Creepy Dogs and Murdering

Tuesday 9/2 (Last night's)

My dreams have been really fragmented lately, can't remember most of them. Judging from what I do remember, thank goodness!

In the first part of this, I was a guy and I worked at a hotel of a bed & breakfast type. One of my jobs was to murder somebody out of each group who stayed there! Then I quickly cleaned up the room and made it all pretty for the next victim so they wouldn't suspect and the rest of the previous group wouldn't't know what happened. I killed at least two people in this dream, and I didn't feel particularly bad about it either. I was thinking in the dream after I killed the first one (I don't remember how I did so, I may have had some ability to kill... it wasn't bloody but was quite fast), well maybe I should have thought about that a little more. Nah, that's my job.

Then in another part of the dream, I'm myself again and swimming across this bay in the middle of the night. Everything is pitch black. There are some other people, friends of mine I guess, who are also swimming across. I can't see a thing and the water is cold but not very deep, I keep running into slime covered sticks and logs with my feet, which is very uncomfortable. Then I see a dog/wolf-like thing swimming in the water, only it's head is out. It has an orangish cast to its fur. It swims toward me and I am trying to get away but I keep running into things underwater. I try to dive under to hide but it grabs my hand, which is still sticking out, in its teeth, and is biting and chewing on it. Then I wake up, and can't shake the image for a long time.

In the next dream after I go back to sleep, my friend H- is visiting me and we are driving around a town (I'm not sure which one) in my vehicle. We are hungry and looking for a place to eat, and I ask her where she'd like to eat. After some discussion we decide to try a place called something like "Kitchen Mama" which is a chain restaurant (not a real one to my knowledge). I have driven here before but am not familiar with the area, but I do remember there is on nearby. After driving around a bit I stop and use my cell phone to look up the restaurant online... there is an application where I can just search for it and it will show me the ones in the area. It asks me to choose which type of Kitchen Mama restaurant I want: Some of them serve chicken as their specialty, some don't serve chicken and some of them serve it sometimes but it's not guaranteed. I ask H- which one she wants and try to search for it. After some issues with getting the results to come up I realize it is just around the corner and we drive to it.

Little Fire On The Prairie

Wednesday night/Thursday morning (6/26)

I had two dreams from this night that I remembered very clearly until I was just getting ready to write them down, and somebody said something that annoyed me. Poof! The first dream was gone just like that and I haven't been able to remember anything else about it since. I was myself in it, though. So here is the second dream:

I am "Laura" in the "Little House" series. We arrive to the prairie for the first time. There is a long straight line of the edge of a woods with tall trees on the prairie next to where we are going to put our house, and I quite surprised. I point out this to my father (Pa, in this case), saying I didn't realize that there would be woods here. The woods is different though, the trees have no low branches and the space between them is clear, like the rest of the prairie.

A little bit later we become aware of smoke coming from a neighbor's house up on a huge hill nearby. We run towards it. As we get closer we join lots of other people running in the same direction. When we get there the house or barn is well on fire and we are all coming to help, although what exactly we are supposed to do I don't know. My mother (Ma) tells me to go get on a cart. There is a cart with a bunch of stuff and people in it pulled by two large tan oxen. She tells me to drive it over the edge of the hill, where it will be safe (this is both something I can do to help, as a young child, and a safe place for me, apparently). I climb onto the cart and drive them, they are eager to run and they go over the edge of the hill, which is a huge cliff. This is what I'm supposed to do, however. I am concerned as the cart tips forward rather than staying level and lands in a crash at the bottom, breaking a bunch of stuff. But everybody is happy, only one occupant of the cart was killed as a result of the fall, and I've gotten it away from the fire.

I remember being aware of several incongruities in this dream as it was happening, such as things that didn't match the actual books or even logically things, but I dismissed them because this "wasn't really the book". The level of awareness wasn't quite to the point of realizing this was a dream but it was more than usually occurs in dreams.

Evil Ex-Landlord Stalker Finally Gets Me

I am in my bedroom when the bedroom door starts to open. It is Ra-, my former evil landlord! I rush over and try to hold the door shut, he is acting friendly and like he just wants to talk to me. I yell at him to go away but he keeps pushing the door and is bigger and stronger than me, and I can't hold it shut. I realize that I don't want to be trapped in this room with him with no exit, so I let the door open and come out into the living room. I am yelling at him to get out of her, and pushing him towards the door, he resists but acts as if he's done nothing wrong (as is typical actually, acting friendly and ignorant while deviously stabbing in the back). I eventually work him over to the door and throw him out, yelling at the top of my lungs, get out of here, don't come back, etc. He goes. I see a girl standing at the door opposite my apartment door (it's just like the one I live in now), she looks nervous about the big row. I say sorry to her, weakly, that I don't know what he was doing here. I see now how he got into the apartment in the first place to get to the bedroom; he has removed the doorknob from the front door.

The rest of the building at least is a dorm (how/why I'm not sure, it looks exactly the same as the apartment complex and I've obviously been living there for a while in the dream). The girl is one of the new students moving in, and there is a meeting being held for the floor or building to get to know all the residents. I go to it. Among the others, I see the girl there, who is still looking at me somewhat worriedly. I and the other floor residents chat and get to know each other. The others are pairing up with roommates (I'm not, since although I live there I am not still living in my apartment with my husband (although he's gone at the moment), and am not a student like the others).

I give one of the girls advice on living with a roommate. The most important thing to consider, I say, is the cleaning compatibility. If you have somebody who is really picky and someone who is more relaxed, that can cause some strife, but mainly for the picky person. I am not the picky sort, I say. She says that she is, so she hopes her roommate is not lax.

I go back to my apartment (I think, maybe it's just another room) with one of the girls. The phone rings. It's Ra-. I slam it down. I don't want to hear his explanation which would be fake anyway, i just want him to go away. The girl says that a bunch of them are driving out to O.S. this evening (as if it were only an hour or so like from where I used to live). I tell her I don't think it's really a good idea to go all that way tonight, it's a long drive (it's already dark out), but she decides to go anyway. I don't go with them.

I think I call my husband the next day and tell him about Ra- coming, but he still isn't home. I decide that I will report it to the landlord's office so they know about the incident.

But later that day, he comes again. This time there is a lot more struggle. I think some of his clothes are off (not all). I wrestle with him. I tell him I am calling 911 if he doesn't go away. I'm very loud and yelling and eventually force him out again after a longer fight and lots of yelling at him to go.

Now I am more scared, I can't keep fighting him off if he keeps coming back in. I go down to the apartment complex office, but it's 7 pm and it's closed. I decide to drive down to the police station. I'm not sure what I can do, or they can do... get a restraining order? But at least I'm going to tell what happened and maybe they can tell me what to do or help protect me from him.

Outside the police station an officer is seated in a parked running vehicle. I knock on the window, but he tells me that he's on duty (apparently having to go somewhere) and to go inside and talk to the people there. This seems reasonable. I go in, there's a small line of people at the counter. A policewoman, older with puffy slightly orange hair, processes them quickly, they have minor things to take care of. I'm the last person in the line, luckily, because I know I'm going to take more time than these quick people.

I just start telling her what is going on, my voice shaking. She gestures to me to squat down (she does too) and talk quietly so the other people who came in to take care of things don't overhear. Then she leads me over to a small table by the window and I continue explaining.

Suddenly the door opens and Ra- comes into the police station. Everybody is startled. He comes toward me, talking, and I try to evade him. I start running toward the door and he pulls out a handgun and shoots me. I feel it hit me through my back in the left side, probably through vital organs. As I fall to the ground I can feel it tear through my body, and I wonder if it's hit my heart. I can feel my blood pounding through my body. I think I am dying right then. Everything is tingly and pressurized and it feels like I'm going to black out, like my heart is racing.
But, I don't die right then. I am dying but I realize that I will hang on for 3 days.

What happens after that is disoriented: I may be taken back to my apartment, he may come again, or maybe it's just a flashback and I'm reliving it very briefly. I think my husband comes home; I remember him bending over me in my dying condition, I don't think I can move much. I know I won't live much longer.

Although the attitude of the evil ex-landlord was accurate: in other words pretending to be "friendly" and ignorant/innocent of wrongdoing while stabbing in the back, the breaking into my apartment, attacking me, and ultimately killing me was not :P. A frightening dream, filled with adrenalin and fear. The feeling of dying and my body shutting down when I was shot was very intense.

Confused and Confusing Grandparents

4/9/2008
Wednesday morning's dream

It had to do with my paternal grandparents (my grandfather died 14 years ago tomorrow, which I didn't realize until just now). In the dream they weren't entirely like my paternal grandparents, sort of a mix with my other grandparents some of the time, but mainly they were my paternal ones. One of them died, but which one it was changed and there were sort of two versions of the dream based on that. It was not linear. Both grandparents were going a little crazy due to some kind of age related-condition, like Alzheimer's (also not the case in real life).

At one point, I was at the house with my father. My grandfather was there, and my father told me to go down to the bottom of the hill and move my truck, becuase it was blocking in my grandfather's vehicle and we didn't want him to know this. I'm not sure what the logic was behind it, but if he'd found out he would have thought we were treating him differently (because of his condition, which we were, but he wasn't aware of how it affected his faculties) and would be mad. He was disoriented and not in full grasp of his mind. Whichever one lived was affected severely by the death of the other.

At another point I was walking down along the old railroad grade beside the river, with my grandmother I think, talking about my grandfather. It was clear that she wasn't all there. There were vehicles along the way, and she was talking about riding on a boat, and wanted to get on it. Possibly to go see my grandfather (who I think had died at this point and version of the dream), but it seemed like she was mixed up with that and arriving somewhere on a boat in a memory of the past.

The Never Badly-Ending Story

April 4, 2008

Friday Morning/Thursday Night

The main part of the dream is actually a story that I’m reading in the dream, that I’ve sort of entered into. I’m associated with one of the human characters. There are a boy and a girl, probably around 12 or 13. When I’m in the story I don’t realize that it’s a story, it’s just the main dream.

In addition to the girl and boy there is a cat, he is sort of gray/brown stripy, short-haired, and a magical creature which appears as a human baby but can also fly and turn invisible, or appear as a bird. The four of them form a team. They ride together on a bicycle, with the baby/creature in the front basket, attempting to outwit a duo of evildoers.

The team rides down a road which looks like a road near where I grew up. By the “triangle” intersection of the road, they see the evil doers in front of a house. They look like R-, a previous coworker of mine who also appeared in this dream, and an old bald guy, and both are getting into an old red pickup truck. The kids prepare to trail them without being too obvious, so they ride further down the road. After they lose them, the cat jumps down from the bike and sets off down the road. The kids look into the front basket and see that the baby has vanished, leaving only its clothes. They understand that the cat and the baby/invisible flying thing are going to keep following the truck, while the kids will try to intercept the bad guys at their destination.

The kids are at a place like my grandmother’s house. There is an alarm on the wall that rings, indicating that someone is driving up the driveway. They go to the front window and see the bad guys unloading giant lemons from the pickup truck. Each lemon is actually a captured person. The kids have cornered, but the bad guys know they are there too (outcome is uncertain).

Switch scene back to down the road from where we left the cat and bird/invisible/baby thing. The “view” pans up over the bridge that is further down the road. White feathers are fluttering down the river, blowing down the river and falling from the sky, dotting the road and water.

The cat is standing on the other side of the bridge at an intersection, where I- road meets M- Hill Rd. There are two squished cats in the road and a small squished dinosaur. The dinosaur looks sort of like a cartoony version of a triceratops, but about a foot and a half high if it were alive. The bottom half of it is a single leg: it’s sort of like an elephant foot with a head on top of it.

The cat is distraught, these are friends of his that have been killed (it’s unclear what happened to the bird/magical thing, but the feathers fluttering everywhere don’t bode well). Some passersby drive up and take in the scene. The cat rails at them: “Do you even realize what has happened? What a tragedy this is?” He points to the dinosaur and asks them what it is. They are unsure, and say it must be a cat. The cat names the kind of dinosaur (I forget what it was called, some dinosaur sounding name) and berates the hapless humans who are trying to be sympathetic but are basically clueless. “You don’t even know what it was! It was a (name of dinosaur)” (they don’t know what this is either). “It’s not even supposed to exist today. You don’t even know how tragic this is!” Etc.

The scene switches to me on the couch at my parents’ house, reading a book. The previous part of the dream was the end of the book, and I have just finished it. I am somewhat unsatisfied with the ending: I quite liked the book but the ending with the cat standing there amongst his squished friends, and no loose ends tied up about the rest of the story, is just bothersome.

I am playing some kind of music on the television screen. It is currently playing something beginning with P (Persepolis, or Persephone perhaps? This is not a song/band I know in real life, but was apparently a favorite in the dream). A coworker, Ju-, comes in and asks what music it is, and I tell him. I say shyly smiling that I hope it wasn’t too loud and bothering him in his cube. He says No, no, he really likes it and would like to borrow it. I give him the dvd box with the program and also give him the book to borrow, or maybe I give him a movie version of the book.

I start reading another book and become the character again. In it I am a girl who is returning to some kind of riding camp (she actually does look like me in this one, although she isn’t me, I’m just sort of embodying her). I/she am in something like a grocery store but with horse equipment on the shelves, and have not ridden for a long time. Some other girls (who are members of the camp) come to the end of the aisle and say to each other “Who’s that? She’s new.” I smile and say Hi, how are you, or something along those lines, intentionally pretending to be a normal, friendly person. It feels very fake. But I tell myself, I don’t know these people. I can be somebody else here, a different persona. A man comes along and tells the girls to go saddle up and me to clean a saddle that is on the shelf. I understand that this is because I have only just returned and have to work my way back up, so I am not bothered.

My sister comes into the house where I am reading on the couch and I put the book down. I know she was reading the first book and I ask if she finished it and if she liked it. She is non-committal. I tell her that I liked it but I did not like the ending, because it didn’t resolve any questions of the plot, it just ended abruptly with the cat finding the other run-over animals.

Ju- comes back in with some movies including the book (or movie version?) of the same story. I ask if he is finished already, he says no, he only got up to this point (pointing to a picture of a colorfully dressed woman on the back cover, who apparently showed up at some point earlier in the plot---In the dream I remember this. There’s a long part to the story that wasn’t included in my actual dream, which just had the very ending.). Ju- says that he’ll finish it later, so I don’t tell him how it ends or that I didn’t like the ending.

There was another part where I was myself in the house and a fat mouse was running around and one of the cats caught it and killed it, and I was planning to relate this fact to my husband to prove the usefulness of cats. I don’t remember where this part fit in chronologically, if it did at all.

The Bugs Kept Coming...

3/11/2008
Last night's dream (Tuesday morning/Monday night)

I only remember the last part of this, which was creepy and gross. I had a small wooden toy sort of like a threadspool with holes in it that was sitting on the bedside table. I was in bed, it was morning but I hadn't gotten up yet. It was some kind of cat toy, I think. As I was fiddling with it, I suddenly realized that there were some kind of bugs inside, they looked like a cross between a centipede and an earwig, and had long wavy antennas. One of them came out of one of the holes and started crawling around; it dropped on the bed and I jumped up and knocked it away, but then I couldn't see where it had gone. My husband asked what I was doing. I said there had been a centipede, but it was gone now, nothing to worry about. I knew there were more in the toy but I didn't' want to alarm him, also my skin was crawling already. He looked at the toy though, and said he thought there were more inside. One had crawled down to the entrance of the hole and was waving its antenna around. It dropped out and landed on the floor, and as it ran across the floor it started to grow until it was an lobster, several times larger than actual lobster size. My husband jumped out of bed and ran after it, hitting it with a shoe until he killed it. He dropped it in the kitchen garbage, asking me first (joking) if i wanted to eat it. I said it wasn't really a lobster, but a centipede, it just looked like one, and I didn't care more for lobster anyway.

I asked him what we should do about the toy to get rid of the bugs... could we submerge it and drown them? or burn it? Then I was in my parents house, but I still had it. Another centipede came out, this one was very long, and it was running quickly across the floor. I wanted to kill it before it went into a crack in the floor, but my feet were bare. I stepped on it and the middle of it squished, but it kept running and disappeared into a crack. Another one squirmed out, also very long, and ran under a corner of carpet; I pulled it up but couldn't find it again. Another one came out and started running towards my sister's room door, I finally found a shoe and went after it trying to squish it. I was creeped out by all the centipedes squirming around and disappearing into corners of the house, my skin was crawling.

Then my father came out, he had the other shoe. I thought he was going to kill the remaining centipedes, but he had two cats instead and said he had to kill them. One was a brownish orange tomcat, who I don't remember the name of, and the other was a female with white and yellow splotches, who was called Lemon Cream. Both had short hair, and were not actual cats that I know. He killed them both by hitting them with the shoe. I was upset but he was strangely cheerful afterwards. I picked up a section of newspaper and read an article about it where he was joking about putting them in soup. I was mad and yelled about it, but it didn't phase him.

A Family Inheritance

Saturday 3/08/2008
3rd dream (3 of 3)

This came right after the previous dream but I don't think they were connected because nobody was chasing me, and it was set in the present (today).

I went to visit my family, as planned for today. When I got there I found that my husband was planning to call one of my grandpas' meetings (he used to have these family meetings for a short period of time to advance his philosophy. But he's been dead for many years). I asked why he was calling one when grandpa was dead, and he said it was actually about a family property.

He called the meeting at my grandma's house, with my family and also our neighbor J- and his wife. Then he outlined the problem. Apparently there was another piece of property (land) which belonged to the family, but somehow it had ended up in the hands of Mary somebody. Mary had died just recently, and at her death, J- was supposed to have reclaimed the property again for us (somehow it was his fault that it had gone to her instead of staying in our family in the first place). But he hadn't done so, and our family wanted it back.

I don't remember exactly what the upshot of the meeting was or if he was going to get it back, but the next day my sister, brother, and I went out to an old barn or warehouse, presumably a building on the property, to recover some belongings that had been there for a long time. We went through boxes of papers and piles of junk, and found a lot of old drawings and things we'd made as kids, collected in boxes by our grandma on our mother's side (who also passed away some time ago). We were supposed to sort out various items and bring them home, on our parents' instructions. I'm not sure if we were going to lose the property again or get it back.

Many strange goings-on in a busy night

1/16/2008 - (Out of order, yep :P. I saved it on the wrong computer then forgot to post.)

Sad and looking for a place to stay

In the first part of the dream, I was coming from my parents’ house, but going to P- to stay with my aunt K-. I'm not sure why I couldn't stay at my own house, maybe I didn't live there yet. I didn't call in advance but ended up in downtown and wandered around trying to find a place to call. There was a library named Io Jima. I stood outside of it and called. My aunt was surprised that I was there, and I was embarrassed to explain that I needed to stay with her. It seems like maybe it was my house and she was just watching it for me while I was away, but hadn't expected me back so soon. I hadn't lived there before though, it was a brand new house for me that she was watching. We arranged for her to meet me downtown where I was. I went to a restaurant nearby and waited. There was a little boy there and I followed him around the building for some reason. I think my aunt picked me up and took me to the house, but then she was in the attic. There was a crawlspace there through a hole in the ceiling, but the cover that hid it was coming loose. It was like a door on a long strip of white leather, which was wearing out. I mentioned that I would get it repaired. We established a place for me to sleep up there, on a pallet near a big window, and I slept there. I seemed to be running away from something or had to stay there because of some kind of unpleasant situation that I was trying to get away from and had not had any place else to go.

The next day my siblings and cousins met me at the same restaurant downtown. It was an empty, old building all painted white, which didn't seem to be actually serving anything. Apparently this meeting indicated I needed to go back to my parents’ house.

When I got back I went over to Grandma’s for the weekend visit. We were all sitting around when my sister saw my mother coming back from a walk. She had my brother (young) with her and also some little kids including one in a backpack, which weren't hers but a friend's. I was surprised to see them. Someone commented that I had no sooner left than she'd replaced me with new kids. They came in and helped themselves to cookies and juice. I tried to smile at one of the little girls but she was solemn and suspicious of me. I saw my brother come in from the kitchen and spit on the floor. I got up and went into the kitchen and called him after, beckoning to him, and when he came I told him in a whisper that he needed to clean up the spit. He was chastened and moved to do so. My other aunt N- had already noticed it but he got to it. However, when I got back to the couch, my mother and the girls were sitting in my place and there was no room. I tried to sit but she didn't move, so I got up and went upstairs and sat sulkily by myself with my book, feeling excluded. I could hear my father talking downstairs about some woman who'd made great advances in her life, and it sounded like he was talking about me, and he described this book he'd read that was really good, called something beginning with P. Propet or Portent or something like that. The title was strange but a real word. He seemed to be sticking up for me, I thought, perhaps comparing me to the person in the book. My mother hadn't read the book and said he should have told her about it earlier. To which he said he had tried to get her to read it, and five times she had refused, tapping her finger on the book’s title, and said she “wouldn’t read a book with that damn title.”

Next dream:

South American "research"

I was in some country, I think in South America, there to study. There were two groups of young men there who were competing in some kind of coming-of-age ritual, although they were already close to my age. I was going to follow along with one of the groups for research. We trekked across the countryside. One of them was tall and close to my age, with pale skin and dark hair, handsome. The next was short and sort of fat, with curly long red hair and a long faded beard, looking sort of like a coworker. Another one was tall and darker, and the fourth I don't exactly remember but he was unattractive in some way. None was a leader; they all had to work together.

At one point they came to a river. They showed me one of the rules in their culture. They floated a small animal down the stream and the others watched from the opposite bank. But then they floated another animal that looked sort of like a dumpy green fruit-like frog, which turned its back on the watchers from the bank. Because of this, they yelled and threw things at it. I commented that the animal didn’t understand facing them or turning its back, but they explained that this was their tradition. Another one came by and faced them and they did nothing to it. Later the one that had turned its back floated in the water with a greasy stain coming from it, as if it were sick or dying. I am not sure if this was a way to identify dying animals (that they had seen it was sick beforehand) or if they had injured it. The entire scene with the floating animals I had seen before in another dream, but undeveloped as to its meaning and the surrounding story.

We got a move on then, one of them chastening the others for dallying there so long. We ran up hills, along narrow trails, etc. I ran to keep up, they were able to move faster than I. It was some kind of race against the other group. We camped for the night in a small tent with all of us. I wondered how we were going to spend the night like that, but the dream skipped over it so I never found out. In the morning I found myself waking with the handsome guy that I kind of liked still there, preparing to pack up. We talked and he ended up kissing me, and I got carried away by this and tried to go further. He protested that this would be a huge problem in the competition and get him and his group disqualified, but didn't resist very much. But immediately the other team member with the red beard popped in. He was totally shocked. I was embarrassed, and the other guy started moaning and praying and asking forgiveness for having done this. The other guy was angry and pointed out he'd put his whole group in jeopardy, but you could also see he was hurt that I'd picked that guy and not him or the others. We continued on and finished the race.

The two people on the council who awarded prizes picked their team to win despite the indiscretion, which apparently they were open about to the judges, but they fined the guy who had kissed me to 185,000 and possibly also a time in their jail. I was taken aback and felt very bad about my part in it, and thought the punishment harsh, but everyone was very relieved by it (apparently it could have been worth) and relieved that their group had passed.

Radioactive seepings downtown at work

Next: I am back in P-, possibly at work. I have been sent into another room to retrieve something. It has a big window across all one wall. I look out as I go there and see a big funnel cloud, but I can't tell if it’s a tornado or just a cloud shaped like that. In the room, I see the city landscape and I see a nuclear tower in the middle of it. It's normally quiet or not in used, but now it starts generating huge clouds of steam. People are in a closer room, watching, which I can also see through a glass wall into (I can see through the glass wall and the real window to see outside the building). As I'm watching wondering what is going on with the tower, is it going to explode? Some military people come in. some are already watching. They wear tan uniforms, and might not be military but work for the nuclear plant, but are somehow official. A short roundish woman in uniform asks me if I would like to come into the next room next to the window to get a better view (indicating there's no option about it). I go in with her and watch and ask some questions about it but don't learn much. After a bit I leave via going to the bathroom (as a kind of excuse to leave the room). But when I look at the toilet, instead of water, it's filling with blue stuff similar to toilet bowl cleaner, which is thick and sticky and everywhere. I try to wipe it off the seat but it comes back. It's somehow connected to the activity at the nuclear tower. I decide it won’t work and leave the bathroom and manage to get out of the room too, since now I want to leave instead of being stuck watching with the others. Then I wake up.

Thwarting a motel evildoer

Later the same day morning, I fall back to sleep and I have another dream where my husband and I are floating down a river in a canoe or other small boat. We stop and we want to spend the night at some kind of hotel. The place beside the river bank is like a miniature wooden house, with several parts, just barely big enough for a person to get inside and lay down. It’s like part of a fun park. We end up going in anyway. Somehow we have more space inside the house. There is a big guy in there too. I take a little boy, my brother or son, into the bathroom and go down the stairs. When I get down the stairs I get an awful feeling that something bad is happening upstairs and I race back up. I envision the big guy going into the bathroom after the little boy and trapping him in there. When I get up to the top I see he is not doing that but something else threatening, I don’t remember what. I somehow get up the banister, and manage to jump to the landing he is on, and stab him with a knife. I call to my husband and he comes and helps and we kill the guy. I only caught him because I had had that thought at the exact right moment to avert disaster. We run away out of the house after killing the guy.

Killer Bicyclist

12/29/2007
Saturday Night's dream

Towards the end of a long complicated dream that I don't remember, I'm going through a logging area. I'm not sure if I'm on foot or on a bicycle, but I don't think I walked all the way there. I have lost whatever vehicle I had. Towards the end of the road, I meet up with a bicyclist. She is sort of disheveled, with wild dark hair. We talk, and she mentions offhand that she's killed a couple of people in bicycling accidents (the others were also on bicycles or in cars). She speaks of it as sort of an unfortunate side effect; I feel slightly appalled by it, but I suppose that it does happen, we just don't hear about it that much. The continuing roads are closed, possibly by flooding, or don't go where I want to go, so I set off through the woods. I'm intending to cut through the hills to the town of R-. I pass a simple wooden shed in the woods, by the side of the road, intended for travelers to take shelter in. It's like a park building. A sign stipulates that the door to the "huckleberry hut" must remain open at all times. This has something to do with the weather conditions.

A dangerous market for me, attacks and poison

Monday night/Tuesday morning's dream -1 of 3

In the first part of the dream, I accompany the rest of my family to some sort of huge market. There is a $20 per car fee to get in. We have multiple vehicles. There is me, my sister and brother, my cousins, my aunt and uncle, someone who is either my husband or another guy (it changes), and one of my cousins' cousins from the other side of the family, a girl with dark hair called Jane or Jean or something like that. We negotiate the fees and the driving and eventually all make it there. We park our cars in some big garage parking area and split up into pairs of two. I think I'm with my aunt, but I get separated or don't want to stay with her and go off on my own. My husband/the other guy volunteer's to go with the cousin's cousin, who doesn't know anybody else there. This makes me jealous. I want him to go with me (if it is my husband, I think it's before we get married). I go through the huge market, it has many stores and goes in and out of huge warehouse buildings. There are tons of people there. Some of them make unpleasant comments to me or stare at me. I end up sort of lost, wandering around by myself, feeling rather uncomfortable. I run into one of my cousins, at one point, he is listening to a concert or band playing. Part of it is a huge dark warehouse with lots of open vendors, and other parts are like a mall, still others are open air market areas.

After some time, I climb back up stairs out of the bottom of the warehouse part, somebody is grabbing or harassing me in some way. I find my mother going through a jewelry section in the mall part. We meet up with my aunt at the open air vendor part, and everyone ends up gravitating back to the same area near the beginning, at the same time. Everybody else has been having a blast. It's unclear how we all managed to come back to the beginning at the same time, since it was not prearranged. Everyone drifts in except the cousin Jean/Jane and the other guy/my husband. I think about them off by themselves and am bothered.

We all stand around waiting to see if they will show up for a while, then go off looking for them. We go sideways from the mall area and there's sort of a canyon area, with hills and gullies with small trees and red crumbly clay. The females of the party decide it's time for a bathroom break and the others move away to wait. I climb the side of one of the clay hills, when suddenly an old guy in an orange/yellow checkered shirt comes after me. He looks a little loopy. I am afraid he is going to try to rape me. He pokes me with a wooden skewer with some sort of substance on the end of it, in the shoulder I think, and it hurts acutely. I wrestle it away from him and jab him with it several times. Within moments, he rolls over, dead.

I realize that the skewer had some kind of poison on it... will I die or become ill from the small amount I got? Some of the others come over but in my opinion they don't seem concerned enough about me and I am also irritated that none of them came sooner to help me. The unrelated cousin and my husband/other guy are also there now. Nobody seems to think it likely that I'm going to die from the poison or that it's anything to worry about, despite the dead guy lying there, only I am worried. We eventually make our way back to our cars, and I find mine (I'm traveling alone now, apparently). Overall I am bothered and disturbed by several things in the dream and everybody else seems happy and enjoying themselves.

Dealing in the Desert with a Disappearance in the Snow

Last night's dream

My husband had gone on a walk in a mountainous park. It was snowy there. He didn't come back and I and my family and rescue people went out to look for him, but didn't find him. It was a forested area high in the hills, which looked kind of like where I used to live. It snowed again that night and he did not come back. I came to the realization over the next days that people did not think he was coming back, and he might be dead.

My mother, who had been staying there with me, took me back home, and we were going up to my grandma's house to visit when we saw a sign board with a brown poster on it, and my sister started crying and was very upset. At first I thought it was bad news about my husband, but it was actually a notice about a wake for an old friend of hers who had died a few months ago (in the waking world as well). I was surprised to see her so upset, because she'd already known of his death at the time it happened and had seemed sad then but not so upset. Something had happened to her boyfriend around this time as well, he was sick I think in a life-threatening way. It seemed odd that all three of them were in peril around the same time. It was when she got upset over the sign that I realized that everybody else already thought my husband was probably dead by now, since he hadn't been found.

I was sad, and worried, but not inconsolable or as upset as my sister had been about the sign, because it didn't seem real to accept the fact that he was actually dead, so I kept waiting and hoping. I drove back near the mountain area, wanting to stay nearby and not to return home until he was found, also leaving my work indefinitely to wait and find out.

I started walking alone and found myself in a deserty area, very dry and dusty, with some sage brush and desert plants. I ran into a guy about my age, taller and bigger than me, but very friendly, and I followed him back to a small town, where he lived. He was native american, and it was a native american town, but it was in a somewhat old-fashioned architecture style. The buildings were of the type covered with baked clay, with rounded edges, like in the southwest, but modern and comfortable inside. They were sandy colored on the outside and matched the desert around. I felt a little out of place walking through the town, but he and his family who lived there invited me in and I stayed and talked with them. They knew already who I was, it seemed, and that my husband was lost in the snowy mountain area (it had a name, but I don't remember which mountain it was). They were very nice and sympathetic to me. I stayed for a while, and watched TV with them, there were some issues with reception and we kept getting strange channels.

The guy I met offered for me to spend the night there, as I wanted to stay in the area and I had nowhere to go. He was very nice to me and as I got to know him, I realized that he liked me and was interested in me. I told him that I was very grateful of the offer (I was, and I kind of wanted to stay there), but I reminded him that I was married (I don't know if I said married, or engaged to be married). He said that he knew that (in other words, was not trying to get anywhere with me right now), and he looked sympathetic and it occurred to me that none of them thought my husband was coming back, they were just waiting for me to come to that conclusion as well, and provide comfort for me when I did. He wanted me to know that he wanted to be there for me when I understood that, but he wasn't going to pressure me, although he didn't say this, just showed it by his actions.

I realized that if my husband was really not coming back, I would keep hoping for a long time, and how long would it take before I accepted it? I never accept things, just keep hoping whenever something bad happened or I lost someone. This brought to mind the guy I had loved years before I met my husband, who hadn't been interested in me the same way. I had kept hoping he would change his mind, but it hadn't changed, and eventually I'd forced myself to move on. Looking back I knew it wouldn't have worked out but it had taken a long time to realize that. The nice guy who was helping me reminded me of him in some ways, but more gentle and nice to me.

I tried to think about how it would be and what I would do if it turned out I was a widow, but I couldn't get it to sink in. I spent a lot of time wandering around the area and thinking about it, and wondering if my husband would be found, as the nice guy who'd offered me a place to stay while waiting showed me around the town and the garden and such, and tried to make me comfortable.

The overall feelings of the dream were of sadness, thoughtfulness, the unreal feeling caused by shock, and also a sort of comfort, as if everything was going to keep going and be okay. When I awoke I still felt this and then I also felt guilty about it and about not being more distraught.

A leap not of faith - deeply affecting me

10/30/2007 - Last night's dream

Someone tells me that a former coworker of mine, who I thought had quit or gotten fired, had actually committed suicide. At first I think it is "Eric," a former coworker at my current workplace (who looks like an actual former coworker at my current workplace, who I didn't know very well), but it turns out to be someone called Billy Graham, Jr., at my previous job. (I didn't recognize him as an actual coworker from there in the waking world. Also he is apparently no relation to the famous Billy Graham, despite the name).

Apparently, over a year ago when everyone thought he was fired or let go, he actually had jumped off one of the 400-towers at my previous workplace, to his death. I am completely shocked to learn this. I'm also shocked that nobody told me this at the time and I didn't know, since it happened while I was there. In my recollection, he was a tall, somewhat gangly fellow, probably in his 20's, with light brown hair. He also taught classes on doing things in the outdoors (perhaps survival classes) at local colleges. I knew of him at work but didn't work with him directly, but now am quite caved in by the news.

A bit later, same dream, I am at a house, which I think is mine. It's not like any house I've actually lived in, and I don't think it's supposed to be. In the dream it is located near where I actually live now, although the terrain is more like SW W-. It is an old house, painted gray. A few people including my sister are with me, and we are hanging up wet clothes to dry in the house. It seems like we were out walking and got caught in a rainstorm and soaked. It's still drizzly out now and throughout the dream. There are so many wet clothes, I am afraid that they are going to steam up the inside of the house and not dry. As I am carrying clothes inside from the van which is parked out front, I realize that you can see through the large front window all the way through the house and out the back window, because I can see my sister in the backyard bringing clothes in. The windows each have a plain, white or light colored curtain completely covering them, which I thought prevented people outside from seeing in very clearly. Now I realize that they can see my quite easily when I am inside, which I don't like.

A short time later, I am riding in my mother's van with my mother and my cousin. My mother is driving, and my cousin sits in the back with me. They have come together to visit me, meeting at that house earlier in the dream, and we are now driving somewhere nearby, a wooded area. I talk to my cousin, mostly to have something to talk about as we haven't always gotten along in the past. She mentions that they had some trouble finding my house, and I agree that it's hard to find. If you don't turn at the correct spot, which is easy to miss, you have to keep going because you run into a bunch of one-way streets, and eventually 3 or 4 streets later you have to turn right and you end up at a small graveyard, where you can turn around.

Casting around for another topic, I ask her who used to teach the outdoors classes that she took a while back. I know already that it was Billy Graham, Jr., and it's not so much that I care to inform my cousin about what happened, as that I desperately need to tell SOMEone the news. She says it was Billy Graham, Jr., and mentions a few details about the classes. I am bursting to reveal the news, not in an excited way, but in the way it is when you have learned something bad or creepy and you have to tell someone so you aren't the only bearer of this information. I let some pauses go by and then say, Guess what? and tell her about the suicide. She is shocked along with me. It's just unimaginable thinking of how he killed himself jumping off the tower, and I was even THERE, and thought he had just quit or been fired, and everyone went along with it without much question when he wasn't there, and NOBODY TOLD me. It was like they were trying to keep it quiet, to keep the bad feeling away.

My mother then mentions offhand that my husband and I have such a wonderful marriage, the best one that she knows of among all the people she knows even herself. She is so happy for us. I feel extremely guilty knowing that it's not so great as it appears, but I can't tell her and don't even want to tell her and make her feel sad.

We stop the car and are preparing to go hiking in the woods, and we will visit someone on the other end. We take backpacks and my mother asks me to bring some dried fruit from the car, to give to the person that we will meet at the end of the hike. It's a man, but not someone I know. I get the dried fruit from the car, it is prunes and dried apricots in a coffee can. I take some new, freshly dried ones and place them on top to fill up the can. The new ones are enormous, one dried half being almost as large as the diameter of the coffee can. I think about how new fruit just keeps being added to the top, and likely when the guy we are giving this to digs down to the bottom, there are going to be some old moldy pieces of dry fruit, which will disgust him. However, I don't dig down to get them out, just add the pieces on top and bring it up to my mother to put in her pack.

I wake up with "The only boy who could ever reach me, was the son of a preacher man" stuck in my head, despite the apparent lack of connection to Billy Graham, and find myself wondering what the suicidal guy is supposed to teach me... that the answer is jumping off a tall building? It seems like there are too many metaphors here for me to possibly sort through. The whole dream was laced with tenseness, guilt, hidden things being revealed, and a sad feeling. The dead guy in my dream doesn't seem to be a real person in the waking world, but I did learn about 2 months ago that someone I used to know recently committed suicide, and it had a big effect on me. His ghost showed up in another dream, shortly thereafter, which I didn't log here due to other disturbing content.

Escape As Angry Teenager and How to Respond to a Violent Death

Sunday, 10/21/2007 - Last night's dream

In the first part, I am at the beaver dam with my cousins and possibly siblings, at a younger age. We are escaping or hiding from some people, possibly our parents, but we are hiding separately from each other. I spend a lot of time crawling through several-foot-tall grass, sneaking away quietly from those approaching on the road. At one point, someone passing by sees me, but as it turns out does not capture me but points out that my hiding place is visible and I should move. I drop to ground level and belly crawl through the grass to a safer vantage point. I crawl out onto a bank from where I have a view of the road but can duck down into the grass again. My younger cousin is being taken past on the road by an adult. I wave at her somewhat smugly indicating that I have not yet been captured, the adult does not see me. She looks unhappy but doesn't give me away.

In the second, much longer part, I am at my parent's house. I am still living at home, and am much younger, a young teenager, and at permanent odds with my parents. I have just arrived to take my evening shower and am next in line. My father is complaining about how I have not been studying SAT paperwork for a big test (I don't think it's the SAT but something else which I'm using those materials to study for). I am mad and don't want to study it. When my younger brother arrives, my father tells him to shower next while I do some studying. I am extremely upset by the unfairness of it all, and decide to leave home in a fit of teenage angst. I stomp off afterwards.

I pack some possessions and take off on foot, setting up camp for the night in the woods by my grandparent's driveway, not far away. I am quite furious with my parents and am fed up with living at home. There is some interim part earlier where I am captured in a woodshed or barn with my cousins and/or siblings, and we escape. At any rate, my cousins and siblings come along and find my camp, and since they are also running away (from the captors, not from their parents), decide to stay with me. They have other supplies, so I grudgingly allow it and we set up a tent. It is going to be extremely close quarters, and I consider moving into a tree instead. My younger cousin cautions that this would not be a good idea, because I am pregnant and if I fall I could injure the baby. This is true, I consider. Apparently I have been pregnant all through the dream (showing quite a bit), this isn't new news.

Then, some friends and relatives of my cousins come down the driveway to our hiding place with my aunt N-, who says they have freshly escaped as well and are going to stay with us. This is the last straw! I do not want to share my hiding place with all these people, but the others want to allow them to stay with us. I announce angrily I am going off to make my own camp. I pack up my few belongings and stalk off. Dusk is falling. I hear coyotes howling and reconsider the tree idea. I pause on a hillside and see a wolf or coyote walking nearby. Someone, possibly my lover/future husband, is with me now and we change to look like mountain lions (or appear so to the coyote), it sees us lying together and passes by without approaching us.

Then I am alone again. I have more possessions than I need to set up sleeping quarters, so I decide to put them in my car, which is parked on the side of the road. I consider taking the car and parking it at the edge of the field and spending the night there, but I can't think of anywhere to park it that my father won't see it in the morning, and I want to be more hidden than that since I have told them I am going to leave home and live on my own. I put some items into a box in the car. While I'm doing so, my mother walks up.

She seems sad and asks me what my plans are. I am grouchy and say I am about to leave. She suggests a place several valleys over that supposedly has some jobs available right now. I am somewhat surprised, and a bit disappointed, since I was sort of thinking she would try to convince me to come home, but I don't want to show this. I grumpily say, "Well, maybe I'll go there then." My mother sits down in the car with me first to talk to me, and shows me a necklace that she got. It is made of many brightly colored strands of string, like a very vibrant hammock, and is very long. It looks like it is a stylized version of long elaborate hair. Halfway down there is a multicolored plastic ball which pulls the strands together, and at the end they all come together in a larger ball, which is like a comet with the strings as its tail. I comment on this similarity, and my mother says that she thought it would make up for her thinning hair as she gets older, and tells me about a shop in an open air market where she bought it recently.

As we are talking there, we see a guy who has just arrived in a small dark blue car. He is maybe 30 with dark hair, and is very agitated. His friend is lying injured by the side of the road just a little distance from my car; the friend has just been hit by a car (another car, apparently). He is freaking out asking us what he should do in terms of first aid. My aunt K- has walked up as well in response to his cries. We gather around. It is immediately evident that there is no hope for his friend. The injured person's head is sliced cleanly in two like a cantaloupe, and bleeding. The live guy is panicking and freaking out. He asks if he anyone knows how to apply a tourniquet. He reasons that cut off limbs can be amputated and people survive, right? My aunt makes gentle, reasoned responses to each of his queries, indicating that she doesn't think it will help in this case, breaking it to him gently that his friend cannot recover. Every time he says something, I want to blurt out the obvious--The guy's head is cut in two! That cannot be fixed or transplanted--but I hold myself back and marvel that she is able to respond without stating the obvious. I can see that stating the obvious would make the already upset guy much more upset, but I myself cannot formulate a response that doesn't include this pretty bluntly. He also asks about calling an ambulance. He says he tried to call M-, but he couldn't get through. "M- who?" says my aunt. I am surprised again (M- is the name of my grandfather, her father, deceased a few years, who would have been living across the street if he was alive. But she doesn't give any indication of this to the distressed person). He says M- was an old friend of his who lived nearby (probably the same person, but again my aunt doesn't say anything about this and I stop myself as well).

I find myself wondering at the back-and-forth play in this conversation, obviously she (and my mother, who is also responding in the same fashion) want to help and calm the guy, and their responses are working, but I can't figure them out or what I would say to get that effect. I can only tell that my blunt statements that come to mind should definitely not be spoken, and I am able to restrain myself from saying anything since they are doing a much better job.

Touching Another Plane

Monday Night, 9/10
I was at a new class. I'm not sure what kind of class it was, but it was some kind of PE class involving physical activity, or training to do CPR, or swimming... something like that. I had a locker which I retrieved my things from. It was a new class that I just started, and there were some people I knew slightly in it or talked to... I wasn't feeling extremely negative about it, but not that positive either. There were the usual confusions of the new day where I did not seem to know where anything was or what anything meant, while everyone else did.

Then, I have stopped by the P- airport. I am intending to go to a nearby grocery store, as I urgently want to buy some ice cream. I have slipped away from the others, in this, since for one they would not approve and for two, I am intending to eat it all myself, guilty style. I'm having one of those periods of craving things and eating them all myself.

I make my way up and down aisled, through rows. It sort of morphs between an open air market and an actual grocery store of the enormous warehouse style. I collect a cylindrical box of ice cream, a frozen peanut butter pic dessert, and a third item, and make my way to the checkout counter. The guy there has a notice which he is passing out and which is on the wall, a flyer printed on colored paper. It notes that something about ID. I rummage around and around to locate my debit card and driver's license, holding up a lot of people, but I cannot find my current ID. According to the flyer, I can't make a purchase without it. I am steamed, and I resolve then and there to go to the nearby DMV office and get a replacement license in order to make the purchase. I suspect it's really not that lost, but I'm getting frustrated that I cannot buy the ice cream and other stuff. I stomp off to go do this, pondering if anyone will object to the fact that I have obviously driven to the DMV without a license. Around that time, I realize from writing on the flyer relating to the state that I must be across the border in V-, not in P- at all. For some reason this is irritating as well. I maneuver my way around the airport and stores and locate the DMV.
Skip over actually getting the license, I go back and purchase the ice cream and other stuff. The ice cream is in a yellow box like Tillamook ice cream, but it has a black, rather cartoony picture of a jackal on it. I meet up with my mother and sister nearby, and we are looking down into a treed area, possibly a park, from a high distance. I am in a much better mood now, but my mother is pointing down below, talking about how my sister can always see these things she can't see. She asks if my sister can see something down by the river.
My sister rolls her eyes to me, we've been through this before. It is I who can see things other people can't see, not my sister. She tells my mother she can't see anything, while I point out whatever it is down by the river.
Then, I see a pack of jackals (real ones), moving through the trees. I marvel over them and exclaim. My mother and sister cannot see them at all, and gradually throughout this part I realize that it's not that I can see BETTER, it's that they can't see them AT ALL. They are there, but I (and perhaps others) am the only one who can pick them out, as though they exist on another plane but live in this world. I am racing over the implications of this in my mind, thinking of other occurrences this might explain. Suddenly I realize that the jackals actually came from the ice cream I bought, and it is through this that they have been let out. I marvel at them, they are not dangerous or threatening, and the others seem to realize something is there, but cannot see it.

I take my mother's hand and leap down a huge waterfall of fruit from the top of the airport to the bottom. It is in enormous stairsteps, with different kinds of fruit on each step: peaches, strawberries, etc, hundreds and thousands of feet down. I jump easily from step to step, feeling the rush of air but knowing I will land safely as I bounce from one to the next. My feet squish into the fruit at each landing, and I can smell the fruit and see the airport far, far below, but I don't feel heightsick because of the certainty of the giant staircase I am jumping down. I glance to my mother, enjoying the sensations, and realize that she is a little frightened, although trusting of me. Then I realize that it is because she cannot actually see the fruit staircase we are jumping down either! It's like the jackals. I try to imagine what it must look like to her without it, probably scary, but she is coping very well.

Back near the grocery check out I run into some other people carrying their licenses, they can see these things too right now. We compare stories and discover that each time we lose our licenses, we have a glimpse into the "other side" as if we have died, but we haven't. This is what allows me to sometimes see these things from other planes. My best friend, S- died a month ago (in December, apparently... the time is different), and at that exact time I was able to dip into this plane as well. The other occasions for me and the other people this happens to have been triggered by similar events, and seem to also be signaled by the licenses, which get punched with a cancel stamp at that time: D. We are fascinated by our discoveries and heightened senses that we have access to, although it is something that seems to come and go and may be finite.

In real life, the time of the year is different (December was not a month ago), and my friend S- has not died, a month ago or now. But it's sunny and warm like the weather in the dream. I haven't lost my license lately, but I was driven to go and get some of that ice cream after the dream, although I only just made the connection.

Taekwon-do & chicken yard part 2, and me as a guy on drugs

Last night's dream: Wednesday Night 9/5/2007
In the first dream I was up at my parents house. Some relatives, possibly aunts, drove up in a car. My best friend from childhood, S-, was there, but she was only 8 or 10 years old. My sister had painted S-'s face blue and was trying to make sure that she didn't touch it and get it on her Taekwon-do suit.

I went down to the chicken-yard, my father was there cleaning it up. One side had been disked and plowed to make it all flat (this is beginning to sound like a strange sequel to this dream... maybe it is?). The sidewalks and inside were all clean, and the chicken's were enjoying pecking the tilled up earth. On the other side of the yard, I helped him move some boards against the bottom of the fence, which had been moved to cut down weeds and grass growing there.

Then I went to Taekwon-do with my sister, as we used to do when I was younger. By the time we got there it was absolutely pouring with rain, although I was not wet. We went inside and took our shoes off, I was wearing my black wooden clogs. When I took off my shoes, I discovered that the socks I was wearing were filthy, and I rolled them up with the clean cuff on the outside and stuck them into the shoes, feeling ashamed. My teacher came up and we bowed several times, she seemed happy to see me (although not ecstatic). Then she told my sister some kind of joke about God (I think it involved God's gender) which they both laughed about. I did not think it was funny and felt uncomfortable.


In the second dream, which sort of overlapped, I was a young man about my age who was addicted to (and on) drugs. My girlfriend was also addicted to drugs, including cocaine and heroine, and she disappeared and was found in the woods... dead in one version, and alive in another. In the ending in which she died, I did not feel sad or shocked, just sort of complacent and accepting of it. This faded back into the end of the other dream, with the pouring rain.

It was not pouring rain at all when I woke up, which was a little disappointing, although it's probably what allowed me to still get to work on time.

Apocalypse and a Paralyzed Dog which is My Fault

Dream from Saturday night (8/11)
It is the end of the world, the apocalypse is starting. One of the effects of this is the internet going down. There is a group of 100 or so people who are planning how they will survive it, a handpicked team. They have a way to keep a small network with their blogs and stuff going through the apocalypse. I am part of this team, but not by choice. It seems to have to do with my work affiliation. I am outspoken at the meeting expressing my contempt of their idea and asking why they get to single themselves out as being special enough to survive, what about the rest of the world? If just going off individual merit, my parents and family members are far more qualified, and not because they are related to me. I think the elite group should not exclude the rest of the world.

In between, I am on a trip somewhere with my family and husband. We are in a deserty region near the coast. I see the family dog, C-, being bitten on the face by a gila monster. Except, it doesn't really look like a gila monster, it is all green and swims in the water. But it is quite large, and it's bite is deadly poisonous. I feel guilty because I don't say anything immediately when I notice it, and then it finally lets go of his face and swims away (his whole head was pretty much in it's mouth) and I know that it's going to be fatal. Nobody else seems terribly concerned, until it becomes evident that his body is paralyzed (from the neck down, for some reason). We head back home. We end up in the city of P-, buildings are collapsing, or blown out and empty. We are searching for a veterinarian, but everybody is closed due to the apocalypse. We finally end up going back to the town where my parents live, where we locate a vet and leave C- there to be cared for, going back to my parent's house.

At my parents house, my father discusses with my husband how we should head back to our home. One proposal is for my husband to take the truck, and my father to take the tractor, with me riding on the back, and go into town. At the time I don't realize it, but later I think my father knew that the dog was going to die at the Vet's and would need to be retrieved. Later, I am standing on the covered porch at my parents house as darkness falls. I can actually feel the darkness closing in around me, it is velvety soft and warm. I go inside to the living room, my parents are sitting on the couch and chair. I ask them if they have heard anything about C-, or something like that. They do not say anything at all. We stand there looking at each other, me with the growing realization that this must mean he has died, but nobody says anything.

We are still standing there when my husband comes in the door and I wake up, without the question being answered.