of fucked-up dreams I had last night.
***
I was watching a movie starring Ewan MacGregor (or Tobey Maguire, or maybe it was both dudes playing the same role at different parts in the movie). The main character was a hitman, and he took a job and carried out with too much speed and efficiency to notice that his mark was holding a baby. So he’s overcome with remorse and decides to take care of this baby. But then he decides the pressure of taking care of the baby is too much, so he self-mutilates. To the tune of cutting off his own head. There is a scene where a disembodied head is calling 9-1-1 asking politely for help with reattaching his body. Then he decides that he doesn’t have the time to wait for the ambulance crew, so he stitches it back on himself. But somehow his skull and jaw fall out in the process, and once his head’s back on he has to jam them back into his head through his mouth.
It was a terrible movie. I woke up.
***
I’m outside the building that I’m going to live in, and it looks like the proportions are off for actual living, so I’m walking around to get a feel for the neighborhood, to maybe convince myself the area will be worth the weirdly-shaped apartment. I see a friend of mine pass (Seth, a super-sweet guy) and I call out to him happily. He’s riding some kind of parade float—think like the dragon in a Chinese New Year parade, only it’s kind of like a bicycle too—so I grab onto the tail and he rides me around and I laugh. Then I let go while he turns so I can go flying in the air, and he screams “ARIELLE NO WATCH OUT FOR THE SCORPION” and in mid-air I see a tiny airborne scorpion, about a half-an-inch across, no bigger than a bumblebee, and before I have a chance to move it hits me in the face, at the corner of my mouth, and stings. The right side of my face instantly swells, and I know from the urgency of Seth’s warning that the bite is very dangerous and I probably need immediate medical attention. So I ask Seth to take me to the hospital, but instead he frowns at me, turns, and walks away. I ask someone else the same thing, and he does the same; it’s as if I’m being shunned for letting this bite happen to me, and I think I might die from it, but no one will offer me help.
***
Andreas has moved out of the apartment for some reason, though we’re still together. I can’t pay the rent myself, so I take on a roommate. For some reason, it’s my ex. I tell him, “you understand you’re sleeping on the couch,” and he finds bullshit reasons to sneak into bed with me (“we left the window open and the couch is wet! I’ll just sleep on this side of the bed tonight”), wait until I’m almost asleep, and whisper creepy things into my ear about how he’s going to make me love him again. I wake up and tell him no, he has to leave my room, this arrangement is purely monetary and I have no feelings for him at all anymore.
Another day of this roommateship, he finds out that Andreas and I are in the point of the relationship where we’re acknowledging that I one day want to have kids with him. Ex freaks out (because when we were together I wasn’t ready for kids though he wanted them), and he says that that’s not fair, because “WE were going to have kids FIRST.” I don’t really know what he means, but then I figure out that he expects me to literally have his kids first; like, bear him children before I can go off and have the kids I want to have with my boyfriend. I tell him I’m not going to be his fucking surrogate, that that’s insane, and he gets angry and scary and throws things, and I get the awful feeling that somehow he’s going to force me to.
4/14/10—thewordunheard