Bitten! Another zombie nightmare

Zombie mom is always prepared

My husband and I are home alone, as my son is visiting my parents out of town.

I wake in the morning to find that he is all ready out of bed. I get up and go down the stairs into the living room. The whole apartment is dark. I look to see if he has fallen asleep on the couch, but he is not there. Maybe he is in the kitchen.

As I turn toward the kitchen, I can see him just standing in the little hallway that T-intersects between the living room, bathroom, and kitchen. I think that maybe he's sleepwalking, though I've never known him to do that before.

I approach and gently say his name. If he is sleepwalking, I don't want to startle him. If he reacts badly, he's in the one spot in the downstairs where he is most likely to impact a corner.

He turns toward me when I say his name. He holds his hands out to me, and I think maybe he is upset about something. I put my arms around him.

That's when he bites me. He sinks his teeth into my shoulder, not like a cute little love-nibble, but hard. He draws blood. The act startles me into jumping back away from him. I switch on the light and he shies away from it, looking at me and growling. His skin is pasty and pale, his eyes red-rimmed. He is drooling like a baby, and there is blood running down his chin. There is a huge, festering bite mark on his arm.

As I am backing away, I see a mangled body on the kitchen floor, and boxes stacked high in front of the sliding door. He sort of zones out a minute. I run for the door. As I reach it, I hear his feet pounding behind me. I open the door, turn the button lock, and practically throw myself outside, pulling it shut behind me. It's locked now. I don't know if he can get out, but no one will get in.

I hear the rattle of the handle as he tries to open the door. It rattles two or three more times, then stops. There is nothing after that. The lock appears to have flummoxed him long enough to forget what he was doing.

It's starting to get light outside. I look around quickly, but I don't see any other people. What has happened begins to dawn on me. My husband must have come downstairs after hearing a noise, fought an intruder who turned out to be a zombie, and been bitten in the process. Now, I've been bitten. I have to warn my friends, before they are taken by surprise.

I realize my phone is in the apartment, but I'm sure he is probably just inside the door. There is no way for me to get in there and get it. I look around. There is a lady with a bunch of kids coming out of the building next to mine. A little bus comes and they all get on it. The side of the bus says something about evacuation. The driver motions for me to get on and I shake my head. He looks at me like I'm nuts, until I show him the bite on my shoulder. His eyes widen, and he nods, quickly shuts the door, and drives away.

I know I don't have time to walk or drive to my friends' houses. Instead, I jump up into the air and think about remaining up. It works, and I am able to rise above the trees. I know that as long as I have the cognitive ability to do this, I'm not dangerous yet. I fly straight over the nearest friends' back yard, over their house, and land on the sidewalk. The front seems more like a store front than a house, with a big display window.

I run up the front steps and knock on the door. The youngest lets me in. I tell her I have to talk to her parents right now and to go get them immediately. She brings her mom, who has been my friend since college.

I tell the kids to go play. I don't want them to hear what I have to say. My friend notices my serious look, and sends them both out of the room.

I show her the bite. I tell her what happened, and that there is an evacuation in progress. She asks how long I have, and I tell her, "Until you shoot me."

We have an agreement about this. It's something we talked about one night years ago, when we were staying up late and just gabbing. It was just a dumb conversation between kids with ridiculous what-if questions about impossible scenarios, but it was also kind of serious, and I had made my thoughts pretty clear.

If I ever became irreversibly dangerous, and especially deadly, to others, and I would be unable to control my behavior, I would rather be killed than contained. In my right mind, the most horrifying thing that could happen to me would be if I were to lose control and hurt someone. I would never want there to be any risk of that. I'm scared, and I don't want to die. There is a feeling of dread weighing heavily in my gut. But I want even less to hurt anyone, and to me the choice is clear. I can't let myself become a monster.

She asks me if I'm hungry yet, and I say no. I'm not even feeling it yet. The bite is a little red, but it doesn't look bad. I tell her it would be best to do it now, and get it over with, before I have the chance to hurt anyone. I ask her to call my mom when she makes her calls, to give my family a chance to make themselves safe. She says she will. Everything about her is calm except her eyes. She's not crying, but if I say the wrong thing, like anything emotional or mention of my son, I can see that she will.
I don't. I need her to do this for me, and I mustn't do anything to make it harder than it has to be.

This is the part of the conversation that her husband walks in on. We've been buddies since they got together. He has kind of adopted me as a kid sister, which is funny, because I am older than he is. He is a good guy, but he's a bit more sentimental than she is. She's the disciplinarian in the house. He looks tough, and would kill to protect his kids, but when it comes to his loved ones, he's a big softie. He is appalled that his wife is going to shoot me just because I asked her to. He brings up the possibility of a cure, and says I should come with them so they can get me medical attention.

She and I exchange a look. I know they have an escape setup in the basement. They will be safe. I didn't come here to be rescued. I came to warn them. If they aren't going to stop me from becoming a mindless, ravenous, cannibalistic beast, I'll go back out the front door and try to find some other way to prevent it. If I can still focus enough to fly, it should be easy. I dread the thought of dropping myself, though. That might hurt a lot. Shooting would be quicker and less painful.

She tries to explain to him what is going to happen to me. I chip in with how horribly I fear hurting anyone, especially my loved ones. I tell him that denying me a quick end would force me to live out one of my worst nightmares. He argues, "not if we can get you to a doctor so you can be cured."

There is no arguing with him. He has put his foot down. I prepare to leave, but when I look out the window, I realize that there is a huge crowd outside now. They are all walking in the same direction, moving as if still asleep. These are not evacuees... they are zombies. I can't open the door, or some of them might try to come in here. They could get my friends.

I tell my friends, "You have to go now. They're everywhere." I know that their escape setup will take them out of the neighborhood, and anyone entering the house will not be able to find how they got out.

My buddy insists on taking me with them. I am not going, but I have to let him believe that I will, or he won't go until it's too late. My friend grabs her bug-out bag, her purse, with her cell in it, and a gun. My buddy grabs his phone and another bag that sounds like it has medicines in it. I follow them all down the stairs to the basement, where there is a huge boiler with pipes going all over the place. It takes up most of the area near the stairs. We have to go around it to get to the rest of the basement, where there is odd living room furniture made of layers of big square cushions.

The escape route is behind the bottom of the couch. There is a tunnel that leads out. I don't know were it goes, but I know that once they get out, they'll be ok. We raise the front cushion, remove the cushions from under the "seat" cushion, and send their dogs crawling in, and the kids behind them. My buddy goes next, followed by my friend. I quietly tell her I'll find a way to deal with this, and that I'm not coming. She nods, and we exchange a sad look. I tell her to go. She gets moving, and I put all of the cushions back into place, making sure no one can tell the difference. Had I been going with them, there would have been a way to do that from the inside, but since I didn't, it's not necessary.

I go back upstairs and get the key to the house. Then, I make a 911 call from their phone. A recording tells me about the evacuation. From the message, it sounds like the infection is mostly in the Virginias, southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. That is followed by a list of phone numbers to call under various circumstances. I write all of them down. I call my husband's ex. She does not believe me. I give her numbers to call, then call my older stepdaughter and tell her the same thing. She agrees to call the numbers. Even if the ex doesn't take care of things, my daughter will. She is smart.
I hang up and call my parents. I tell my mother what is going on, and give her the list of numbers. I call my husband's parents, and tell them the same. I tell both sets of parents, if you think I'm nuts, call the numbers. Everything will be explained. I tell them that then, they need to call the rest of the family.
I call a couple of other friends, give them the list, and charge them with calling as many of our other friends as they can.

In my family calls, I get teary disbelief from the other end of the line, but I don't have time to be human about it. I'm not hungry yet, but I'm really scared, and just a tiny little bit hopeful. The last number is to call if you are infected. There is mention that the military is working on a cure and is close. They need volunteers.

When I hang up with the third friend, I decide that is enough. I call the military number. I am asked a series of questions, including how long it has been since I've been bitten, how the bite looks, whether or not I am hungry, am I having to swallow more frequently than normal, and am I starting to feel any confusion or "brain fog."

Looking at the clock, I realize it's been nearly half an hour since I was bitten. The bite is an angry red, but it's not swollen up like my husband's bite was, and it hasn't produced any pus, like his had. I'm still not hungry, and I'm not drooling. My thoughts are flowing just fine. The person I am speaking to seems surprised that after the amount of time it has been, I'm not showing any symptoms. He tells me that the virus has been acting faster than that on most people. He asks for a description of how my husband looked, and I give it.

I am asked about our health history, and I give that, too. I am asked the address where I am, and I give that. I tell him that I came in here to warn my friends, but they were all ready gone. I used my key to get in and double check, but the house is empty. They must have left with the evacuation. The agent I'm talking to seems to buy that.

He tells me to wait there, and an ambulance will come to pick me up. He says my condition is unique, and I may be able to speed the process of creating a drug that eliminates the condition. I am momentarily happy about that, but then I wonder what will happen if it doesn't work.

I ask, "They won't just let me exist as a zombie if they can't cure me, right? I don't want to be like the people outside." The agent assures me that the cure is at hand, but in the "unlikely" even that it does not work, the back up plan is "termination." I won't be forced to live as a flesh-eating zombie. Relief floods over me. Whatever testing they are going to do might hurt, but at least I will be helping to solve the problem. In the process I will likely be cured, and find the cure that can save everyone else. I just have tough out whatever comes next.

I give the agent a rundown on the neighborhood situation. The street is populated by moving zombies, but they all seem to be headed toward the downtown area. There are not as many now as there were before, but there are still some. Behind the house is an alley, and there doesn't seem to be anything out there. There is a six foot chain link fence around the back yard, with a big gate. The gate is broken, so it only looks locked. They can come in that way, close the gate, pick me up, and get out quickly without confronting a horde.

By the time I hang up with him, there is a big truck outside. It has ambulance lights and markings, but it looks more like a moving truck. Some men in military gear get out. They have a straight jacket and a mask like the one worn by Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. I step outside, lay on the ground, and put my hands behind my head. I tell them to hurry, and to keep quiet so the zombies won't come around the back, but they've been attracted by the sound of the truck and are rushing the fence. I say that I'm not hungry yet and will comply with any instructions I'm given.

The guys grab me and quickly drag me into the truck, where I put my arms into the sleeves and let them wrap me up. I tell them to go ahead and put on the mask just in case it happens on the ride "there." I don't know where there is. They are treating me with caution, but they don't seem scared. One says, "you're really not hungry yet?" I'm still not, but I can feel that I have a fever, and I tell him that. I see hope in their eyes. The truck starts moving, and I feel myself falling. A pair of hands catches me from behind. I hear someone say, "This might be the one. She's infected, but she's fighting it."

As I wake, the thought occurs to me that maybe I am fighting the virus better than others because my immune system was changed by my experience with a predecessor of West Nile from a mosquito bite in 1985. Then, I wonder if maybe I got a weakened version of it because my husband's white cell count has been elevated by a gout attack . I want to ask the men, but I'm surfacing from the dream, and I can see my room. I realize that I have been dreaming. I'm not infected with anything.

I laid in bed for a moment, thinking about the dream. The buildings and topography didn't match reality, but that is pretty common for my dreams. The apartment doesn't border directly on a street. We face the parking lot. It has a street name, but it isn't really a street. It's private property. 
There is no alley behind my friends' house, and there is no escape tunnel in the basement, and their backyard fence is nowhere near as tall as the one in the dream. It's just a fence. There isn't even a couch like that. Then again, the layout of their house was also different. The building was almost like a downtown store instead of a house. The window was huge. Were the situation real, the zombies outside most certainly would have seen us and attacked. Also, it's Monday, a school day. My son is at home, not at my parents' house.

The people kind of matched, but not totally. My husband would have defended against an intruder, and when he discovered there were zombies, he would have blocked off the sliding door, but he would not have stayed in the apartment after being bitten. He would have left to avoid infecting me. The kids never would have just willingly let themselves be left out of the conversation, either. The would have hidden in the hallway and eavesdropped.

The memory of the conversation where my friend and I promised to not let each other live as unthinking, cannibalistic or otherwise deadly monsters was a real memory. It is also true that her husband, my buddy, wouldn't have the heart to follow my wishes before I started showing symptoms. However, my friend is protective enough of her family and caring enough of my wishes that she wouldn't have argued with him. She just would have shot me as I asked her to, and faced the consequences later. We have a pact. I would do the same for her under the same circumstances.

He doesn't have all of his meds in a bag he can just grab and go, either. On waking, I thought, what if there is some kind of natural disaster we all have to get away from? I'm going to point that out to him and suggest he put them in a bag to take into the basement with him if there is a tornado, or to to take away with him if there's ever any other kind of area threat that causes an evacuation.

Flying is something that happens in a lot of my dreams. It's so frequent that it no longer even clues me in to the fact that I'm dreaming. Most of the time it happens in good dreams, but like this time, it also happens during nightmares. It usually involves an escape, though.

The dream was disturbing, but it didn't leave me with quite the bad feeling that some of my zombie nightmares have caused. I woke feeling hope that not only I, but all of the infected could be saved from the disease. I felt that the process could be reversed. I was expecting painful tests (biopsies, blood tests, and tests with drugs or serum to see if it kills the virus) but I felt that it would be worth it. As I woke, I was in the process of calling on my willpower and inner strength to psyche myself up and steel myself against the coming experience, not dreading it. As a result, I feel really ready to face whatever comes along today, despite being exhausted and in pain from an extra long and challenging work shift yesterday. 


On a side note, this is the second time I have had this dream.

Recurring nightmare: Ravenous

I'm in a darkened room, sitting on a hard cement or stone floor. I'm extremely hungry, like to that point where I feel weak and shaky. All around me, in the dark, there is meat. I am grabbing big chunks of it and eating with my hands, letting the juices run down my chin and onto my clothes, barely chewing before I swallow. No matter how much I stuff my face, I'm still famished, still feeling shaky and weak, as though I haven't eaten in a few days.
I can hear the sound of my own munching, the smacking and ripping sounds as I tear chunks off of the meat with my teeth, chew, and gulp it down. I am disgusted with myself for eating this way, but I feel like I am starving. If I slow down, I'll never catch up to this hunger. It's so strong, it hurts.

I get to the point where I've eaten everything within reach. I crawl around looking for more. There is a feeling of desperation. What if there is no more food here? Quickly, I come to a wall. I'm momentarily distracted by that, and feel my way along it. It's made of stone blocks or huge, smooth bricks. It's curved around enough that after feeling my way along for a while, I realize the room is round, with no doors. I can't find a ceiling, even if I jump, but I do come across more meat. I sit down and begin gobbling it up.

Soon, I've eaten everything around me again, and I crawl along the wall looking for more. I continue to seek out more meat and cram it in for a long time. There always seems to be more, but I always seem to be starving.

Suddenly, there is light. Way up above me, there is a crescent shaped crack in the darkness, and I see something falling. It hits the floor with a thud. In the dim glow from the light above me, I can finally see what I've been eating. On the floor all around me are human corpses and human body parts. The object that just fell is the corpse of a large man. Looking up, I can see the silhouettes of two people. I hear them talking.

"Is she eating them?"

"Looks like it."

I can see that my hands are stained with blood. It's caked under my fingernails. My clothing is soaked in it. Huge segments of flesh have been torn off of the bodies, and I'm surrounded by bones. It's not just meat. I've been eating human flesh. I've been ripping their bodies apart and cramming wads of human flesh down my throat like some kind of carnivorous beast.

I am shocked. I think I should feel nauseated and ashamed, but I don't.
Even now that I know what I've been eating, I'm ravenous, and I'm thrilled that there is fresh meat in front of me. To not grab and devour it takes an immense amount of restraint. The only reason I am able to make myself wait is that the people above me are watching me. There is nothing out of the ordinary about their appearance, but something about them terrifies me.

I hear myself growling at the people above me, and though I'm horrified at how animalistic I sound, I can't stop. Though my logical mind tells me otherwise, I am emotionally convinced that they are going to take my food. I can't stop thinking of the bodies as food.

The silhouettes face each other. One nods, and the crescent of light shrinks to nothing, once again returning me to darkness. Unseen, I lunge at the fresh body and begin tearing into it. I can't stop. I am so hungry!

Oddly, in these dreams, as long as there is "food," I don't have the sense of being trapped in the little room, which seems to only be about 12 feet in diameter. I have no desire to escape, only a desperate need to eat. Only when I think there is no more to eat do I think about getting out.

In worse versions of this dream, when there is light and I look around, I can see that the faces on the bodies are people I recognize. On a few occasions, some of them have been moving. The worst time I ever had this dream, some of the bodies were my loved ones. That time, I woke screaming.

Most of the time, when I wake from this dream, I can feel that I've gotten hungry in the night, and I think that maybe I was feeling the hunger pangs and they made me have the dream. Other times, though, I don't have that, and I have no clue why I'm dreaming of having a crazed, starved, feeding frenzy on human flesh. I never feel guilty about it during the dream. 

When I wake I'm momentarily baffled, grossed out, and upset about my activity in the dream and my attitude toward it. The feeling mostly fades quickly, as I am able to look at this as just a dream, but I do remain really disgusted by the thought of it. Even when I am hungry, having had this dream makes it hard for me to eat breakfast.

Recurring nightmare: Doppelganger

When I was really young, I started having dreams about running into an exact or nearly exact, but wholly evil copy of myself. There are a few specific ones I remember, but I also remember that the theme was a frequent occurrence. I still have doppelganger dreams now, but they are much more rare than back then.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I am in the kitchen with my Mom. She sends me to get something from my room. I go down the hall past the bathroom, turn, and go down the hall to my room. The door is closed. That's odd, because normally I don't keep it closed, but I dismiss it. I open it to go in and get what I am after.

When I open the door, I see myself sitting on the bed across the room from me. Sitting with my other self is my mother. My other self looks upset, as if she's been crying, and she is snuggled up to my mother. I realize that can't be Mom, either, because she's out in the kitchen. The realization of that actually is scarier to me than the sight of my double. Then, my double gets off of the bed and begins slowly walking toward me, her jaws working hungrily. I back out of the room and shut the door. I run back down the hallway. I hear the door open as I near the end of the hall. I turn to see the doppelganger standing right behind me, mouth opened further than it should be. One physical difference between us is that her teeth are like shark's teeth; there are rows and rows of them, and they all come to a point. I try to push her away and she grabs my hand and bites my finger.

The pain woke me. I am pretty sure that the cause for this dream was the pain of a broken finger, which I remember happened when I was in the second grade. By the time I was in high school, that finger was starting to show signs of osteoarthritis. My other fingers are doing the same now that I'm almost 40, but that one got a 20 year head start. I'm guessing the head start is was caused by the injury.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I'm in my room. I've been sitting and reading, and I'm getting kind of hungry. I think I'll go get a bite to eat. I get up out of the beanbag I'm sitting in, and turn to leave my room. As I turn, my eyes catch the tall mirror on the dressing table at the other end of my room, near the door. My reflection looks wrong. It takes a moment to realize that it's because the hair color is wrong. I have dark brown hair, and the girl in the mirror is blond. I move closer, and notice that she also has really, really pink eyes... and sharp teeth. She's baring them at me.

I bolt toward the door, which takes me right past that mirror. As I run, the doppelganger runs toward me in the mirror. I'm terrified. I run out the door. As I cross the threshold, I feel something tug at the back of my shirt, but it lets go. I slam the door, hard, and there is a thud on the other side.

* * * * * * * * * * *

It's mostly a normal day. I have errands to run. I have things to deliver, things to pick up, and people to check on. I go about my normal routine, write down my list, and lay it on the kitchen table. I get my breakfast together and grab something to read while I'm eating.

When I'm done with breakfast, I reach for the list, but it's gone. It's not just not where I put it. It's also not on the floor nearby, not on any of the chairs, not in the trash, and not in my pocket. It occurs to me that maybe, without thinking, I used it as a bookmark . I can see myself telling my friends about that later and laughing. However, it's not there, either. The paper has just vanished.

I'm frustrated by the loss, but I guess it's no big deal. I decide that I don't have time to write the list again, but writing it the first time kind of fixed the stops in my memory.

The first place I'm going is to pick up a check at the newspaper. I have to cash it before I can run my other errands, or I won't be able to cash it until tomorrow. When I get there, the secretary tells me I was all ready there earlier, and picked it up then. I know that I wasn't, and think that maybe my Mom picked it up. We look a lot alike.

I head home, but she's not there. My brother is up, though. He tells me I'm too late to apologize for what I said earlier, that I'll have to wait until she comes home. I don't know what the heck he's talking about, but I don't have time to deal with it right now. I have to deliver something to a friend for a school related project, and she's only going to be at home for a couple of hours between activities today. I head to her house.

When I get there, my friend is unhappy with me. She says we're done talking about it, and not to try  to fix things. When I ask what she's talking about, she tells me I was just there and told her I don't have the item for her project. I tell her that's impossible, that I just came from home, and I have the object right here. I hand it to her. She acts like I'm either crazy, or trying to make her feel like she is. We part on kind of edgy terms, but agree to just call the situation weird.

This continues for all of my errands; every place I go, I'm told that I was just there a few moments earlier, and had done or said something to upset the person or people involved in the errand. If I was supposed to pick something up, it's been taken. If I was supposed to deliver something, it's no longer expected. Everyone on my list looks at me like I'm an absolute nut.

The whole day, I am a step behind my double, never running into her, always running into the fallout from whatever it is she did. At the end of the list, I go home. When I walk in the door, my whole family is in the kitchen, talking worriedly. They all turn to look at me with surprise. I ask what's wrong, and my brother asks me how I got there. When all I can do is give him a confused look, he tells me we all just had a huge fight, and I locked myself in the bathroom. I hear the bathroom door slam open, and everyone jumps and stares in that direction. I get chills, worrying about what I'm going to see come down the hallway from there.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The second one first happened when I was in about the 5th grade. We'd just moved me into an upstairs bedroom, and I wasn't used to sleeping up there. The third one started when I was in high school. There were more, but those three are dreams I had more than once, and which have stuck with me for a long time.

Wreck

This was one of those really short ones that gets to me when I have it. I've had it before, and every time, I feel creeped out all day afterward. It makes me nervous about being in the car at all.

I'm riding with a colleague to a meeting. We both work for the same department of the same company. We're heading across the state for this meeting, which is about something we did that the company wants to expand to things other people are doing. The meeting is really important, and we're dressed in suits. Mine has a skirt, and I'm wearing a moderately frilly blouse with it.

The driver is one of those medium-height, (around 5'7" to 5'9") energetic, positive attitude guys. If he was a woman, I'd say perky. He's fun to work with, and I'm really glad I'm riding with him. We're enjoying the trip. We had a good lunch at a place we both like, and now we're laughing and joking as we drive.

Suddenly there is a huge, unavoidable accident in the road ahead of us. I can't tell what started it, but there is now a several car pile-up around a tanker semi. I can't see what the semi says it's carrying, but I'm worried. The driver hits his breaks and turns the wheel to avoid hitting the cars in front of us, but we still end up crunching into a little sporty two-door that is just off the right side of our lane. We aren't badly damaged, but the two-door is really crunched up. The people inside are moving, and I don't see blood, but that doesn't mean they aren't badly injured.

We are ok. We decide we should get out and see if we can help anyone. Before we can, another vehicle slams into the middle of the mass of cars all ready crashed. This vehicle is larger, but I can't see it well enough to identify what it is because I'm not looking in that direction.

The tanker truck explodes, sending cars flying. The little two-door lifts up off of the pavement, taking the front end of our car with it, then forces us backward. We're flying back, then falling as we go off the edge of the road and into what looks like a quarry. It feels like we flip over twice. We land kind of on our side, with the driver's side down. All of the glass in the car is broken, and dirt comes pouring in. I hear a sick, wet crunching sound and a scream from beside me.

Then, it's quiet except for the pattering sound of dirt falling into the car, now more slowly. I have dirt up to my knees. I look over, and my colleague is covered up past his chest. He is very pale, and his eyes are red-rimmed with anguish. On his face is an expression of grim determination. He looks at me, and his face bears an intensity I can't fathom.

I'm terrified.

He struggles to speak.. "I'm dead. See if you're buried."

Somehow, I know that he means for me to see if I can get out of the car. Before I can look, I see his eyes kind of glaze over and lose focus, his face loses all expression, and he starts quietly repeating that line over, and over. "I'm dead. See if you're buried. I'm dead. See if you're buried. I'm dead. See if you're buried." He speaks rapidly, and with no emotion, as if trying to remember a list instead of to communicate, or as if he's stuck on that one line and can't move on to the next thought. He is extremely pale.

For a moment, I am confused, and a little afraid of him, and then I realize he's dying. The crunch I heard was something under the dirt damaging his body. The pattering noise I'm hearing is not the only sound in the car. There is a trickle of liquid somewhere that I can't see. He's bleeding to death. He's repeating that line because he is stuck on it. His brain isn't getting oxygen, and he's losing consciousness. His last words were his way of telling me to get out of the car before the dirt traps me in here with him. I want to escape the sinking car, but I don't want to leave him. It's an awful feeling.


He is still repeating that line when I wake up. It's the last thing I hear before finding myself in the darkness of my room.

Every time I've had that dream, I've always awakened with a feeling of sheer terror, sure I'm trapped in that car, horrified at what has happened to my colleague, and filled with dread over the fact that I cannot do anything to help him.


The parts of the dream that I experience are so vivid and feel so real that I can't seem to shake it off when I wake up. I still feel that sense of dread and horror, and kind of a sense of guilt over having to save myself and leave my dying colleague behind. 


One of the weirdest things about how real this dream is, is the fact that the "colleague" and the job are completely nonexistent. The person in the dream is not anyone I've met in real life. He's not anyone famous, or anyone I remember seeing on TV or in movies, either. I've never worked for a department of a company in a capacity like in the dream, either.


The closest thing I have to relate to this is that I was in a terrible accident as a child. My mother, grandmother and I were traveling across the state to see family. I was sleeping in the back of the car when the accident occurred. My mother was severely injured, and nearly died of her injuries. I wasn't hurt, but it was only by chance that I wasn't killed. The only reason I survived is because of the way I was laying. Had I been facing the other direction, the car that hit us would have smashed my head.

The memory is traumatic, but not in the same way as this dream. No one actually died in that accident, and I was young enough to not understand a lot of what happened. There were only two cars involved, ours and the car that hit us. There was no semi, no explosion. It was just a really bad two car accident. They did have to use the jaws of life to get my Mom out of the car.
Some of my memory of that accident is distorted (like the way the car looked after the accident; I remember it looking much worse than I'm told it actually did) but I grew up with Mom & Grandma both very much alive afterward, so I'm pretty sure the death in this nightmare didn't come from that experience.

Fragments of the journey

Sleep was really broken up last night, so the same happened with my dreams, but they were all weird nonetheless. The first one was yet another instance of me being a guy in my dreams. Kinda weird... it happens a lot. When I was younger, it used to upset me, but it doesn't bother me any more.

I'm on my way to a wedding, driving a big long van. In it are the tux I'm supposed to wear, and a pair of shoes that are hell on my feet. I'm not putting any of it on until I get there, not because I'm afraid it'll get spoiled, but because I just hate wearing crap like that. It's uncomfortable no more because the clothes are binding and inflexible than because they're just not me. It can't be helped. I'm in the wedding.

I'm having a rough time with the van. It drives fine on flat road, but it really struggles on hills. I think back to a joke I once heard in a movie, about driving a Rolls Canardly... rolls down one hill, can 'ardly get up the next. Har har har.

To add to the stress of the day, I get lost. I make a wrong turn, and end up driving toward some small town I've never seen before, and I've driven all over the state. Now, I'm not in the van any more. I'm on a three-wheeled vehicle that is kind of like a tricycle version of a motorcycle. I'm driving slow because I'm looking for a landmark, glad there's not traffic for me to hold up. As I move along, I spot a cop car hidden behind the big sign welcoming drivers to the town. As I spot the car, I realize where I turned wrong, and decide to turn around. I'm in the right lane of a two lane road, so I signal and get over to the left.

Where the officer is behind the sign, there's a place to make a legal U-turn, but the officer is parked perpendicular to it, blocking the whole thing. Behind him is a little island of sidewalk and grass in the middle of the road. It seems to serve no purpose but to split the highway.

Beyond that, I can turn left into a gas station parking lot. There is a traffic light, but I have green, so I turn and use the gas station to turn around. As I turn around in the station, the light changes and I get green again, right when I'm ready to go. I turn right into the left lane of the two lanes going back out of town. I pull up next to the officer, and there's another light at which I have to stop. When I do, the officer turns on his lights, gets out of his car, and approaches my window.

I roll down the window and he asks me what the hell I'm doing. I tell him that I took a wrong turn and got lost, where I'm going, and how I screwed up. He looks annoyed that I had an answer, then fiddles with something on his radar gun while asking me if I know how fast I was going coming into town. I know that I was only doing 50 in a 65, because out of habit, I had checked my speedometer when I saw his car. I tell him how fast I was going, and he looks triumphant, and says, "WRONG!"

He shows me that it says 177 MPH. I know this is impossible, because this bike won't go that fast, and even if it would, I couldn't have made the turn if I had been going that fast. He then proceeds to tell me that I made an illegal U-turn at the light, even though we both know I pulled into the parking lot of the gas station to turn around. Then he says that I ran a red light to make the turn, even though we both know the light was green. I tell him that I know none of what he is saying is true, and I hear a gasp from my right. I look, and realize that now there are several cars around us, both lanes stretching almost back to the previous light. The lady in the big van next to me looks shocked.


I tell the officer that he and I both know he is lying, that I saw him fiddle with his radar before showing it to me, and that I think I am being targeted because I'm from out of town. He says, "No, you're being targeted because of who you are." Then, he hands me a ticket for an amount that is more than I make in a month. I know the name of the town now, and I can find my way back here. I know one other thing the officer doesn't: I've got a video camera in my helmet which I've been using to record the trip, and it has recorded everything we've done and said, along with my speedometer. I have all the proof I need to demonstrate that he's lying. I tell him I'll be back to fight the ticket in court, and he laughs. I drive away angry, but slowly and carefully. I don't want to give him an excuse to pull me over for real.



* * * * * * * * * *


I'm in a big Victorian house with a huge number of rooms. I guess that makes it a mansion, but it's just one big house, not a long narrow place with "wings."

I am in a dining room with a small table. It looks like it was meant for only a few people, like maybe four, max. My dad is sitting at the table, working on a laptop. I am chatting with him. I hear my husband call me. It sounds like he's off to the side that doesn't have a door. I have to go the long way around to get to him. I go up a short set of stairs out of the room, then turn right into another room, go through that, and into a hallway. There are several rooms off of the hallway, the end of which opens into a big, spacey room with chairs and couches.

Several of my friends are in one room practicing belly dancing. I want to tell them I'll join in later, but I'm afraid I'll either look inept or hurt myself because they've all taken classes in it and I've never had the opportunity. I learned a few moves from a professional, but I've never even practiced them. Anyway, I'm looking for my husband. I hear him calling me again, but this time his voice is further away.

I go on into the big, open room. At the other end of that room is a short stairway going up to kind of a little deck that has doorways at both ends. I go up those steps and head for the doorway on the right. That should get me to where he is. As I enter the hallway, I hear him calling again and tell him I'm coming.

* * * * * * * * *

I'm on a stairway moving up. It's poorly lit. I know I have to go up, turn right, go down a hall, and come back down. I'm still looking for my husband. I've been walking for a long time, and can't seem to find a way to the part of the house where it sounds like he is.

* * * * * * * * *

Somehow I've ended up in a basement. It's really dark here, with just patches of light. I know I'm not in the right place. I can barely hear my husband calling me. The sound is coming from above. There are scraping sounds coming from the darker areas around me. I can't see what's making the noises, but I have the idea that I want to get out of the basement before I find out. The stairs look like they're yards away from me. There are dark spots on the floor between me and them. I think that I should jump over those. I am running.


I woke up from this one with kind of an "unfinished" feeling. My husband was sleeping in the bed, right next to me. As soon as I saw him, I felt better, but I wonder if he had been saying my name in his sleep, and that caused the dream. I've heard him talk in his sleep a few times before. It's rare, but it happens.

* * * * * * * * *

I'm in my room, working on something when I hear a noise. I'm home alone, so I know there shouldn't be anyone in the house. I stop what I'm doing and listen. It sounds like something solid hitting the wall in my son's room, not really hard, but kind of quiet, like a knock.

I go down the hall and stand outside his door. Standing there, I hear the knock again, almost right next to my head. I don't hear any other noise there. I open the door and look, thinking he might be in there, but there's no one in the room. Then, I hear that same sound, but it's coming from downstairs.

I go down the stairs. There's no one in the living room, but I hear the sound again, coming from the kitchen. I go look in there, and that room is also empty. I look in the utility closet, but everything in there is fine. I hear the knock again, and this time it's definitely coming from the direction of the living room. I check the bathroom, just in case, but no one is in there, either.

Again, the living room is empty. The sound is coming from an outside wall this time, so I look out the peep hole in the door, then look out the window. There is no one outside in that direction. I hear the knock again, this time from the same wall, but above me. I hurry up the stairs and down the hall to my room. I hear the knock again, this time really loud, when I am just outside the door.

I fling the door open, looking for the intruder, but there's still no one. Now, I just feel silly. I must be reacting to the sounds of the apartment building "settling" as the weather changes. Mad at myself, I turn to start working on my project.

It's not there.

The knock starts up again, on all of the walls in the room. I hear it all around me. Fear tightens my skin and shoots ice up my spine.

I have the strong feeling that whatever is causing this is centered in the closet, and I have to go past that closet to get out of this room.


The change of emotion woke me. I woke feeling like there was something in the room with me, and rolled over expecting to see my husband. By that time, though, he was out of bed and getting ready for work. I don't work as early as he does, so it wasn't time for me to get up, and I was still really sleepy. I thought I should get up, because it's usually under these circumstances that a bad nightmare occurs, but I was so tired I dozed again instead.

* * * * * * * * *

I can feel my covers sliding off. I reach to straighten them up, and can't find the edge. The covers slip entirely off of my feet, and I feel nervous. I sit up and grab the middle of the blanket, and pull, managing to get everything back onto the bed. I find the top and wiggle around until I'm covered again. I settle back into the pillow, but as soon as I do, the covers start sliding off again. I pull them all the way onto the bed, so that nothing is hanging off the edge.

I feel something grab the covers over my feet, and the whole set is thrown off of me, flying up into the air. Something grabs my ankles, and with a good hard yank, pulls me off of the bed. My head hits the floor with a thunk, and I feel myself dragged toward the closet. I can hear heavy breathing with a bit of a rattle in it. I try to scream but I can't. Kicking as hard as I can, I feel my foot impact on something like flesh and bone. There is a crunching sound, and a loud growl, and I feel teeth sink into my foot.

The pain woke me, but it didn't end there. I don't know if the foot cramp caused the dream, or the dream caused the foot cramp, but for several moments after I woke, it felt like those teeth were still sunk into the bottom of my foot. I had to sit up and massage it out before getting out of bed. The whole time, because of the last two dreams I had, I felt totally, irrationally creeped out by my closet! At least this time, I didn't wake up on the floor.

Prison Escape

I'm in a truck that's normal sized, but souped up to do tricks like a monster truck. There is a battle taking place in an arena between myself and an authority figure who is chasing me. She is piloting a giant robot called a mech.

Somehow, I've gotten my truck onto the top of a tall, narrow, flat tower of rock so that I'm up as high as the mech. I intend to jump the truck onto the mech, but the device that does that malfunctions, and I end up on the ground at her feet. I dodge in and out and shoot, but the authorities decide that the battle has been won by the mech, and I have to go with the woman inside.

We leave the arena through a normal sized door, leaving our vehicles behind. She takes me into a building. It's a familiar place. I've escaped from here before. I ready myself to escape again.

We enter the room where I'll be kept, and I'm told I'm considered guilty and dangerous, and I'm to be executed because I cannot be held for a full sentence. I accept the ruling without any struggle, because I know I'm going to escape again. I'm not going to permit this; I've done nothing wrong, and these people have no right to do this to me. They are not the real authorities, just people who have the arrogance to think themselves that important, and behave like it. The woman speaking to me is put off by my attitude, and says she doesn't think I understand the gravity of the situation. She tells me I won't escape this time. After that, sge and everyone else leaves the room.

I know the layout of the part of the building from which I previously escaped. The room I'm in has huge bay windows, but the glass is unbreakable. However, everyone driving by can see inside. Outside my door is a hallway stretching away from the room, with two other doors immediately to the left and right, then a receptionist's station on the left after the first door. That opens into kind of a lobby with an exit, and there is more building beyond that.

The door to the right leads to offices and workrooms for employees of the prison. On the left, there are other cells, and another hallway that leads to the execution chamber. There are also supply closets and a couple of utility rooms. It was in one of those closets that I hid for several moments after my last escape, while the search fanned out from the facility.

An employee brings me a change of clothes in an overnight bag. I change in full view of the windows, (because there is nowhere else to change) but with my back turned to them and sitting down to prevent anyone seeing anything important. Even so, there is an immediate traffic jam as cars slow down because the drivers can see the back of a naked woman.

The employee returns, and helps me finish changing. She also gives me a magazine with an address in it for where my brother is being held. This gets my attention, as I did not know that "they" had him. Immediately, I am able to see into his room, and speak to him. I tell him that when I show up and say it's time to go, we have to leave without delay, so be ready. He agrees, and then it's time for me to leave this room. The employee leaves, but she leaves the bag with me, along with a bunch of balloons. Before she goes, she tells me to hurry, because they've rescheduled my execution for earlier. She leaves the door unlocked on her way out. She also did that when she brought me the bag, but the receptionist noticed and came to lock the door again. This time, I am able to sneak out of the room.

I walk down the hallway, right past the receptionist's desk. I hear the employee chatting with her, asking what activity I am scheduled for prior to my execution, telling her that she'll take me to it. The balloons hide my face, and the receptionist is distracted, so I am able to slip by. I hear her reply: "Gymnastics."

Gymnastics? Seriously? That's a new one on me. I figure they are trying to keep me too busy to try to escape. I also figure if I head in the direction I'm supposed to be going until I get to the exit, I'll have a better chance of getting out undisturbed. I spot several people in brightly colored (some fluorescent) gym clothes, and decide they must be headed for the gymnastics room. I follow along with them until I get to the big exit. Instead of continuing on to the room, I leave the building.

Several other people are leaving with me. They are completely uninvolved, and don't know who I am, so I'm unconcerned that they will cause me to get recaptured. As I hurry along, though, a tall, blond woman spots a cut on my cheek. She takes a tissue out and wipes off the blood, then wipes the excess not absorbed by the tissue on a pillar that supports the canopy in front of the building. Great. That'll tell 'em I was here when they start searching. Now they'll know which exit I used.

The woman is about to put the tissue in her purse, creating another DNA sample, but I politely thank her and tell her I'll dispose of it for her. I take it, fold it up, and put it in my back pocket. I can't get rid of the blood on the pillar, but maybe they won't see that.

I turn right and head toward the prison where my brother is being kept. The direction takes me across a courtyard with a fountain, gardens, and natural stone steps. From the outside, the building looks a lot like a school. The window pattern is especially similar.

People are coming from the direction I'm headed. I hear them talking, and someone says here She comes. "She" spoken with a capital "S" is how the entire staff refers to the woman who brought me in. Everyone here is intimidated by her. I am given to understand that she is in charge, and is kind of a bitch. I change direction and go up the other set of stairs closer to the building. At the top of the stairs, I find a setup similar to a camp. There are several poorly constructed little shacks. I know my brother is in one of those shacks.

Afraid the woman is following me, and that I will be discovered and recaptured, I slip in behind one of the shacks, the one I am pretty sure he is in. It has a lot of thin wood chips (the same type of wood the shacks are made of, as if the chips are pieces that have fallen off) on the ground behind it, and the back of the building bows backward. Since it's very close to the building I was in, it becomes difficult to get through. About halfway through, at the narrowest point, I realize I'm having to push really hard to squeeze in between the shack and the building.

At the same time, I see prisoners and guards sweeping up more wood chips. They are shoving them in behind the building. If I don't move, they'll see me even though it's dark back here. To hide better, I lay down on top of the chips, which are piled at least a foot deep. Down here, it's even darker. I can see them, but they can't see me. I notice that among the guards are some of my classmates. I'm glad they can't see me. They'd be sure to recognize me, and then I'd never escape.

My plan is easy. I'll wait a few moments until the guards have gone, grab my brother, and we'll run. There is a path from the yard into the woods, where there are carts we can use to escape. Once we've gotten a distance, we can abandon the cart. There will be another family member waiting to take us home.

The guards are just finishing up. As I wait, I can feel the wood chips digging into my side. I have the feeling of certainty that my plan will work, as long as I remain patient and follow it. The only big challenge now is going to be getting up from where I am laying, given how narrow the space is.

The feeling of the wood chips digging into my side woke me. I'd been sleeping on that side all night, and was feeling uncomfortable for real. On waking, I realized that several of the characters in the dream were familiar. Because of who everyone was, I think the dream was a manifestation of the anxiety I feel related to my work and everything that has been going on there. At no point in the dream did I actually feel that I was guilty of something and deserved imprisonment. Rather, the whole time I felt unjustly treated as guilty, and wrongfully imprisoned. I felt that my brother deserved it even less, because he was totally uninvolved with them, and I was angry that they'd taken him.

The "authority" who took me into the building had represented my boss at work. She didn't look like her, but the giant robot did. IRL, my boss is really authoritarian and very impatient toward me. Everything I do is either wrong, not enough, or not necessary, even though it's in my job description or what she told me to do and how she told me to do it. She drives me nuts!

The employee who helped me was a lady who had trained at our store before moving on to a management position. She had noticed that there was unequal treatment by my boss between me and the other employees; I had a heavier workload, wasn't allowed breaks, and couldn't even go to the restroom without getting questioned about it, while most of my co-workers get a break an average of once every two hours, plus restroom breaks, and have time to stand around doing nothing. Sort of mixed in with that identity was the identity of the person who has replaced me in that position as I have moved on to a new position. In my new position, I'll partly be working a different shift, and will not have to deal with my boss as much.


The receptionist was a co-worker who doesn't believe the position I'd been holding was that hard. She is also a gossip monger, and has the tendency to assign blame for anything that she thinks has gone wrong in the store. She frequently communicates that blame to the boss, trying to get people into trouble. It often works, even when the evidence shows that she is wrong. Once the boss has been told by her that someone did something they shouldn't have, or didn't do something they should have, it doesn't matter if it's true or not, that person will be in trouble for something.


The lady who wiped the blood from my cheek, I think represents the regional human resources manager for the company. A couple of months ago, I was injured at work. A doctor authorized me to return, but with a break restriction. Even though the company has allowed that of other employees, my restriction was rejected, and I was taken off of the schedule for a little over a week until the restriction expired. I believe that was done because I filed worker's compensation for the medical bills associated with the injury. I had to, though. I don't have any insurance, and I was hurt on the job. Anyway, it is the HR manager who deals with that, and she's the one whose decisions have kept me off of the schedule for so long.


The condition under which I was hurt has existed at the store for years, and is dangerous. I called OSHA, but found that the particular working condition which caused my injury isn't directly regulated. OSHA offers advice, but doesn't have specific policy. However, OSHA found two other serious violations in the store, and cited the company. The day after the inspection, when the citation was received by corporate, the company changed how my injury was being handled. They used odd paperwork and red tape to keep me off the schedule for nearly two whole months, and refused to allow me to use any of my vacation time to get a pay check during those months.


I fought back by applying for unemployment, and have filed a retaliation/discrimination complaint with OSHA making four specific points which demonstrate discrimination. Because I'd filed unemployment, the company had to put me back on the schedule. They tried to use part of the mandatory paperwork to claim I was on voluntary leave (I wasn't) and get out of paying unemployment, but I had kept a journal, and was able to cite phone calls in which I was ordered to fill out and return those papers and told I couldn't be returned to work without them.

In the end, the company has been left with the choice of either acknowledging that I was laid off, or putting me back on the schedule. In the meantime, they had me out beyond the date of the switch in position from one that comes in early in the morning to one that doesn't.


I've been left with the feeling of having checkmated my way back to work. I'm going to continue to see the OSHA complaint through to the end. Regardless of the outcome of that, it sets a precedent with OSHA and the company that I've felt retaliated against by my manager and by corporate, so that in the future, if they retaliate further, OSHA will be ready to handle it.


I think that my brother in the dream represented my son in real life. My family has been subjected to financial hardship because of what has happened, and it feels like my son has been punished for the company's attitude about safety and employee rights. Among other things, we've had to give up on allowing him to play the instrument he wanted in the school orchestra, because we can't afford to buy one, and we don't qualify for credit to rent-to-own. This is a direct result of my being kept from work. 

I want to make things better for him, and I am sure that will happen, but I'm going to have to be patient and stick out the time it takes for the OSHA complaint to go through, and for the unemployment case to be decided. In the long run, I'm leaving the company; my husband and I are going to move our family back to the area where he grew up after the end of this school year. We'll be able to get the instrument next year, and he'll be able to catch up. There are more and better jobs in that area than where we are. I think that is what the waiting in the dream represented. In real life, though, it's a LOT harder than in the dream!

Zombies that talk

Over the years, my nightmare zombies have kind of evolved. Unlike movie zombies, they have no problem eating each other, but they'll go after the weakest first, and since the living are more vulnerable to pain and injury, we're preferable. Sometimes the zombies move like athletes. Sometimes they have magical powers. Sometimes they are slow to lose their intelligence, and sometimes they talk. Last night, I had talkers and smart zombies. I think those are the scariest, because they can really take you by surprise.

I'm in a house that is not mine. The room I am in has bunk beds. I have run into this room to get away from five zombies who are chasing me. They are pounding on the door and screaming obscenities.

I turn around to see if I can get out a window, and am shocked by the rest of the contents of the room. Lined up along the walls are a bunch of makeshift weapons, various knives and other sharp objects fastened to long sticks, broom handles, and the like. Then, I see the window. It's too small for me to fit through. There is no way out of this room.

I grab an armload of the makeshift weapons, and climb up to the top bunk. The ceiling in this room is really high. I don't have room to stand, but I do have room to get up on my knees.

The zombies break through the door. One points at the bed and slurs "Zzhere ssshee izzzz!" Some of the others talk better, but this one is missing part of the flesh on his jaw, and a few teeth. He kind of sounds like Sid the Sloth from the movie Ice Age, but with a deeper voice.

I am rushed by the group, all of them grabbing for me at once. They don't see the weapons on the bed. Kicking and stabbing at them, I fight like crazy to keep from being bitten. Normally in a situation like this, I would be screaming, but I'm actually trying to avoid attracting more of them, so I'm not. The zombies have no such goal. They are all snarling at me and shoving at each other. I keep hearing the word "mine" and "hungry."

The first one I kick falls over, and has a hard time getting back up. The second one isn't phased by my foot at all. Instead, he grabs my leg with both hands and tries to bite through my boot. I shove a knife on the end of a broom handle in through his eye, all the way through until I feel the blade hit bone. Then, I shove harder, flipping his head back. I kick his jaw, and he lets go of my leg as I pull the blade back out. His eye comes with it. He shouts obscenities at me and claws at the knife, grabbing the eye as if he can put it back and still use it. As he does, his elbow hits the arm of a third zombie reaching for me. At the same time, I can see a fourth and fifth moving around the other side of the bed.

I stab the eye guy in the throat and kick the one next to him so that he stumbles backward. The ones behind me are trying to climb up. I hit one in the chest with the handle of the weapon I'm holding, and knock him into the other one. They both fall. I know one will get up fast, because he looks relatively undamaged. The other is so decayed that he stinks badly. He's down for a few minutes, so my immediate threats have been reduced to three, and one is half blind.

I take a second weapon in my left hand, and begin slashing and stabbing at the zombies. The eye guy seems to be having some difficulty, and his buddy has fallen backward over the first one I knocked down. I focus on the one behind me, and catch him climbing back up the bed. I hit him in the head with both sticks, then give him a hard kick to the chest. I hear bone break, and he lets go of the bed with his hands. He falls on the other climber, knocking him down. I turn back toward the others just in time to see the eye guy fall over with some kind of black goo coming out of the wounds I've left behind in his eye and throat.

The other two zombies immediately start eating him. I take the opportunity to run for the door, jumping down from the bed and bolting. The two zombies feeding on the eye guy ignore me, but the ones on the other side of the bed come scrambling around the corner of it. Beside the door is a metal baseball bat. I grab that, and whack the nearest one in the head as hard as I can. I hear the crunch of bone breaking. The zombie falls, and the one behind him pounces on his back and begins tearing into him.

I run from the house. Outside, I see kids toys, a bicycle, and an odd shaped mechanical device. Upon closer inspection, I recognize it and realize it's meant for personal flying. It straps onto the back, with controls on the front. I put it on and hope it works. When I operate the controls, hot air shoots out of the bottom of it and I fly up into the air. I get just about ten feet off of the ground when the zombies come running out of the house. They are yelling at me to come back, that they aren't done with me yet, and so on. I push another button and air comes out of the side of the pack, moving me away from the yard.

* * * * * *

I'm leading a woman and two small kids to the safe house that my friends and family have set up. We've fortified the place so that it's nearly impossible to enter unless you are let in from the inside. I'm pretty sure the woman is not the kids' mother. She doesn't look anything like them.

The kids are fully aware of the danger, but the woman has convinced herself that it's not as bad as it seems. We're going through a residential neighborhood that has been pretty torn up. Wrecked cars are all over the place. There is visible damage to most of the houses. Bones lay in plain sight on the ground where zombies have eaten every scrap off of them. We're being as quiet as we can. We only have to get past about a block of this before we reach the guarded area around the safe house. Once we get there, I have a flag that I'm supposed to wave, so they don't shoot us.

We're nearly through when we hear a man's voice behind us. "Hey... hey you guys! Wait up!"
I can tell from the sound of the voice that there's something wrong with the speaker's mouth. That isn't always a guarantee that it's a zombie speaking, but it's a warning of probability. I look back, and size up the guy behind us, as well as his buddy. Both are much the worse for wear; clothing hanging in rags, blood on their arms, and no shoes. Their hair is matted. I can't see the details of their faces from this distance, but they're not walking very well. I quietly tell the woman with me, "Those are zombies. Don't respond."

She doesn't believe me. She thinks they might need our help, and she wants a closer look. I argue, but I can't stop her. We're in trouble if she gets something started here. We've lost our weapons, and the kids are both really small. There's no way I can protect all three people if these two draw a crowd. I know what's going to happen, and there's nothing I can do about it. She gives me a dirty look, turns, and takes several steps back toward the zombies, asking if they're ok . As soon as she's a few feet away from us, the zombies start running toward her. Instead of figuring it out and running away from them, she just stands there waiting for an answer.

I grab the kids and activate the jet pack from before. It's hard to control while I'm holding them, but I get it to move us in the direction we were going. The only thing I can do is cover their ears so they don't have to hear her screaming. I turn their faces toward each other, so that each has one ear against my chest, and cover the two exposed ears with the palms of my hands. It means I can't cover my own ears, though, and that is how I hear her telling them, "You idiots! I was almost in!"

I look back, and see her berating the zombies like she's one of them, and thin it hits me... she is one of them. I take my hands off of the kids' ears and look at them. They are not zombies. Their skin is warm and they're crying. I ask how long they were with the woman, and they tell me that she found them only a few seconds before I did. I get chills, and as they look where we're going, I look over their necks and arms for bite marks. I see none.

We land, and I wave the flag. A guard comes out to talk to me, and I tell him we need a doctor to examine these kids before bringing them in. I explain about the woman. The doctor comes out and examines the kids. There are no marks on them, and they're able to remember everything from when the zombies broke into their school until when I found them. The woman had told them she was a teacher from another school, where she was the only survivor. The doctor decides we should keep the kids isolated for a day before integrating them in with everyone else, but he's pretty sure they're not infected. I leave the kids with the doctor, and go in to report to the others what I have found out. From now on, we're going to have to be really careful who we rescue.


There are other parts of this dream, but a lot of it is fuzzy. I do remember being in a building with a lot of stairs, and as I looked down from the floor I was on, I could see that someone had destroyed the lower sets of stairs to the basement. There was a kid down there, and she kept telling me how hungry she was. She just wanted a finger or toe, and if I would just throw one down to her, she promised to be quiet. She sounded so normal and so pitiful that I honestly started thinking, why do I need all ten toes?  In another part, I was arguing with a guy in a jail. He was in a cell, and I was outside of it. He was telling me that he was uninfected and I should let him out, even though I could see him and it was obvious that he was a zombie. He didn't realize that he was missing some flesh, so he thought he could fool me.


That was the creepiest part of this nightmare, that the zombies could talk, and think . It was really hard to sleep after that dream. This morning before my alarm went off, I spent quite a bit of time in a cycle of dreaming that something was grabbing my feet, being jolted awake by that, and then dozing back off only to be "grabbed" again. It happened so much that when I finally woke all the way up, the blanket was pushed up to my waist.

The Dorky Knight

Last night a friend was subjected to a baseless but very hurtful personal attack. The worst for her was that it was done anonymously, so even though she has some idea of who it wasn't, there's no way to be sure who it was. The person really hit below the belt, attacking an aspect of my friend's life about which everyone with the same aspect is going to be sensitive, and in which my friend has had enough struggles to shake her confidence in herself, even though she is actually going far above and beyond the average in that area. The attack was totally unjustified and wrong, and the person I think it comes from has no business pointing fingers, as she is not handling that aspect of her own life with much honesty. If it is who I think it is, I'm convinced that the attack was her way of making herself feel better by tearing down someone who she can at least pretend is doing worse.


I didn't realize how mad I was about this until this morning, after I woke from the following dream.

My friend and I are at the Ohio Renaissance Faire. We've both gone in garb, but this year I decided not to go the girly route. While my friend is dressed beautifully in a full skirt, blouse, corset, cloak, and sexy boots, I'm in pants instead. I've put on a chainmail shirt, and I've got a sword on a belt and a shield strapped to my back. I look like I am ready to kick some ruffian butt.

We're walking around looking at stuff in the shops. Our kids are with us, but our husbands aren't. They are at the faire, but they've gone to check something out that doesn't interest us. We have a plan to meet for lunch shortly and all go watch shows together.

As we turn to leave the store we're in, the kids ask to visit a specific shop that has padded toys that mimic weapons, so kids can pretend to be knights of old or play stories like Robin Hood without hurting each other. The stores and stages circle around the border of the property and cross in the middle, almost loosely forming kind of a squished figure 8. We have to cross the grass to get to that store. We talk about walking the rest of the way around to get to it, but none of the stores in that direction interest us, so we start cutting across the grass.

Immediately, a former friend of ours jumps in front of us. She is wearing a long dark cloak over a very skimpy dress. She has her hood up, casting a shadow over her face. On her hands are really long, dark velvety gloves. She physically looks different than normal, like she's lost a bunch of weight, even though she didn't start out with any extra. Now, she's gaunt and creepy looking: Bimbette, the wicked sorceress of ill repute.
She tells us we can't go that way because that's the way the kids want to go, and you can't just give kids what they want.

My friend points out that we are going this way because we don't have any interest in the rest of the stores along the loop, but I don't think that's necessary. It isn't this woman's business if we want to do something the kids want. I tell her to buzz off.

Bimbette looks annoyed, and starts shouting that we should be locked up for breaking "the rules." There are no rules at the Ren Faire about which direction you may walk, and there are lots of other people in the grassy area. (Oddly, none of them are paying any attention to us.) Whatever "rules" she's talking about are all in her head.

We ignore her and try to walk around her, and she slaps my friend across the face with her gloved hand. I reach for that hand, but she draws it back quickly and steps away. On my friend's face is a red mark from the slap. It starts to spread, and I realize that Bimbette had something nasty on the glove. It looks like it is causing an allergic reaction. Somehow, I am sure she has an antidote to it in one of the little pouches hanging on her belt.

I demand to know what Bimbette has put on my friend's face. She says it's her "just desserts" for not fitting the mold. That makes me really mad, and I draw my sword. I demand that Bimbette give the antidote, or I will cut her down.

We're no longer at a modern Renaissance Faire. It's darker, and there are more trees. The buildings are more solid, and the shop keepers look scared. There is no one around us who isn't dressed like us. Off to the side are three people imprisoned in stocks. Every so often, someone throws a rotten vegetable at them. Signs identify them as having offended the queen.

Bimbette vanishes with a poof, and I am left standing in the square with my sword drawn like an idiot. My friend's face has hives on it. I quickly grab her and take her to the nearest apothecary to see if the proprietor has anything to soothe her skin. Inside the shop, I find another friend of ours (whom we haven't seen in years) crushing dried herbs into a powder. We show him the reaction, and tell him how it happened. He immediately identifies the poison as the sting of the worker queen. He tells us the worker queen is an ordinary worker bee that thinks it's the queen bee of the hive. It lays eggs, steals royal jelly when the actual queen is not looking, and refuses to do any work even though it really is just a worker bee. It will protect the hive if attacked, and its poison is a very potent irritant because of its diet. He says he can temporarily fix the damage, but we need to go get a special root in order for him to make the antidote.

My friend's daughter is in tears at this point. She thinks that the slap is her fault, because she was the one who wanted to go to the toy shop. Her brother and my son are trying to make her feel better by clowning around to make her laugh, but they're too close to a bunch of glass jars full of ingredients, and we're afraid they're going to knock stuff over. We both tell them we know they mean well, but there are too many breakables, and to cut it out, and they stop. My friend puts her arms around her daughter, looks her in the eyes, and says "This is not your fault."

Immediately, Bimbette's disembodied voice fills the room. "One strike! Unequal treatment! Unfair!"
My friend's hives turn into boils, until I yell, "Bullshit!" Then, they go back to being hives. It feels like Bimbette just cast a spell, and I just cast the counterspell to it.

The chemist mixes up a cream. In it, he puts some powder from a few different jars. I can't read the writing on most of them, but I notice that one says "honesty" on it. I get the mental image of a plant that looks just like a violet, except the petals are white. He whispers over the cream as he stirs in the powders, then asks if he can have one of the daughter's tears. My friend pulls the child to her protectively, but the girl says ok, if it will help Mommy. She leans forward, and the chemist uses the bowl to wipe a tear from her cheek. He mixes that into the cream and then tells my friend to rub some onto the affected area. My friend doesn't want to put her daughter's tears on her face until the girl says, "No, Mommy, those aren't bad tears. Those are tears of responsibility. I can take responsibility even if it's not my fault." The girl then takes a finger, rubs the cream on her mother's face, and then both kids kiss where the hives are. The hives shrink down, leaving just the original bright red hand print.

The chemist smiles, and says "You are almost right. Those are tears of epiphany. You had an epiphany when you realized that responsibility and fault are not the same thing. Your epiphany helps, and the kisses helped even more." Then he looks at my friend and says "This won't completely get rid of the poison. It will only slow it down. If you don't have an antidote, the hives will come back. You need your own cure."

Then to me, he says, "Find this flower," and shows me a picture of a tall, leafy plant with big, floppy orange flower petals. It looks like a super-sized lily. "The roots of the plant grow down into the ground, put shoots up a few feet away from the central stalk. Those shoots are roots, too. You need to collect one of those and bring it back to me." He nods at my friend. "She has to harvest it, but she needs a protector. The woods are dangerous."

It is time for us to meet the guys. We decide that it won't be safe for the kids to come into the woods with us, so when we get to our meeting spot, we quickly explain the situation and ask if they mind us going. The guys agree that the woods would be an unsafe place for us to take the kids, especially since we would be distracted from them by our mission. They decide to take them to the toy shop where we were originally headed, while we go find that root. From behind us, we hear, "Strike two! Dumping the kids off on your husband!" We turn, and there is Bimbette.

Even though I am leaving my son with my husband, and the decision was basically by committee, she is only looking at my friend. My friend shouts back at her, "What would you have me do, risk their lives in the woods where there are wild animals? That's just stupid!" Bimbette doesn't answer, but instead throws a dart (like you would throw at a dart board in a bar, but bigger) at my friend. I use my sword like a baseball bat to deflect it back at her. It sticks in her arm. Again, I demand the antidote, but she throws a glass ball on the ground and disappears in a puff of smoke.

We kiss our husbands and kids goodbye and head toward the city gate.

* * * * * *

We are on a thin dirt pathway in an area so heavily wooded that it is dark as twilight, even though it's the middle of the day. I have my sword drawn, and am looking around. We've been walking on this path for a bit, and it feels like something is following us. We're looking for the plant the chemist told us to find. We've seen a lot of other plants, but none with the flower he showed us. Mostly we are running into ivy plants and bushes.

We hear movement in the underbrush close to the path behind us, several yards back. I turn toward the sound and speak to whatever is in that direction. "We know you are there. You might as well just come out." When nothing does, we decide it must be an animal, and we cautiously walk on for several feet. I keep hearing the movement, always the same distance behind us. Finally, I decide to go back and check. There are paw prints in the dirt off the side of the path, but they look old. The dirt is dry, but the prints look like they were made when it was muddy.

We turn to leave, when a huge cat jumps out at us. It isn't a regular big cat, like a mountain lion or anything. It looks more like a giant house cat. It is gray with white splotches and short hair, and it's wearing a pink collar. I knock my friend to the ground and roll us out from under the cat's paws, then slash at it with my sword, slicing open its nose. The cat growls at us loudly, then meows. It sounds like a normal house cat, only a lot louder. I shout at it to scat, and it hisses. I grab my shield and hand it to my friend. The cat pats at us with a paw, claws extended. My friend smacks the shield into the paw, as I jab at it from the side. The cat jumps back and hunkers down with its ears back. We move away up the path, facing the cat. Its tail is twitching, so we stop and set ourselves for the next attack.

When the cat pounces, I jab my sword all the way into the bottom of one paw, as my friend smacks its nose with the shield, really hard. At the same time, I notice there is a pendant on the collar. I recognize the pendant as belonging to Bimbette. The cat yowls and runs away. Looking in the direction it is running, we spot a flash of bright orange. We go through the pathway the cat has created through the underbrush, and find the flower we're looking for. Digging around, we find the roots sticking up out of the ground. I get a little knife out of the pack I have around my waist, and hand it to my friend. She cuts one root off at ground level. We empty a small bag of compost over the cut root so that it will have something to feed on as it grows back.

We return to the apothecary, where our families are waiting for us. The chemist takes the root and chops it into tiny pieces. These, he mashes into a paste, which he mixes with the cream from before. The mixture kind of melts into an odd blue liquid. The chemist pours it into a cup, hands it to my friend, and tells her to drink it. My friend's kids admonish her to drink every drop, because "you know how important medicine is, and we want you to be ok."

Bimbette appears in a flash, shouting "Strike three! Not being ok in front of your kids! Making them feel like they need to take care of you!" I see her and draw my sword. She reaches for the glass, but my friend holds it behind the shield. Bimbette yells "You can't have that! It's not yours! I didn't give you permission to feel better!" She tries to reach around the shield, and I cut off her arm. Instead of bleeding, the arm just melts into the floor, and the stump closes over with some kind of dark goo. My friend looks at Bimbette and says, "I don't need your permission." She drinks the blue liquid, and the red hand print on her face disappears.

We start talking about which show we're going to. Bimbette is livid, screaming that she's still there, and we have no right to ignore her. I tell her to can it, and we start to walk away. She throws another dart, but this time my friend just bats it away with the shield. I decide she should keep the shield in case Bimbette hasn't given up.

* * * * * * * *

We're back at the Ren, sitting in the audience in the mud pit waiting for the show to start. We've sat closer to the back to avoid getting too muddy. My friend has my shield strapped to her back. The first guy comes out onto the stage. I feel a sense of relief and happy anticipation.

This is where the dream ended. I went on to dream about something else, but I can't remember much about it, just something about a card game at my friend's house. It's something we do a lot, so that's kind of ordinary.

I'm pretty sure the dream is an indication that I want to find some way to negate the unmerited "slap in the face" that the person gave my friend. I know that the daughter would feel responsible for my friend's hurt if she knew about the attack, but it really isn't her fault. Recently, I've seen her demonstrate some maturity in understanding things about herself and about life, even though she's still just a kid, so that fits the dream, too. I see her trying to be a more responsible person, even though that's hard for her.

I'm mad enough to want to hit Bimbette (or whoever the guilty party is) back for what she did, or I wouldn't have dreamed about cutting off her arm. The attack really was very catty, so I guess that explains the feline attack. The cure in the woods, though, I think represented my feeling that my friend has to look within herself to find the answer. She knows that she is not what Bimbette (or whoever it was) called her. I know that she just needs to take ownership of her sense of self-worth, and not let someone damage it with such a cheap pot-shot.

Also, now I really want to go see the mud show at the Ren! 

Burglar

When I was really little, my Aunt and Uncle took in a foster kid. He was much older than me. He was severely abused - so badly his growth was stunted - and he was very disturbed. Despite the abuse at home, when he turned 18, he made the choice to go back to his biological family.
One night, I had a bad dream that he broke into our house and was trying to kill my family. I was the only one awake, and had to chase him out of the house. It's been almost thirty years, but I still remember a couple of parts of the dream. There's a big hole in the middle, though.


I find him coming up the stairs to our bedrooms, and I know he means to kill us all in our sleep. He is surprised to see me awake.
I see him running up the stairs, and I grab my brother's baseball bat.

* * * * *

We are in the kitchen. My brother and my Mom are there, too. They are off to the side, watching. The foster kid has a gun. He shoots at me, but instead of a bullet hitting me, I am hit in the cheek by a bunch of little rubber pellets. I turn and scream at him to get out, and he looks scared. I scream it again, and he looks really spooked. I start stomping toward him, and he backs out the open door. He changes his mind when he gets outside, though, and grabs it. I slam it shut on his thumb, and lean on it to force it shut, even though he still outweighs me a little. I hear the bone in his thumb break, and he goes from trying to get in to trying to pull his thumb out of the door.

That is when I woke, but not the end of the story.
That morning, I heard my brother tell Mom he had "bad dreams" the night before. He thought that someone had tried to break into the house. I said I'd dreamed the same thing, and told them who. Mom shivered and looked at me wide-eyed when I said it, and asked if us both if we'd been up in the night. We nagged her until she admitted that she had been up, because after a nightmare about a burglar breaking in, she had gone downstairs and found the door open.

Even that is not the end, though.
On the floor in the kitchen, I found rubber pellets like the ones that hit me in the dream. On the door frame, just above the latch, I found what looked like dried blood. My Dad insisted that it was rust, but it was right where his thumb had been. Then, we discovered the soda bottles we'd been saving to recycle were gone. Someone had taken them. After checking, we found a few more small items taken from the garage.

A couple of weeks later, Dad caught the foster kid stealing more items from our garage. Apparently, he had to prove his loyalty to his "real" family by showing them that he'd stolen stuff from his foster family, and since my Uncle and Aunt lived across town, he hit our house instead. I was sent out of the room for the rest of that discussion.

After that, we never saw the foster kid again.

How aware are we of our loved ones' thoughts and feelings? Did my family share a common dream because we picked up on the presence of a familiar person in the house, or was it just one of us, and then the others picked up on that person? It could be that. Before he left, I was close to the foster kid. Though he was chronologically much older than me, mentally we were the same age.
Was my dream really a dream? Maybe he really saw me in the kitchen. Maybe I scared him away.
Or... maybe it was all just coincidence. Did three of the four people in the house all have similar dreams on a night when the thing we dreamed about really happened... all just by chance?

"Vegetarian Friendly"

 Not a dream... just a photo that reminds me of the zombie dreams I have all the time.

I especially love the hand print right over the "vegetarian friendly" sign. Of course zombies are vegetarian friendly. The Undead Dietitian's  Association recommends consuming at least five servings of vegetarians every day!

Another Quake

I am taking my son to school. For some reason, today we decided to walk. We've left the apartment and are walking toward our first turn. The morning traffic passes us by, all driving just a bit over the speed limit, as usual in dry, sunny conditions. It's nice out, warm but not hot, dry but not overly dry. It's sunny, too.

As we approach the corner, I see the sidewalk on the other side of the street ripple like a shaken ribbon, making waves. There is a grinding noise, and I feel the ground lift under my feet. I grab my son's arm and we hold onto each other as the sidewalk jolts sideways and pitches us into the "tree lawn," the bit of grass between us and the street. Afraid we're going to end up in traffic, I wrap my arms around my son and try to roll back toward the sidewalk .

I feel the ground drop out from under my back as I roll us, then the sidewalk slams into me and throws us both in the direction we're moving. We land on the grass, but it knocks the wind out of both of us. At the same time, I see cars bouncing around on the road. Brake lights come on, and I hear the sound of an impact, followed by breaking glass.

We are about ten feet from the sidewalk now. The cat who lives at this house runs to us and yowls, like we can fix the shaking ground. The sidewalk breaks, and one side of it rises a couple of inches more than the other side all along the new crack . I also see a crack in the side street.

The shaking stops. The people whose yard we're in come running out of the house and ask if we're ok . We are, but we're both really startled. Both of us are shaking, even though the ground has stopped. The cat leaps into the owner's arms and sticks its face into the crook of her elbow. She says, "She does that when she's scared" and I answer, "We used to have a kitty who did that, too." I am trying to act less afraid so that my son won't be so scared. It wasn't a big quake, but it feels like it to me.

I look up the street to see if the accident was bad. It looks like a small car pulled or rolled out of the last driveway of our apartment complex into the rear passenger side of a big pick-up truck . Everyone from both cars is standing around looking at the damage. The side of the truck bed is dented, but just a little. It's kind of folded down. The front end of the little car is scrunched up, as if in disgust. I hear the driver of the car say, "It just threw me. What the hell do I tell my insurance agent?" and I realize that the damage to the truck is too high for the car to have hit it while on the ground.

I hear a police siren. I look and see the patrol car weaving its way among the stopped cars. Everyone has gotten out of their cars and are all standing around, making it slow going for the officer.

The sound of the police siren was real, and as it neared my apartment, I woke up. The officer drove right on past, but it was kind of disorienting, to say the least. I did go back to sleep, but I don't remember what I dreamed after that.

Funny thing is, today stuff is falling for no reason. Four times in the last hour, various items that have been sitting in the same spot for weeks have hit the floor. I figure it's because of the weather changing (you know, air pressure, the apartment "settling" as the temperature changes, etc.,) but it's kind of disconcerting after dreaming about an earthquake. I'm kind of jumpy because of that, and I've been startled each time something fell.

Medivel evil

I don't remember as much about this one as I usually do about my dreams. I've had it before, and I was just as foggy about it after that time, too. Unlike most people, that's a rare thing for me.
Here is what I do remember.

My mother has some kind of a special power. She has sisters who want to take it from her.
We are in a huge stone castle. There aren't any glass windows in it. It's all basically open except where there are doors. We're dressed in really old style clothing. It's really kind of uncomfortable trying to do the things I'm doing while wearing a corset and a skirt with a bustle in it. Mom's is this really pretty, regal looking baby blue with trim and embroidery in some kind of iridescent fabric and thread. She almost looks kind of Disneyfied. Mine is black, with trim and embroidery in shiny silver. I look more like I came out of a fashion show for Goths.

I have powers, but nothing like what Mom's power is. I'm there to protect her because my powers are for fighting and hers is not. She is in a room with no windows, just one door, and it's my job to protect that door.

The sisters send an army of trolls and ogres. They are basically just big men with a warped shape to them. The trolls are extra tall and lean, with angular faces and long fingers. They are strong. They're not as strong as the ogres, but they're smarter. Ogres are taller than regular men, but not as tall as trolls. They're much heavier set and much uglier, with odd lumps and warts, short arms and legs, and thick, heavy foreheads. Both of these monsters can fly, and are attacking us on an upper story of the castle.

I am also able to fly. This makes the battle a little more even. I'm able to block a lot of them from coming in the windows. Those that get close, I'm hitting with bursts of explosive, flaming energy that I can shoot out of the palms of my hands. When that isn't working, I'm ramming them with my feet. I am making lightning strike the ones who are outside.

This battle seems to be the main activity in the dream. I fight a lot of ogres and trolls, but for a long time I don't encounter the sisters. Finally, whether they run out of minions or they just get tired of sending them, they show up to attack. There are three of them. Each is in a different bright color, and they all clash badly with each other, but otherwise, they're all dressed like us.

There is a battle with me in front of the door, and the sisters throwing power effects at me. There is fire, and there is something that makes my body hurt, but I have something that makes the air between me and them into a shield. I block off the whole hallway with that, and then I do something else. After that, the minions who I'd gotten to retreat, and had therefore not needed to kill, come up behind the sisters and attack.

The sisters turn on them and fight, but now they have their backs to me. I am able to throw some kind of a spell at them involving something that I shout, and something that I throw. It hits them from behind, and there is a big dust cloud. When the dust clears, the sisters and their minions are gone.

There are a lot of details I don't remember. For one, the battle with the ogres and the trolls was long, but most of it is kind of a blur. I can remember at one moment kicking one out the window, and at another moment holding my hands out and yelling "fireball," and the exploding force flew out and hit some of them. I also remember flinging my hand sideways and making lightning flash outside, hitting the flying minions, but I know that there were a lot more things that happened between those and fighting the sisters. 

I remember thinking that the sisters clashed and looked tacky, but I can't remember what colors they were wearing. I did get the feeling that if they got Mom's power, they were going to fight each other over it next. I can't remember most of the specific things I and they did to one another, either... just that our attacks were magical and some of my actions. I used the air as a shield. I know I charmed the minions but I don't remember how, just that I was using them to distract the sisters and so I could attack them from behind. 

I woke before going in to make sure my Mom was ok. I felt like she was in the room worrying about what was happening outside her door, and I needed to make sure she knew the battle was over. I can't remember what her power was at all, just that it was really important, and that her sisters wanted to take it.

Last time I had the dream, I made a point to call Mom and make sure she was ok. She was fine, but had a concern that meant a lot to her, so the phone call was actually really convenient for her, as she had been planning to call me. I was able to give her information which helped with this concern, which I had known was probably going to come up, but my act of doing that wasn't really a means of protecting her from any "attacker." It was more that I helped her figure out how she was going to handle it. I was exercising a "power" I have that she doesn't have - the ability to research the problem online, find which organization she needed to contact, and learn from the experiences others had recounted after dealing with the same concern. After that, she was able to address and handle the concern herself.

Also, in real life, she doesn't have any biological sisters, only brothers, and neither of them wants to usurp any kind of "power" she might have. The sisters in the dream were entirely fictional, and I'm not sure what worry of mine they or the monsters represented, given that at that time, I really didn't feel like Mom was "under attack" in any way in real life.

I'm actually going to be visiting my parents' house today, but I'll probably still call shortly after Mom usually gets up, so I can check on her.  This time around, I know she's going to campaign for City Council again after years out of office because politics in the small town where she lives are becoming really stupid (again.) I'm a little worried about political attack, but not much because so far she's running unopposed, and most of her old political rivals are no longer involved with politics at all.