Get a Move On!

I am with a group of people which includes friends and family, and a few strangers. We're running from a horde of undead zombies. These are about halfway between the totally mindless old movie zombies and the horrifying smart zombies I've faced before. They don't talk, and they really do look undead, but they have some ability to reason and figure out things like opening unlocked doors. We have learned that they can also figure out which direction we probably went based on evidence presented (like footprints, one door leading out and the other to a closet, etc.)

We're in an office or lab-type building, with long hallways and lots of rooms on either side. We're trying to get out of the building, with what seems like every zombie from miles around chasing us from behind. I'm in the back of the group, fighting to keep the zombies from getting my loved ones. I cannot seem to get the group to move any faster. No one has the same sense of urgency I do about being bitten. They're all focused on the idea that if they get infected, there will be some kind of cure. It has not occurred to them that if this horde gets their hands on us, there won't be anything left to cure.

I'm walking on the high ceiling to keep from getting grabbed and bitten. I'm using a makeshift weapon that fires an exploding shell to take out the front zombies and slow down the rest of them. I can see over my shoulder that the group is slowly walking toward the exit we've chosen, through which we can see a safe pathway outside. I keep yelling at them to run, and they keep looking back at me like I'm being unreasonable and pushy. Someone shouts back that they're moving, and they can see that it's under control, so why get frantic?   
 
The pile of dead zombies on the floor begins to get tall, and one female with patches of long blond hair sticking out of the side of her head (making her look a lot like the Cynthia doll from Rugrats) is struck with the realization that if she climbs, she can reach me. The other zombies don't yet seem to get that, but I realize that if they do, I'll be toast. At the same time, I run out of shells. I hit her with the weapon, but it's poorly made, and has taken as much force as it can. It breaks apart in my hands and falls to the floor. The zombie reaches up, grabs my hair, and pulls. Desperate, I reach down and shove her head so her chin hits her chest. I see that the flesh on her neck is rotten. I dig my fingers into the soft spots where the skin is kind of melty. It feels almost like sticking my fingers into warm spaghetti that's been in water too long... wet, squishy, a little ropey, and very slimy.

I rip handfuls of muscle and sinew off of the zombie's neck and shoulders until her spinal column is completely exposed. I realize this will not stop her from rending and biting. She's ignoring the attack - these zombies have no working pain sensors - and continuing to pull me down from the ceiling even as I push on her collarbone. I grab the spinal column with one hand, and the collarbone with the other. I pull on the spine until I hear a wet, crackling, crunching sound.

There is a pop, and a sudden release, and the bones in my hand come up, with a couple of feet of torn nerve tissue hanging down. There is no spray, because the zombies' blood does not circulate, but there is splatter from the force of the action. Drops of blood and spinal fluid hit the walls, the body, the pile, the zombies, and me. The body slumps and falls into the crowd of zombies, who begin mindlessly ripping it to shreds with their hands, but not eating. There is something about the virus that makes them violent toward anything unable to defend itself, but only hungry for living flesh.

I throw the head and spine to the floor, turn to shout again at my charges, and see them stopped, standing still, and staring at me in horror. When I look at them, their eyes turn to the shredding frenzy on the other side of the dead pile. They break and run for the door, not shoving each other, but finally rushing to get out. Behind them, I back away from the pile while the zombies are distracted by the body of the blond.

*****

The whole time we've been travelling, one of my friends has been berating her husband over mundane, innocent things. "Don't put your foot there. Why did you step in that spot? There was no indentation there, and now there is. You ruined it." All of us in the group had pointed out that she was being unreasonable, but it didn't stop her. Even her daughter was getting in on it, "telling" on her father to get him into "trouble" with her mother.

Finally, my mother in law yelled at her to just shut up. She told my friend off in no uncertain terms, pointing out that she had no right of approval over everything her husband did, and that she wasn't treating him as a man or an equal, but as her personal verbal punching bag. She told her to quit being so nitpicky over everything and just enjoy the fact that she had someone to love.

Since then, my friend remained quiet until we reached our next destination.

I've gotten my group into a house, where there's a secret opening to the sewer. That is where we are headed. We have learned that there is a community down there which has avoided infection and remained hidden and safe. It's defensible and self-sustaining, and new people are welcome, though we'll have to be isolated until they know we're not infected.

The opening to the sewer is behind one of the cushions in the couch in the corner living room, which has such huge picture windows on the two outside walls that it might as well not even be closed.

Once again, I'm facing the problem of getting people motivated. They have forgotten about the horde in the building. Even though we've encountered zombies along the way and lost two of our number (strangers, but we'd gotten to know and treasure them and are as heartbroken and weary as if we'd lost lifelong friends, not just sickened over the human deaths) the sense of urgency is gone because we no longer face an immediate threat. Members of the group are looking for things in the house to grab and take with them. I'm frantic because there are not curtains or shades on the windows, and I'm sure that any minute, we'll be spotted by the zombies wandering outside and pursued again.

Most of them aren't looking for anything valuable, like tools, food, survival books, or potential weapons. Instead, someone grabs a video game console, despite being told we won't be able to plug it in. Another grabs dress shoes and make-up, and a third is going through the household's freezer for goodies. My nagging friend is grabbing unimportant little things she thinks her female friends would like - beads, make-up, dice for gaming, and other similar items which would not be useful for survival. The husband finds a well-stocked liqueur cabinet, and grab several bottles of high-proof hard liqueur. I know he's grabbing it for drinking purposes, but I hope he gets it to the colony intact, because I see the potential use of it as a disinfectant for wounds, and the glass bottles as weapons.

Only two men (my husband and a friend) and my kids are focused on survival. The men grab a toolbox, a bag of survival manuals and fixit books, and a shotgun shell-stuffing kit with supplies (but no gun can be found.) The girls grab everything in the medicine cabinet, and everything in the cleaning cabinet, which they shove into a duffel bag before heading for the living room while shouting for everyone else to hurry. My son grabs a big bag of canned food and boxed cereal. He puts trash bags over it, then throws two more at the other kids for their bag of first aid stuff, and shoves the box into his bag.

Zombies spot us through the windows. I point this out to the group, and start pushing people to head for the living room. The zombies attack the front door as we run for the living room, everyone weighed down by objects they're taking with them. At this point, we're trying to stuff 80 people into a 4' by 4' hole, so it's slow going, and fairly quickly the zombies realize they can come at us through the picture windows. I and two others are fighting them off, one at the living room doorway with a broken mop handle, stabbing at eyes and open mouths with the pointed end to create a wall of dead bodies, and two at the windows with kitchen knives (which I grabbed when the zombies spotted us) and a meat tenderizing hammer.

It takes several minutes to get everyone into the hole. The doorway guard has filled the hall with bodies, and nothing can get through behind him. We send him through the hole, then start backing toward it. My ally, a teenage nephew, wants me to go first because I am a girl. I insist that he go first because he's young and healthy, while I am not. The argument lasts seconds - him insisting I'm the leader and therefore needed, me insisting that he better get his ass in there before we both die.

Finally, I shove him through the hole. As I do, one of the zombies gets around the pile of dead in front of us, and grabs my arm. I barely avoid getting bitten, shove the hammer down the zombie's throat, and kick it into the crowd behind it. They fall onto it, ripping and shredding at its clothing and flesh. While they are distracted, I jump into the hole, slide the door closed, and lock it from the inside. The mechanism to unlock on the outside is complicated (easily used by a living human, but a challenge for a zombie,) but I fear that eventually they'll figure it out if they remember we're in here long enough to get through the mental process. Their attention span in the absence of visible prey is short, so I'm hoping they'll just leave.

The way down into the sewer involves a series of tunnels that are like amusement park water slides made of cement. It's hard to navigate, filthy, foul smelling, and dangerous, but the group seems to mostly be doing okay with it. I'm helping my mother and a few others with physical difficulties.

In the upper tunnels, we encounter a couple of recently turned zombies, and I again have to send the group on without me. This time, they listen, taking the initiative to guard the kids and get them to safety while I keep the zombies from pursuit. Again, I find myself beheading one, using the kitchen knife I still have in my hand. When the head comes off, the other zombie attacks the body, ignoring me as I stab up into its brain and twist the knife to sever the spine.

I leave the two bodies in the way of future pursuers, and turn to go down the next tunnel, hoping I can catch up with my group before they run into anything else. I know my immediate family will protect them, but I don't want my loved ones to get hurt. I'm filled with anxiety at the thought that something else may get to them before I do.

Cuz that's how it is

After I had the first dream, I woke momentarily and then went back to sleep. Next thing I knew, I was dreaming from the perspective of a little kid, and feeling like one, too. There was no sense of schedule, work, or anything except what was interesting or fun, and what was not interesting or fun, and a sense of being close to and guided by the person I was with. 

An older kid is watching me for the day, a distant family member I always call Cuz-cuz even though he's more distant than a cousin. I call him that, and he calls me "Vic," the pronunciation of a shortened version of my name. As usual when we're together, he's brought me to a playground, where I've found a new toy I hadn't noticed the last time I was here. The toy is fascinating. It hasn't got any of the buttons or levers that many of the other toys in the playground do. It's not made to be climbed on or played in. It's a brain teaser.

I've discovered that if I focus on the little blue and brown ball inside the glass, I can make it spin and whirl, change the shape of it, and even make it blow up in a fiery explosion, after which it will slowly re-form. I've become so entranced with the toy that I've actually got my fingers and my nose pressed against the glass. I've blown it up about fifty times, but I've tired of that and am instead shaping the surface of it, making hills and valleys, watching the blue liquid on the exterior flow into the deeper areas if I move the surface where it sits.

My attention is so fully taken up with what I am doing that I don't notice the approach of a bigger kid, until he says, "What are you doing, freak?" Looking over, I see that he's taller than me, outweighs me, and looks cross. I'm not even bothered by the nickname. All the kids call me that because I look different from them. My eyes are a weird color. My skin is, too, and my hair. Of course they aren't going to understand.

Also, there are things they do that I don't, and things I do that they can't. There are things I like that they think are weird. I have learned to not act too different from them when they are around, but in this case I've been caught. None of the other kids would play with the ball inside the glass the way I am. They would just keep ripping it apart, and if they could, blowing it up.

As if to drive that point home, the boy smashes my masterpiece against the bottom of the case, flattening the ball out like a big fat brown-and-blue pancake. I tell him that I was playing with that. He smirks and laughs, and starts slamming it around rapidly inside the case, kneading it until the brown and blue mix to make a runny black tar. When I look away from him, he starts taunting me.

"Awe, you gonna cry, freak? Waaaah! Did the poor widdow baby wanna keep it fowevew? You little dumbass, everyone likes to break that thing. It would have been someone else if it hadn't been me. Why don't ya do something about it?"

He knows that I'm not allowed, but he doesn't know why. I hit harder than the other kids, even the bigger ones. I hit in ways they can't, and in ways against which they cannot defend. So, I'm not allowed to hit at all.  Whenever this happens, we usually just leave the playground and go for a walk in the woods, where Cuz-cuz tells me the names of all of the plants, or tells me stories about the conquering heroes who won this home for 'our' people. He always says 'our,' even though we both know I'm not really part of the community. I'm really, really mixed. That makes me different, and as I am learning, different is bad.

I take my fingertips off of the glass, turn my back on him, and start to walk away like I've been taught. The bully follows, pushing me from behind so that I fall down. Cuz-cuz decides to get involved. I hear footsteps, and from above my position, his voice. "You should leave this one alone."

I hear the bully snort and make a lewd suggestion as to what my sitter can do with his time. Cuz-cuz, says in a very serious voice, "How old do you want to be when you die?"

The bully laughs out loud and says, "What are you gonna do about it?"

Cuz-cuz tells me to get up. I do. The bully reaches, and Cuz-cuz slaps his hand away, then kneels down beside me so that he's my height. His eyes are kind, but sad. He says, "You know when you're with me, I'm the boss, right?"

I nod. The bully snorts again, swats again, and is rebuffed by another smack of the hand. Cuz-cuz turns and tells him he'd better quit, or he'll have both of us to deal with. The bully starts taunting again, but Cuz-cuz ignores that, takes both of my hands to direct my attention to himself, and starts talking to me again. I follow his lead, watch his eyes, and listen.

He says, "Okay, then. Think of this like a test. You have limited permission. You may cause non-lethal, non-injurious torment. Do you understand? No injury, nothing lethal. Got it?" His eyes are focused on me, filled with the intensity of an adult trying to get a vital point across, even though he's barely an adolescent. I realize that he's taking a risk. He's allowed to give me this kind of permission in more serious situations, but not like this. The adults don't think I'm ready to tell the difference yet. They don't think I can keep it under control. Cuz-cuz is supposed to take me home when I'm bullied, but he's letting me hit back because we're tired of not being able to go anywhere.

This is his responsibility. The adults have made that very clear. He's not just protecting me from the other kids. He's supposed to be protecting them from me, too. I know that if I screw this up, he'll be the one in trouble, not me, but it will also mean the adults won't trust me for a long time. This is a test of my maturity and my self-restraint.

I nod. I am resolved to not harm the boy. I just want to make sure he understands that he's not picking on a wimp. I can hear him still taunting, only now he's making fun of Cuz-cuz. "Such big words for such a little kid. Do you really think the freak understands what you're saying?"

Without looking away from me, Cuz-cuz lets go with his right hand, reaches out and grabs the bully's neck, slams his face into the glass with a loud thunk, then lets go and takes my hands again. "Don't call her that, you little asshole!" he says, not even looking away from me. Then, to me, he says, "You sure you're ready, Vic?"

I nod again, and just so he knows I'm up to speed, I tell him, "No boom, no blood, right?" Cuz-cuz smiles, and nods back at me. "You got it, Vic. Show him."

He lets go of my hands, puts one of his on each of my shoulders, and turns me to face the bully. By now, there are other kids gathered around, seeing that we haven't just fled the park and wondering what is going to happen next. Secure with Cuz-cuz behind me, one arm across my chest, and both of his hands resting on my left shoulder, I look at the boy and tell him he's a big meanie. He laughs, turns to the other kids, and says, "Awe, did you guys hear that? I'm a big meanie! Oh, no... whatever will I do?" He rubs his eyes melodramatically, and the other kids laugh.

For a moment, I can feel my temper creeping in. I really don't want to let it take over, because I don't want to let Cuz-cuz down. He's doing something for me that no one else has. He's loosening my leash, just a little bit, in hopes that I won't have to put up with this any more. By doing that, he's risking severe punishment should his choice lead to anything worse than a schoolyard scrap. I can feel that he's ready to grab me and run should I go off, but I also know that by the time he could, it would be too late.

I reach up and give his hand a squeeze, and loose the building anger into the case, attacking the ball, instead of the boy. I let the energy make the ball rapidly explode and reform itself over and over for a few seconds, filling the case with fire and sludge, until the edge is spent and I'm feeling more level-headed again. The kids watch as the toy goes ballistic, the dark substance smacking against the glass, and fire lighting it up over and over... boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-BOOM! until I stop, and turn my eyes back to the now quiet bully.

The bully is losing confidence. He starts to bluster. "You ain't allowed to hit back, and I know it. You can't do anything to me. You better not."

I feel a little uncertain for a moment, but Cuz-cuz's voice behind me reminds me, "It's all right, Vic. You're allowed. Just remember to stay within the perimeters I gave you." I can feel his heart thumping against my back. He's scared. He knows the risk he's taking. Again, I squeeze his hand to let him know I'm all right. I'm not going to let him down.

Suddenly it hits me how cool this is. I'm finally going to get a little of my own back, and maybe scare this guy off of me for good. Maybe from now on the other kids, even if they're not going to like me, will at least stop being so mean. Even though I'm not allowed to really hit back, what I CAN do will be quite enough. Giggles bubble up inside, and I let them out, shooting their energy forward and wrapping it around the boy.

As the sense of exuberance wraps around him, he starts to look nervous, then grossed out as if I'd wrapped him in sewer slime. He starts trying to wipe it off of his skin, shouting, "What the hell? What are you doing to me? Stop it, you little shit!"

I start to shape the energy, still giggling at the sense of freedom and release, and begin to push it under the surface. Seconds later, his skin is a perfect match to mine, and his eyes have changed from their natural burning red to match the deep blue of the toy in the case. Looking at his hands, the boy screams wildly and begins scratching. I ask him what's wrong, doesn't he like his new look? He turns to me and demands that I change him back, right now. I ask him what if I don't? What is he going to do?

The boy threatens to beat me. I tell him to go ahead. Even with Cuz-cuz behind me, holding onto my shoulders, the bully advances, swinging his fist. As soon as he does, I make a thick, squishy wall of molded energy between us. His hand smashes into it, instead of into me. When he feels it, he punches with the other hand, both fists sinking deep in to the invisible substance, clear up past his wrists. I harden the wall, trapping him, then walk around it so I'm behind him. The other kids all move away, gasping. Feeling powerful even though I've done my tormenter no harm, I climb up onto a rock and lean over to speak quietly into his ear, telling him never to pick on anyone again, because I'll be watching. The bully, terrified because he is trapped and feeling helpless, babbles his agreement and begs me to let him go. I tell him the truth, that I've not done anything permanent. I'm holding back a lot, so everything I've changed will work itself back to normal in a few moments, but for now, I'm not going to undo what I did. He's stuck like that. He wails like a little kid whose candy was just taken away. I ignore him.

I turn and tell the other kids he's on punishment. They all know that phrase, and they know what it means. When the adults say it, it means leave that kid alone. Don't pick, because we want him to focus on whatever it is we're trying to enforce right now. You stay out of it. They all quietly turn and walk away, just as if an adult had said the phrase, and I realize that the other kids have just afforded me authority. They're responding to me not as the freak, but as the boss. I have just stepped up a lot in the playground pecking order. Maybe I will have to remind them sometimes, but from now on, I'm not the kid on whom everyone else takes out their bad-day frustration. I turn to see Cuz-cuz's approving smile. I ask him if we can go for a walk now, and he tells me I've earned it. He stands up and takes my hand, and we start to walk away.

I can feel the changes all ready wearing off of the bully. His freckles are disappearing with little popping noises. Soon, his skin will be back to normal, then his eyes, and finally, the wall will disappear, freeing him. I don't know if he'll forget his fear and pick again, or if he'll remember and stay away, but at least this was fun while it lasted, and even better, Cuz-cuz is proud of me. That makes the trip more worthwhile than anything.

I only hope he doesn't get into trouble for letting me do this.

That scene faded into the kind of walk in the woods I'd been remembering before, with "Cuz-cuz" telling me names of things and talking about how to use them. The experience felt a lot like hanging out with an older sibling. This was someone who I had to obey if he gave an order, but who didn't have the full authority of a parent. He felt like a source of sometime comfort, but not a source of discipline. There was a sense of the kind of love and admiration a little kid has for a related older kid who offers time, attention, and genuine affection... of wanting his approval, and the enjoyment of feeling important to him... but the entire experience was also clouded over by the worry that the incident at the park was going to get him into trouble with the adults in charge. I woke with that sense of worry intact, because the dream ended while we were still in the woods.

Well, that was strange

This one needs a little background, or you won't understand why I'm weirded out.

Last weekend, I went to my parents' house to help move furniture and stuff so they could use a downstairs room for a bedroom instead of the upstairs. While I was there, my Mom told me she's been having nightmares like mine, and she described some of them. It's highly unusual for Mom to even have nightmares at all, much less involving specific things that have been present in some of my weirdest ones. 

Mom isn't used to this, and she was really shaken up by some of the painful attacks she'd experienced. Unable to help her get past what she'd dreamed, I decided the best route was to help her get the tools she needed to deal with future nightmares, instead. We spent hours, while working in the room, talking about techniques I use in my dreams to fight monsters by using things that can't be done in the real world, like magic and flying. Mom can fly in her dreams, so I know that she can use other lucid techniques. I told her that when she gets ready to go to sleep, she should repeat to herself over and over that she'd be strong and capable in her dreams, that she'd know she could fight and win. Before going to sleep, she should focus on being aware that she's not in the real world, and that she can do anything. It's what I learned from the lucid dreaming book I had in high school, and though I haven't been able to completely make use of the techniques, that one thing (being able to fight back) got through.

I told her that if worse came to worst, when impossible things are happening to her and she gets really scared again, if she can't fight back she should focus really hard on me, and I'd fight for her. I went on to describe some of my battles, and how I am able to move and shape things.  If it comes down to that, by telling her that, I've given her the image, figuring that when she did have a nightmare, if she "called" me, she'd experience the defense I described, because that would be the image she had of me. 

Then, with Mom's consent, I did some energy work, using a candle as a focus. I designated the candle's energy to represent the forging of a connection between how she feels in her dreams and how I fight in mine. I linked that to how she fights in real life, given that she never backed down when she was in city politics, even when the local police were stalking her. I charged that as the candle burned, it would release energy that would bring out Mom's own strong will, and would bring up in the part of her subconscious involved in the dream state some automatic defenses that would stop anything scary or painful from happening. If the nightmares were a psychic attack, the connection would call me to her, and I'd be able to handle it from there.


All week, she's said she's been fine, no bad dreams or anything. Then, last night, just as I was drifting off, it felt like someone who shouldn't be touching me was. In my semi-conscious state, I visualized and half-experienced reaching out and grabbing someone by the shirt with my left hand, and punching the shit out of his jaw with my right, so close to dream-vivid that I actually heard the smacking sound my fist made against his skin and the grunt of his voice. Then, when I was all the way asleep, I had this.


I'm on that stretch of beach again, city off to my left, water on my right, and that little snack shack that doesn't sell snacks, looking smaller than ever in the distance ahead. My first thought is to wonder why I'm here, but that doesn't last long, as a confused, irritated voice calls out from behind me. "What the... Where is this place? Who the hell are you?"

I spin around to see a group of rough looking men, all huge, standing together on my beach. They look really out of place, staring at the white sand, dark sky, and choppy water. Glaring at the one nearest me, who by virtue of having spoken seems to be their leader, I demand to know who they are, and what they're doing here. It's weird... they actually feel foreign to me, not like from another country, but like invaders.

The men begin to move away from each other, spreading out to form kind of a half-circle in front of me, all giving me cautious looks. The 'leader' says my mother's name like it's a question. He's half-crouched, like he's going to pounce on me any second, but he still looks confused and very nervous. Chills go down my spine, followed by anger rising in my chest. These guys are looking for my Mom.

"Who wants to know?" I ask, digging my bare feet into the sand and drawing energy for a fight.

I can hear the guys muttering to each other behind their leader. They seem like they're coming to a consensus that I'm guarding Mom, and they have to defeat me to get to her. This idea is reinforced by their having seen a different landscape prior to finding my beach, and having experienced some kind of explosive attack that they believe blasted them into this place. Trying to regain control, their leader steps toward me, telling me it doesn't matter. I'm not who they're looking for, but I'm in their way. He says, "We won't hurt you if you just let us out of here. We're just passing through."

I can feel the guy's energy moving, searching for an opening that will take him where he wants to go. When he realizes the opening is me, his eyes narrow, and he tells the others, "Looks like we're going to have to do this the hard way."

Suddenly, every single one of them is holding something nasty. One has a machete, another a baseball bat with nails pounded through it. I see a straight razor for shaving, several knives, a small axe, a metal pipe, and a pair of brass knuckles. The entire crowd begins advancing on me at once, the majority of them circling around to attack from the sides and behind me.

I ignore the sight of them, feeling outward around me for energy that signifies their individual presences, waiting until they're all about ten feet away from me and ready to jump. As soon as the energy around me tenses like they're about to spring, I raise a spiked, energized shield around me and shove it out to a radius of about six feet. Every single one of the guys slams into it, getting impaled, shocked, and thrown into the air around me. Most of them go flying back into the sand. Seven land in the water. Three of them are out at least forty yards. As soon as they splash down, the dorsal fins poke up and start heading their way.

The three begin to swim, desperately trying to get away from whatever is underneath those fins, one guy lagging behind the others as his heavy workboots and the metal pipe he won't drop slow him down. Their comrades watch from the beach, shouting at them to hurry as the sharks close the distance. I can hear one voice nearby bellowing, "Drop the pipe! Drop the pipe and swim, you dumbass!" It doesn't look like the guy in the water can hear him.

The sharks forget about the other two, changing their angle to surround the slowpoke. Seeing the dorsals in front of him, he stops swimming and begins treading water, gripping the pipe in his hand, ready to swing, not realizing that fighting in water isn't going to be the same as fighting on land.

His comrades watch, sickened and dismayed, as he is ripped apart by the sharks, his ragged and gurgling screams echoing across the beach like the soundtrack of a horror movie until one of the sharks bites through his chest and silences him. I look at the leader of my remaining assailants. "Go home," I growl.

The leader barks obscenities at me, and starts to get bigger. Looking around, I can see that all of them are changing, becoming larger and darker, less human looking. Their faces, arms, and legs are a little too long. Red eyes flash from beneath heavy brows, looming at me over wide mouths full of sharp, pointed teeth. The feeling of opening a curtain tells me that their earlier appearance was a disguise they had ready for whatever nightmare they had prepared for my mother, and they've just figured out that it isn't going to work on me.

The weapons are gone, replaced by bare hands and close-fitting leather that looks like it might be some kind of armor, though I'm not sure. Growling, the monsters close in on me again, careful to stay far enough outside the radius of my shield to avoid another hit, but close enough for me to see they still mean business.

From behind me, the force of someone's energy strikes my shield. Nothing compared to the power of the last opponent I fought here, it ricochets off and spins away harmlessly over the water. Feeling out from the place where it hit, I realize that the sender has left a trail back to himself. Without turning around, I focus on the spot where he stands, and send a jolt back along that path. I feel it hit home, throwing him sideways, so that two of his comrades have to dive into the sand to avoid being hit by his flying body. The leader sneers at me. I sneer back, and take a step forward, bringing my shield with me.

When I move, I see the ones in front of me, and feel the others around me, all flinch away. Feeling confident, I stir up the weather a little more, raising my arm and waving it over my head for effect as lightning flashes across the sky. The tall, thin leader, now much closer to me than the rest of his men, looks up, then looks back at me, determination eclipsing the fear on his face. I understand his position. He is the only thing right now keeping his men from breaking and running in a panic, now that they have realized they aren't dealing with an uninitiated dreamer, but a fighter who has learned to manipulate and use the elements of the dream. He has to show that he is strong, or he'll lose them all.

Outside my shield, I feel his energy building up around him, dark, dank, and foul. It's like sensing an influx of raw sewage gathering on my beach. Disgusted, I push against it, feeling polluted and cruddy. As soon as I touch that filth, I feel my opponent twist it and shove, impacting against my shield in just one tiny little spot with the force of all of his power, making a sound like a knife hitting glass.

The spike continues to pound, tapping rapidly against the surface, moving and down in an arc along the curve of my shield, as I try to get a grip on it. Slippery and revolting, it evades my grasp, and suddenly there is a loud pinging noise as it hits the same spot over and over until a crack formed.

Annoyed, I slam a wave against the spike from the side, shoving it away from my shield. The force of the boss's attack sends his energy into one of his own guys, right through the chest. The impaled monster falls to the sand, dark blood pouring from the wound, body thrashing.

I decide I'm not putting up with this any more. These wimps were going to attack my mother, meaning to scare the crap out of her and maybe even do real harm, and I can feel that if I don't take enough action, there will be more attacks, and more monsters. They will never leave her alone.

Reaching up into the storm again, I pull down bolt after bolt of lightning, striking the remaining grunts down. I feel like I'm playing whack-a-boogie-man with them as they break and run, scrambling over the beach like cockroaches fleeing the light, until all that is left is the leader. Advancing on him, I drop my shield. It's not really needed against such a lowlife piece of scum.

Horrified, the leader backs away from me. I raise the sand behind him, and he trips, falling onto it as I continue to shape it into shackles around his ankles, arms, forehead, and throat. He now looks like he's sitting in a sand version of an electric chair. Desperate and trapped, he lashes out, his nasty energy shooting out at me over and over again. Each time, I feel it coming and slap it away with little effort.

Stepping forward, I get right in the trapped monster's face, my nose inches away from his, and call all of the energy I've drawn into my aura so that he can see it. I can feel the storm flashing in my eyes, and he shrinks back in his makeshift seat. Not satisfied, I draw lightning across above the clouds where it won't be seen, letting thunder roll in, build up, and crash over our heads. A whine escapes him, and suddenly the smell of ammonia and minerals is floating on the wind in front of me.

I poke a finger into his pale, gaunt chest, punctuating a word with each impact, backing the statement up with more thunder behind me, building the volume of my voice as I go.

"Don't.
Fuck.
With.
Me."

The last  word comes out as a roar, right in his face, complete with a blast of hot wind. The monster closes his eyes, crumpling in terror, hands balled into fists. It's all he can do to shut me out. He can't turn away. I've got him pinned in that seat.

Seeing my enemy cringing in front of me, wetness spreading across his lap and the sand beneath him, I feel like a total louse. I'm bulling something that's far beneath me, driving home a point that was likely made before he even attacked my shield; that he'd messed with the wrong person. If this had just been an ordinary nightmare with an ordinary boogie-man attack, I'd have wiped them all out and left it at that. But it isn't. They started out thinking they were here to attack my mother, and I have to make sure that never happens again.

Standing up, I poke my finger at the monster's body one more time, in the fleshy area between the collar bone and the neck, where I can almost see a major vein flowing beneath the skin. Using energy, I burn my initials into his sallow hide, red welts rising in stark contrast to the nearly gray flesh. The monster screams and writhes in pain at the first touch. Feeling sorry, I put my other hand on his throat and block the sensation with more energy until I am done, then heal the burn into deep, dark scars. Feeling the numbness, he opens his eyes and stares in confusion as I finish branding him.

Getting down to his level again, I scoop up some sand and melt it to produce a mirror so that he can see the marks. "You know what this means?" I ask him. Understanding flashes across his face, and then resignation. What is he going to do, argue with me? He has no choice but to accept the situation and be glad I didn't just kill him outright. My stomach turns, cold rising in me as my spirit objects. This isn't my way. I don't want to do this. I hate doing this... but I know that if I don't, there will be more of them, and I will not let them come after my mother again.

"You now belong to me," I tell him roughly. "You're my property, subject to my will and my whim. Get up." I dissolve the chair and the bonds, so that the monster must either stand, or fall on the beach. Even slouching in defeat, he towers over me, standing on trembling legs rather than let me see him fall. Misery and fear in his eyes, he waits to hear the rest of his fate. I steel myself against my aversion to what I know has to be done, then I continue to explain.

"You are now my mother's guardian. Stay just near enough to know if anyone else like you approaches. Don't try to interact with her at all. Just protect her. Nothing harmful gets to her, ever, without killing you first, understand? You can use every ounce of your power to fight and defend yourself against attackers, but only in the course of protecting her. You will warn anyone who runs away that if they come back, they'll end up like you. You will destroy anyone who doesn't run. And..." I let my voice become more harsh and ragged as I speak. "...if you ever even think about trying to harm her, or anyone else I love..." Here, I send a fiery spike of energy down through the brand on his shoulder into his bowels, knocking him screaming to his knees, doubled over at the gut, head thrown back in anguish.

The sight and sound tears at my heart. Immediately, I stop, putting a hand on his bony shoulder to stabilize his weight, once again healing the damage done by the energy. Relief shapes his features now. "I'll know, and I'll come for you," I finish, disgust with myself and my actions cramping my gut, making my words sound all the more vicious and cruel. "I'll make you wish you never existed."

The monster's mental state breaks entirely. He reaches out and grabs my clothing, pressing his forehead against my chest and babbling, promising me his loyalty and obedience, but then begging me to either kill him or go away. Pangs of guilt and shame stab through me at the sight and sound of what I've done to him, anger trying to follow them in as my mental defenses try to blame him for my terrible actions.

I can't do this. I'm not domineering. I don't even like to fight. I was just trying to protect my family. Fighting tears, I close my hands over his long, twisted fingers and shush him, telling him it's all right now. The fight is over, and I'm not going to hurt him any more, just as long as he doesn't try anything dumb.

"Yes, Mistress," the monster begins, the name punching me right in the chest, bringing those tears even closer to the surface.

"Ma'am," I quietly correct him. I'm no one's mistress, even if I have forced him into servitude. I can't take that title. It'll kill me. "Ma'am will do. Don't call me anything else. Now, do you have any other injuries?" Without waiting for an answer, I start looking him over, feeling for anything that is not as it should be, ignoring the return of that look of confusion on his face as I work on the places where my spikes went through in the initial assault.

"Why?" he asks, the confusion deepening, edged with faint hope that I can see him trying to quash. I want to tell him not to give that up, but I don't know enough about this guy to have that much trust. Instead, I lie, pushing back my own moral objection to hurting him in favor of the impulse to protect my family.

"You're not any good to her damaged like this." But I can see the wheels turning. The hope goes back under the surface, but it's still there. I'm going to have to keep consistent watch on him, using the brand like a mark, or he'll turn on me. Uneasiness settles in as I go over every hurt, using the same power that defeated and dominated him to heal my new slave. No... servant. Just a servant, a prisoner of war, paying for his crime. I'm not an enslaver. I'm not!

God, what have I done?

Multiple nightmares

I don't know what it was... stress, maybe, or something I ate, but last night really sucked ass.

I'm ten years old, riding in the back seat of the car, feeling kind of sleepy, so I decide to lay down. When I do, and I see the back of the driver's seat from that angle, I realize where, and more importantly, when I am. This is the night of the car accident that changed my mother's life. We're going to be hit, and she's almost going to die. She's going to be in pain for the rest of her life. I know I'm having a nightmare. Wanting to wake, I shake my head back and forth really hard. That never fails to wake me, ever.

Except... this time, I don't wake up. Terrified, I try again, and again, until it hits home that I'm not getting out of this. I'm going to watch her suffocating again.

I think that maybe I came here to dream about changing it. I tell Grandma not to turn down that road, but she does. I tell her not to pull into that lot, but she does. I tell her to wait a minute, that there's danger down the road, that she can turn around after he passes, but she smoothly turns the car around and pulls back out onto the road.

I feel the car turning right, a sign that the accident is impending. I hear the tires squealing as the other driver loses control. I scream at Grandma to hit the gas, get out of this space, but it's too late. Suddenly, there's the sound of metal crashing and screaming, glass breaking, tires screeching, and we're moving sideways faster than we'd been moving forward. I hear Mom's head hit Grandma's as I am thrown on the floor, covered in beads of broken glass.

Then, it all stops. For a second, everything is still, and then I can hear Mom trying to breathe with two collapsed lungs, a high pitched whistling, wheezing sound coming out of her throat. I know what is going to happen. A bus driver is going to call an ambulance. It's going to feel like an eternity until they arrive and use the jaws of life to get my mother out of the car. They're going to separate us, taking her to one hospital, and me to another, where Grandma and I will pray for hours, worried the whole time because we are unable to get any information on my Mom. Mom will live, but her doctors aren't going to be able to figure out how. She's going to be in terrible pain for the rest of her life, and she's always going to be discriminated against because her disability is invisible.

Except, this time, there is no bus driver. Instead, a tall man in dark clothing comes to the window and calls her name. I can see two of my mother, one overlapping the other. The bottom one is wheezing and struggling to breathe. The top one is looking at the man. He holds out his hand, and she cringes away from him.

The man howls in fury, pounding on the outside of the car, bellowing that no one escapes him, and it's her time. I realize that what I'm seeing is some kind of monster trying to steal my mother's soul out of her body. I climb out of the broken window, onto the hood of the other car, and scramble across. I throw myself onto the tall man, kicking and punching, trying to defend her. He tries to shove me away, and I grab on tighter. I can see the bus driver who is supposed to come to the window and then call for help. He's trying to calm the kids on the bus, who are yelling and pointing at us. I let the man push me away. I drop to the ground, crouch down, and grab his knee, pulling so that he loses his balance and falls. When he does, he drops out of the kids' line of sight, and they get quiet. The driver gets out of the bus, and starts walking toward the car.

The man tries to get up, and I start stomping and kicking at him, intent on keeping him away from Mom's door. I'm screaming and yelling, "No! You can't have her!" over and over, as he keeps shouting her name and telling her she has to come. When he tries to sit up, I tackle him and try to hold him down, biting into his arms and shoving my knee into his gut, anything I can do to save Mom.

I can hear sirens coming in the distance, but it seems to be taking forever, prolonging the wrestling match for my mother's life. The man, who is bigger and stronger than me, finally pins me to the ground, looking triumphant. Before he can do anything else, the EMS is there, ripping open the car and taking my Mom out into the ambulance. I've delayed him long enough; she's going to make it.

Enraged, the man glares at me, calls me a thief, and tells me that I owe him, and one day he'll show up to collect.

*********************************

I'm sitting in a courtroom, next to a man in a suit. I figure out right away that the man is my lawyer. I'm accused of murdering a neighbor who I can clearly see is very much alive, sitting on the witness stand talking about how I "killed" her. I am thinking that this case should be dismissed, but my lawyer is actually arguing instead, questioning the woman's credibility based on flimsy crap that I know isn't going to stand up, instead of just pointing out that - hey, there she sits, alive, so I can't have killed her!

Witness after witness comes forward to describe heinous acts I never committed against this woman, acts that would be evident if I had, by anything from leaving scars to causing her death. By the end of the trial , I'm incredulous. I can tell by their faces that the jury is convinced I'm a brutal murderer.

They leave the room. I ask my lawyer why he didn't just point out that the woman is not dead. He tells me that doing so would violate her privacy rights, and that if she says she's dead, no one has the right to question that. Again, my jaw is hanging open. I ask, what about my right to a fair trial? Don't I have the right to have all of the facts presented in my defense? I'm told that no, if it involves someone's medical status as living or nonliving, I don't.

I ask how everyone can ignore the obvious, that she is up and moving, talking, coherent, and even testifying in the case. Isn't all of that evidence that she is not dead? According to my lawyer, only an expert such as a doctor is legally allowed to diagnose someone as being alive or dead. Since no such diagnosis was offered, the jury is required to disregard any evidence of the victim's living status.

Finally, the jury returns. The foreman reads off the verdict: Guilty.

Totally shocked, I sit and listen as the judge sentences me to be executed for my crime. The method of execution is that I am to be tied between two posts and chopped to death with a machete. Horrified, I turn to ask my lawyer how many appeals I have, but he's white as a sheet, and there's a bailiff grabbing him from behind. He tells me that he has to serve my sentence with me, and it's going to happen right now. He thought we'd won the case by proving that the woman had been caught lying repeatedly, but we've lost, and there is no appeal. I'm dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the courtroom by a large man. Outside the window, I can see three tall wooden posts. My family, sitting behind the defendant's table, are sobbing and holding each other. I feel like I am going to puke.

The big man starts shoving my hands into looped ropes that tighten around my wrists. I know if I don't get out of this, it's really going to happen. I'm going to feel that blade cutting into me over and over until I die.

I can hear the sharp, wet, squishy sound of the blade slicing into my lawyer, followed by his first of many screams. Another man grabs me, and I know it's too late. I'm done for.

*********************************

I'm at work, at my old job instead of my new one. It's about halfway through a full shift, and I'm getting hungry. I step into the back room and grab the quart of milk I bought to keep me going, and guzzle about half of it. When I come back out to the front counter, my coworker is crouched down on the floor, reaching for a dropped pack of cigarettes. She doesn't pick up the pack, but instead, stays in that position. I call her name. She doesn't answer. I get down to see if she's all right, and I see that her skin has kind of a gray tint to it. As I watch, her cheeks begin to crack and sag, and then her lips, and her lower eyelids. Her hair falls out, and her ears droop out to the sides. she falls over sideways. I back away, looking around for help, but there's no one.

I grab the phone and dial 9-1-1, listening to the phone ring on the other end. No one answers. I run to the cooler to get my boss. She's draped over the drinks, her flesh dripping down onto the floor. I flee the store, heading out to my car, which won't start. Cussing and slamming the door, I run the three blocks home to my apartment, passing wrecked cars and rotting neighbors along the way.

When I finally reach the complex, there's no one outside. I have no idea if people here are all right or not, because I've only seen people inside my store and outdoors. Bursting into the apartment, I see my husband and son sitting on the couches, watching anime online. Relieved, I start to tell them what is happening outside, but as soon as I start to talk, my son's jaw drops, and his tongue rolls out. My husband's lower eyelids begin to droop, and I notice that both of the guys are gray. There is hair all over the cushions around them, and bald spots are forming on their heads.

*********************************

I'm in a shopping mall. It's really crowded, like around the holidays. Everywhere I go, people are staring at me with angry looks on their faces. Whenever I'm not actively shopping, they're running into me on purpose. I'm trying to avoid being in the hallway outside the stores very much. At least when I'm shopping, the other patrons leave me alone.

I find something that I want to buy, take it to the counter, pay, and walk out of one store, headed for another. When I get into the hallway, all of the people there converge on me. Someone takes my bag and runs. I try to go after him, but there are dozens of hands on me, people hitting and kicking, biting, and spitting on me.

I'm screaming and struggling, but I end up on the floor. I realize I'm going to be trampled to death, but I have no idea why everyone is so mad at me. The only feeling I have is that I'm an outsider, and they're attacking because I'm not one of them.

*********************************

That was the last remotely coherent dream I had last night. After that, it descended into a night of faces and noises, and the feeling of things pinching and biting me. I kept almost waking up, then finding myself confronting yet another horror. The last thing I remember before waking was having a sleep paralysis dream where I was in my bed, but I couldn't move. I could see part of the room, but not the whole thing because I couldn't turn my head. Off to the side, I knew there was something waiting for me to stop paying attention so it could attack and eat me. 

All day today, I've been haunted by last night's experiences, mostly the decaying dream and the car accident, with the feelings from the night of the accident cropping up at bad times, like when I was working with customers. 

Taken

It's been a long two weeks, and I've had nightmares that I haven't posted due to lack of time. Friday night was my first good, solid night's sleep during that time, because I was changing jobs, working my last two week's notice on the night shift at one, and my training hours on the day shift at the other. Boys and girls, can we say exhausted?

I'm really little, like maybe four years old, maybe even younger. There are adults all around me, rushing around in some kind of a panic. A dark-haired lady takes me by the hand, rushes me out of my room past a vanity with a big round mirror on it. In the mirror, I can see that I'm slim, with long, dark hair like I have now,  and wearing some kind of a sleeveless summer dress with sandals. I have on a lot of ribbons and things. Everything I'm wearing seems to be green, yellow, or golden orange.

The lady picks me up and runs with me to another room, where a man with hair like mine, and a beautiful woman with bright red hair are rushing around. The man is wearing armor that has been painted green. He's carrying a sword on his back, a short mace at his hip, and a bow at his shoulder. His face looks deadly serious. The red-haired woman has put on a dark leotard, and she's holding a maternity dress, even though she's not pregnant.

The dark-haired woman hands me to the red-haired woman. As she takes me in her arms, I realize that this is my mother. She tells me to hold on around her belly, and the dark-haired woman ties scarves around me to help me stay put. Then, my mother puts on the maternity dress. I hear her tell the man, my father, that it's a good thing I'm still small. Over the maternity dress, the ladies place what feels like an apron, but if I turn my head just right, I can still see through a button hole.

I watch the dark-haired lady put on my mother's armor. It's too long, but she doesn't seem to notice that. While she's doing that, my mother's hands pick up a dagger and a little tube with some needles. They move down below my vision, and I see the dark-haired lady strap a belt around her own waist. On the belt, a sword in a scabbard hangs down past her knees. She grabs a shield, turns and runs her hand along my head through the fabric, kisses my mother on the cheek, and then runs out of the room. My father moves the bed, opens a trap door beneath it, and sends my mother and me down inside before putting the bed back in place. I hear him walk across the floor and open a window. There are more footsteps around the room, then he heads out the door. My mother sticks the tube in a hole in the trap door, and places a needle in it. She stands waiting. It's dark where we are. I can hear sounds of running throughout the house, and some shouting.

We are like that for several moments, and then I hear my father's boots again, stomping on the floor outside the door. There is the sound of metal clinking against metal, and then there is the sound of splintering wood, and a massive thump right in front of our vantage point.

We can hear fighting in front of us. My mother's breathing is fast and shallow, and I know she is scared. I know to be quiet, that we're in here because we're hiding. I press my face into her belly and hold on tightly. One soft hand runs across the back of my head. It's all the comfort she can offer.

The fighting escalates, and one of the participants bumps the bed, sliding it just a little to the side. I hear a choking sound, and another loud thump, but it's hard to tell who is down. It's quiet for a moment, then boots that are not my fathers begin walking around the room. Ever few steps, we hear someone knocking on the floor. Knock-knock... knock-knock... not our code. This person is looking for a different tone to the knocking sound, indicating empty space under the floor.

Someone speaks quietly, and a different walk approaches the bed. We hear it pushed aside, and the footsteps walk right up to the trap door. Someone drops down in front of it, knocks, and says, "This is the spot."

My mother takes a deep breath and blows into the tube. There is another choking sound from outside the hole we're in, and then there is shouting. More footsteps approach the trap door. I hear my mother blow out another needle, and another. Two more men fall, and then I hear the door open, and the blade at her hip sliding out of its sheath.

I hold my breath as I feel my mother struggle with the man above her, stabbing and slashing at him. Wetness lands on the fabric around me, and I hear a man's gurgling moan. Suddenly, we're moving up, really fast, and my mother screams. I hold on tight, trying to stay quiet. Tears roll down my face. I'm sure whoever is left alive up here is going to kill us both.

I hear footsteps, and a female voice confronts my mother, asking where the child is. That's me. I stiffen up to keep from shaking. My mother says that she sent the handmaid out the window with me, but couldn't follow, in her condition. I hear a slap, and the female stranger asks if my mother thinks she's stupid. Over my mother's horrified protests, the apron is ripped away, and then the dress. I see that we are surrounded by large men, all in robes and wearing armor. Several of them are holding onto her, with her arms pinned behind her back, and her head held still by their hands in her hair. In front of us is one petite, dark-haired woman, black-robed, with a strange shimmery look to it. 

The scary little woman steps forward and puts her hands on me, and pulls me away from my mother. I scream and hold on, but she's stronger than I am. I'm overpowered, and find myself dragged away from her, and then the men close in on her. The last thing I hear from her is the sound of her voice, screaming my name, as the woman carries me toward the door. I'm struggling and kicking, trying to get away. I feel the woman raise one hand up behind my head.

I woke from this, feeling something hit me in the back of the head, and jumped so hard I nearly fell out of bed. I was terrified beyond reason, seriously still feeling like a scared little girl for several minutes before I finally settled down.

Most mundane zombie nightmare I've ever had

We've walled off an entire neighborhood on the street of a friend's house. All of the other houses on that street were abandoned for various reasons, but the basic reason behind everything is a zombie outbreak. The only family of "original" residents which remained on that street is my friend's family. Several of us have moved into the walled-off area with them, and we've built a compound to protect ourselves. All of the houses are connected one way or another, except some at one end, which were in less stable shape than the other houses. We've dismantled them for parts, and are using the land for farming.

People have arrived recently, and I am sort of giving them a quick "orientation" tour with a rundown on how we are handling our new circumstances.

At the other end, our compound is divided by a high, chain-link fence that was there prior to the outbreak. We've altered it so that there is now a gate big enough to drive through when it is open.
On the other side if it is a what used to be a church and a parochial school. We included that property in our wall because we felt that the buildings may prove useful to us eventually, but at the moment the only thing we are using is the lot. In the lot, there are two buses. We plan to do something with them, but haven't started yet because we are working on other projects. However, we are using the lot space.

On one side of the lot, we have built a huge still, where we are brewing not beverages, but vehicle fuel. On the other side, we have a huge cistern which catches rain water. There are smaller cisterns around the compound, which also hold water, but this one is taller and more broad, and is attached to our makeshift water filtering and purification system. The final step currently uses a commercially sold reverse-osmosis filter, but members of our group are figuring out how to make our own so that when we run out of our supply of those, we'll still have a way to purify our water.

We have vehicles we would not normally have, as well. Parked on the street are a fire truck, an armored cash-delivery truck, and a semi with a tanker-trailer from a gas company, in addition to several cars. My husband and a few of the guys have been working on these to expand the range of fuels we can use to run them. Right now, the fire truck and and the armored truck can both run on just about any liquid that burns. We're working on the semi next. We plan to use it to take gas from neighborhood fueling stations until the alteration of our vehicles is finished, and we no longer have to use that for the cars.

The guys have set up the fire truck so that water can be pumped from a pooled source like a lake or stream, in through the hose to the tank, and then back out when we reach the cistern. The fuel we make in the still is used in the fire truck when we don't get enough rain, so that we can get water from other sources. We use it in the armored truck when we need to make a run for other supplies.

We've established a food and water supply sufficient to serve the complex if every house were populated. We've established food and water preservation methods to ensure a supply through the cold months, and to last us a few months if unforeseen issues arise. We have transportation and have located a few department stores, pharmacies, and hardware stores which, though not totally safe, we can safely enter and exit with tools and non-food supplies, and have "raided" them several times to get things we need.

We have built wind turbines on several houses to power refrigerators and freezers, and have stored a good supply of a refrigerant used in automotive air systems that one of the guys says he can use to restore the units as they go down. We don't plan on depending on those units forever, but we want to keep them going until we don't need them any more. Once we have non-refrigerated food preservation down better, we'll power those down and reserve our electricity for other uses. One of the new arrivals tells me she had a hobby of growing and preserving herbs for later use, and would like to help with that. I make a note. It would be great to be able to add our combined knowledge in that area.

In addition, we've created attachments for several houses to passively use solar heating, so that we don't have to use electricity for much heat. We have obtained a large supply of rolled plastic to help seal off windows and unused rooms in winter, as well. Since winter is coming, we're working on that project right now. I let the new people know that this is probably what they'll be helping with at first, until that project is completed, because it's vital to our winter survival.

Among our number is one chemist. I explain that she has a medical lab up and running and is working on establishing treatments for the most common life-threatening ailments. I don't tell them everything: She has established the manufacture of a couple of different antibiotic substances, a substance to use to treat flare-ups of asthma, two substances to aid in controlling blood sugar fluctuations, a substance that works like epinephrine in case of heart and breathing emergency (but we are told would hurt "pretty effin' bad" if used in a non-emergency), a substance to control blood pressure, two anti-histamines, and a still-in-the-testing phase narcotic pain killer. We don't want anyone but the core group to know about those yet, because of the possibility of abuse.

We have plans to set up an infirmary in a portion of the school, but have not started yet. Along with that, there are plans to set up a radio broadcast from inside the church steeple to try to connect with more people. A teen in the group kind of hesitantly tries to speak up, but keeps himself in check as if he's not permitted to speak. An adult next to him reminds him that he's not in school any more, and he is allowed to talk. He tells me he was in his school's broadcasting class, and that he learned how to set up the equipment. Broadcasting equipment is an interest of his, and he's built radio sets and CBs during the last few years. He can help set up our radio tower, get it up and running, and operate it.

He says he just needs us to let him know what we want him to do. I realize we could put this kid in charge of the project. As long as he knows what we intend to achieve, he has the capability to make it happen. We just need to make sure he has the confidence in himself to take charge, because it looks like he's still in the mindset that anyone older than him has authority over him. I resolve to discuss this with the people in our group who were school teachers prior to the outbreak, and tell the kid we're definitely going to need his help. We have people with sound system knowledge, but no one with broadcasting experience. His chest puffs out, and he seems about two inches taller than before.

Finally, I show them one house we have almost totally boarded up. It's not connected to the other houses at the ground level. Entry is possible from the ground, but it's designed to be sealed once people are inside. There is roof access from the roof of one neighboring house, also designed to be sealed from the inside. That is our safe house. In case of a breach of our complex by zombies, we've designed this as a protected area from which we can fight back. Inside are a host of projectile weapons and a supply of dried rations and water. We don't want to have to use the safe house, but we've set it up as a means of protecting ourselves and fighting off a horde or internal outbreak.

As I finish leading the group through the area, I tell them there are still enough empty houses that they can pick one instead of being assigned. I tell them which ones have more bedrooms, because there are a couple of families who seem to want to stay in the same house. I think they may all be related and have been traveling together through some harrowing experiences. They begin discussing possibilities. At that moment, we hear a commotion at the other end of the complex.

There is shouting, and I hear gunfire. We run that way, and several kids accompanied by three elderly women pass us heading toward the safe house. They tell me that a mass of zombies has attacked the outer wall, and they were told to go into the safe house. Residents are holding off the zombies pretty well, but as a precaution the children and those unable to run fast are sent ahead to prepare the safe house. That will mean setting up the weapons and preparing to seal off  the house. The teen asks which way I want him to go. I ask if he can fire a gun, and he says yes. I hand him one of mine. It's hard for me to send him that direction, but he's older than my son, and my son is fighting there right now. The teen gets it. He looks proud, but very serious and properly scared.

I break into a run toward the commotion. The group follows me, everyone yelling. I see where the wall is starting to split under the assault, and shout orders to my group. Three people split off into a house, where they can fire from upstairs, down over the wall and into the mass of zombies. Through the cracks, it looks like there are about 50 of them (enough to fill two elementary classrooms, basically) but they are pounding the crap out of our wall, so there could be more. I get find my husband and kids, and we form kind of a family wall. We're ready to shoot whatever comes through as two men work on shoring up the wall, and others work on firing over it. In my head, I'm praying hard that no one gets bitten.

There is a loud crack, and part of the wall splits open. Zombies come in, kind of single-file, but rather quickly, considering. They don't care if they tear their flesh on the wall. We start shooting. I hear guns going off around me. I can see through the wall that there maybe are more like 70 or 80 of them, but several are falling outside the wall, and I think we can handle this with what we've got. The fight is going to be just a bit more than a two zombie to one human ratio, and that ratio is getting tighter with every shot. I'm still scared, but not as badly as before the wall broke. Now, I'm more determined than anything.
I'm not letting these mindless, flesh-eating monsters tear apart my friends and family. I move forward and begin firing into the oncoming mass of decaying bodies.

War of the weirds

This one started in a setting that doesn't exist. There were things that I knew about myself but wasn't thinking of, in the same way that you know that you're living where you live in part because you paid the rent or mortgage on the most recent due date with money earned at the job that you do, none of which are you thinking about while you sit and eat breakfast in the morning. It doesn't mean you don't know it. It's just information you have, not information that's on your mind.


That is how I knew in this dream that I'd finished writing a novella, and published it online. I had expected somewhere between total failure, and moderate success that would boost my income by a few bucks a month. Instead, the novella went "viral." The main character was a retail worker who is abused by her boss, and an unexpected number of people identified with her. Fortunately, this had not impacted my family's privacy, as I had published under a pen name. The only link to myself was involved with getting paid, and the public couldn't see that. 

I made more money from the book than I would in a year at work (which isn't all that much, but it was enough). We used the bulk of the money to put a down payment on a house in the town where my husband's side of the family lives, and he began working nearby while I began writing a (much requested) sequel. These are things I knew, but was not pondering, when the dream began.

I am eating breakfast at the computer and typing a chapter from my finished outline. It is early for most people. My son is not up yet for school, but my husband is all ready at work.. I'm focusing this chapter on showing the effects of stress on the character's health, and I'm finding that my personal experience makes it both difficult and easy to write about this. I know all too well what the character is suffering, so it's like I have a script, but expressing it makes me think back to what I went through and brings back the emotional baggage from that experience. Even though I had some success in escaping the situation, I'm still angry that it happened. She had no right to do that to me. Worse, I feel guilty for leaving the others behind. I know her personality. Once I was gone, she would have turned her bullying to another employee and begun to do the same to that person.

I have to fight to keep focused on this story, in which the character did not write anything and has not escaped the situation. At the end of the first novella, she won a settlement from the company, but not enough to get out. She is still stuck with the abusive boss, still trying to hang on to her job so that she doesn't lose her home, and still dealing with harassment on one end, and her body falling apart at the other.

I'm preoccupied with this until it's time to get my son out of bed. I snuggle him awake, watch him rub the sleep out of his eyes, and herd him off to the bathroom. We go through the process of getting ready for school - I make breakfast while he gets dressed, and so on. We eat together and find something humorous to watch on TV. I'm a huge believer in a daily dose of humor. I am convinced that it has positive effects on one's physical health.

After that, we head to the car and I drive him to school, drop him off, and head out to run some errands. It's late morning when I return home with some groceries and some kitchen stuff. The mail has arrived. I grab it on my way in, toss it onto the table, then put everything away. I notice that there is a hand-addressed letter for me. Well, half hand-addressed. My address is hand written. The sender's address is typed.

It's from a lawyer's office.

I open the envelope. Inside is a notice that my former boss has read my novella and seen similarities between what I've written and what the letter calls "false allegations" brought against her in my claim with the labor board following my report to OSHA. My boss is claiming that she inspired the boss character in my novella, and feels that she is entitled to 75% of the profits. The letter is an offer to settle for 50%.


I'm momentarily angry. She has no right to do this. I didn't write about her. I wrote about me. The boss in the store isn't anything like her. The abuse is much more blatant and easy to report, not at all like what happened to me. The boss in the story I wrote is abusive because she can't feel important and valued unless she makes her subordinates feel unimportant and devalued. Her methods involve abuse in front of customers who end up complaining to corporate. She gets busted because her victim is able to amass a great deal of evidence. My boss was angry that I filed a complaint with OSHA. She saw that as a challenge to her authority, and her retaliation was a form of territorial marking, so to speak. The company was also involved in the retaliation, unlike in the story, and the case was still in appeals.

The physical characteristics don't match, either, with the exception that both characters are female. I wanted the boss in the story to look intimidating, so I made her tall and heavy. My boss was short and thin. I made the boss in the story an attractive blond. My boss was a brunette who would have been pretty if she hadn't had such a mean expression on her face, but she did, and she wasn't.

None of the incidents that happened to me were included in the story. I made up incidents for my characters, things that were much more cut-and-dried than my experience, so that I would not have to spend too much effort detailing the reasons why what the boss was doing was abuse. I wanted the incidents described to be things that the reader would look at and immediately mentally categorize as abuse.

After the initial moment of outrage, something else clicks with me. By sending me this notice, my boss is admitting that her behavior towards me at work was abusive. She is admitting guilt! Not only that, but continuing to pursue me after the fact is an act of further harassment. I can use this letter as evidence in my case against the company. A feeling of triumph rises in my chest, and I quickly begin thinking about the composition of a reply.

Instead, I call a local attorney for advice. I am told to come into the office, that he wants to handle the case. I am asked for the link to the novella I tell him which parts detail the abuse, and make an appointment with him for later in the day. I give him the link over the phone. I start supper in my crock pot, then head out to the office. I set an alarm on my phone to go pick up my son at school.

In the office, the attorney and I discuss the letter and the novella. We come to the conclusion that my boss is using her allegation as a means to continue attempting to dominate and intimidate me, and also as a cheap and easy way to get some extra cash. I wonder how she got my new address, and how she had connected me with the novella. I had not given my new address to the company, and had not left a forwarding address with the post office. I hadn't publicly associated myself with the novella or the site on which it was published. She would have had to either assume it was me or get that information from the entity which paid me, and she would have had to do some searching to track me down at my new address.

The lawyer wants to reply wit a letter stating that many people suffer abuse at work, and that many authors have written about abusive bosses. The letter would cite the disclaimer at the beginning of the novel, stating that the characters were fictional. It would also cite several popular movies from the last few decades of the 20th century some more recent ones, including the movie Horrible Bosses. We would point out that the novel was published under a pen name, with nothing to indicate to my boss that the author was me. She would have had to to come to that conclusion on her own. We would further state that my boss's allegation was unclear, and that we needed her to detail the abuses that she committed against me at my workplace in order to determine any similarities.

The lawyer says that our letter would put the boss in an uncomfortable position. Either she would have to state that there was no abuse, thereby totally undermining her case, or she would have to admit guilt, creating an opening by which I could sue her for stalking and further harassing me. He says that if she didn't drop this, we will connect this current harassment with the harassment in the workplace, and argue that she is using threat of legal action as a bridge to allow her to intimidate and harass an abuse victim who has moved out of her reach.

There ill be a legal battle in which I would probably just break even after expenses, but which should result in an order by a judge for my boss to stop harassing me. We would be able to keep my identity from being revealed to the public, so my family would continue to have normal privacy. At worst, I'd have to deal with this for a year. At best, the case would make the news and I'd get more readers out of it. If I don't fight, she might be able to actually win the right to part of my earnings from the novella, and I won't be allowed to write any more about the characters in it. My identity would be made public, and the novella would have to be taken down. I'd lose all future income from it.

I decide to fight. We work on composing the letter, and end up with one that we both really like. In it, we point out the things we'd discussed, along with the fact that in attacking my work, my boss is  attempting to abridge my right to free speech. That bit is a long shot, because the constitution only bars the government from blocking free speech, but since she is attempting to use the legal system as a tool in the attempt, we feel the point should be included. As we finish going over and approving the text, my alarm goes off. I tell the lawyer that I need to leave in the next ten minutes to get my son at school.

We finish our business quickly. He sends me off with a card and the assurance that he'll fight tooth and nail for my case. I feel pretty good about things as I walk out the door.

I arrive at the school a few minutes early, park my car, and wait for my son to come out. While I am  waiting, a man and a women in suits go into the school. Just before the last bell, they come out with my son. He looks really upset.

I get out of the car and run up to them, demanding to know what they are doing. They identify themselves as workers from Child Protective Services, and tell me that I have been accused of violent abuse. My son says, "I told you, whoever said that is lying. My mom's a good mom! She doesn't do anything bad to me. You guys are wrong!"

I ask where the allegation came from, and they say it is anonymous, and even if it wasn't they can't tell me without a court order. I point out that they cannot take my son without any a court order, either. They say if they can, and if I fight, it will "look bad" in my paperwork. I tell my son he doesn't have to go with them, and to get into the car. I say, "You guys are seriously not blind enough to miss the complete lack of injuries, are you?" The lady tells me that the anonymous caller had said that all of the injuries were internal. They are going to subject him to medical testing until they find something. When my son tries to walk away from them, each of them grabs one of his arms to hold him in place.

I tell them I'll press assault charges against both of them if they don't get their hands off of him right now. I pull my phone from my pocket and dial 911. A dispatcher answers immediately and asks what my emergency is. The man in the suit says, "I wouldn't do that if I were you." At the same time, my son yells "Help! I'm being kidnapped! Get these people away from me!" and begins struggling to pull out of their grasp. They struggle with him, and the man wrenches his arm behind his back. I can see pain on my son's face, and he yells, "Ow!" repeatedly.

With the hand not holding the phone, I slug the man in the nose. Blood shoots out and he screams. He lets go of my son's arm and puts his hands over his nose. My son shoves the woman off of him. I shout into the phone to the dispatcher that two people posing as CPS workers are trying to kidnap my son, that they have not shown us any identification or paperwork, that they are using force, and that we are trying to fight them off right now.

I shout at my son to run back into the school. He backes away from the woman, but lookes torn. He doesn't run. The man grabs at my phone with one bloody hand, and I kick him in the knee, hard. I hear a crunch, and he screams and goes down on his butt. The woman turns to see what is going on, and I again yell for my son to run. I hear the dispatcher tell me the police are coming, and to stay where I am. The woman pulls something out of her purse. I order my son to get inside, and he finally goes. I hear the doors lock behind him. Inside, I can see the secretary watching the scene with wide eyes. My son goes right to her desk, holds his hand out, and speaks. She gives him the phone, and he begins dialing.

The woman hits me, and I feel every muscle in my body tense up as if grabbed by invisible hands. I fall to the ground. I don't lose my grip on the phone, but I can't move. I can see sparks coming from her hand. She goes over and begins pounding on the locked door. Inside I see my son's panicked face as he speaks into the phone.

I tell the dispatcher that I've been tased by the woman while defending my son from the man. She asks if further assault is taking place, and I tell her about the woman pounding on the glass. She is trying to get into the school. The man has his phone out and is calling someone. I hear him say something about "refusing to surrender the child" and I tell that to the dispatcher. I state again that these people have shown me neither credentials nor paperwork, just grabbed and tried to take my son. I have no reason to trust them with my child. The dispatcher reassures me that until I am given those things, I do not have to surrender my son to strangers.

I put my phone on speaker so she can hear the rest of his phone call. He is asking if my resistance can be included in the case, and stating that his knee is broken. I tell the dispatcher how that happened, including how the man had reached to take away my phone. I state that I want to press assault charges against both of them for grabbing and trying to take my son.

Before the police arrive, my brother-in-law approaches. Looking inside, I see relief on my son's face and realize that's who he had called. I am beginning to regain control over my muscles, and I struggle to sit up. My BIL kneels down and helps me. I feel weak and wobbly, but can stay on my feet. Both of the people in suits give me surprised looks. I say, "I've been electrocuted before. That wasn't so bad." The woman turns away from the door and says, "Oh, really? We'll see about that." I see her flip a switch on her taser. It looks like she is turning up the juice. I tell my BIL, "Now is your chance. Go into the school. Take my son out another door, put him into your car, and take him to your house."

He starts to argue, and I tell him, "I can handle this. The police are on their way to help me. Just get him out of here." He nods, and goes inside the school as the woman, now angry, comes after me with the taser. I dodge her thrust and grab her arm. I lean back and pull, swinging her around, and then let go and send her stumbling away behind me. It is hard to regain my balance. My muscles still aren't obeying my brain very well. I feel kind of drunk, except without the buzz.

The woman falls and accidentally tases herself. The effect is that her hand clamps down on the button, and she keeps the taser on, and in contact with herself. I have to grab her arm and break the connection. I shake the taser out of her hand. It falls, hit the curb, and breaks. At the same time, I feel a jolt travel through me as I touch her. I fall to the sidewalk at the same time as the taser, and once again can't move. This time, I also can't hold on to my phone. Miraculously, it doesn't hang up or break. The dispatcher is asking what is going on. I tell her what happened. As I am speaking, I hear sirens. I say, "I think the cops are here." I see my BIL with my son in his car, parked several cars away in the driveway. He wis talking on his phone.

All at once, I am glad he is still there. It occurs to me that he couldn't just leave because a crime was in progress and he and my son are witnesses. Not only that, they're MY witnesses. They have to report to the police what they've seen, or it's me against two.

I know that somehow, this is connected to my boss. I make a mental note to call the lawyer handling the frivolous lawsuit and see if we can get either her phone records, or the phone records from CPS. I figure we'd be at least able to prove that a call was made either from her cell or house phone to the CPS hotline.

The sirens get really close, and I hear footsteps and chatter. The officers are surprised to approach a scene in which all the combatants are down, and no one is left standing. I shout at the phone that they are here, and need to know that I am the woman with the long hair, not the one in the suit. An officer approaches me and kneels down. I say, "I've been tased twice, but I'm ok. I just can't move. We're all a little injured."

The officer says that an ambulance is coming, and to just stay calm. I tell him that my son and I have been assaulted by the two people in suits, who have shown no identification or paperwork, but just tried to take him with them without offering any reason why. I say that they twisted my son's arm and tased me twice, and I want to press charges. The officer assures me that there will be paperwork for me to fill out related to charges, but first they need to see to everyone's physical well-being. I can hear another officer telling someone to stay still and not try to move, that help is coming.

I woke not feeling entirely comfortable with the situation. I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Were the officers going to arrest the kidnappers, or were they going to side with them because they were CPS agents? I know that they cannot legally take a child without either parental consent (which I didn't give) or a judge's order (which they didn't have) but I also know that the agency has a habit of getting away with breaking the law.

I also wondered why they were at the school, and what the actual allegation was that had them believing my son could have internal injuries with no outward sign. Why would they believe the accuser after the child vehemently denied the allegation and struggled to avoid being taken? In the few moments after I woke, my mind went over the scenario and decided that if the police sided with CPS, I would ask that my son go home with my BIL, an experienced foster parent, until the whole thing could be sorted out. Without paperwork, the caseworkers couldn't legally take my son, so they'd have to agree. In that situation, I also would pursue assault charges through the entire legal process, to a concluding ruling of guilty or not guilty. No one gets away with hitting my son, ever.

I feel like the cause of the dream, just as other recent nightmares, was stress. I've been dealing with so much harassment at work, and by such ridiculous means, that it is beginning to feel surreal. I recently got a reply back from the company. They told the labor board there can't be abuse because they have an anti-harassment policy. The fact that they're not following it seems to be irrelevant. They seem to think that they and my boss should get away with retaliating against me for filing an OSHA complaint because they've put into writing that harassment isn't allowed. That's kind of like a rapist saying he couldn't have forced himself on his victim because rape is illegal.

I think the last half of the dream is a representation of my knowledge of how this ordeal is affecting my son. He's old enough to be aware of what is happening, and he's demonstrably upset by it. He knows that we've had financial problems because of what my employer did, and that I'm stressed out because of my boss's behavior. Though I've tried to keep him out of the loop, I've been made aware that he knows I'm being abused at work. He's been very sweetly sympathetic, and done everything that a kid can do to make things easier on me. I am really proud of him for that, but I wish he didn't know what was going on, and I'm really angry that the impact of my boss's behavior has bled over into my home. 

Needless to say, a rebuttal is in order. Having to write it is stressing me out big time. That, and I'm still suffering harassment at my boss's hands. She has threatened me and everything.

I need this whole thing to be over, and I need to not have to deal with her any more. She has no business being in management. I feel like the police in the dream represented the legal system in real life. It feels like help is coming, but it's moving really slow. That is intensely frustrating, but there's nothing I can do about it.

In the meantime, I'm thinking maybe I should write about the problem. Maybe there are others who could identify with it, and even though it's unlikely that I actually would profit from a fictional account of my experiences, maybe writing about it would be therapeutic.

It's a Gas, Gas, Gas

I'm driving my son to school. I'm thinking about the morning's schedule, and also about his ridiculous homework assignment for the week .

This morning, I have to drop him off, go home, throw my work clothes on, and leave so I can get to work in half an hour, because I am actually starting my shift on the half hour, something no one ever does at my workplace. I know my boss did it to screw with me, though, so I didn't say anything to her, but just took it in stride. That I am not upset about it will totally piss her off.

The homework assignment, though... that has me upset. My son is assigned to watch a political movie that we can't find online, the library doesn't have, and the video store in our neighborhood has to order out. It's a fictional story called, "Having My Own." Also, the summaries and lesson plans about the movie which I just got done reading online have me up in arms about it. It looks like the school is trying to indoctrinate the kids with the idea that having personal possessions is morally wrong, and they should instead consider everything to be public domain, including their own lives. I'm going to have to go talk to the teacher about the movie before class, then drive home and get ready. That is going to leave me 5 minutes to get ready before I have to go to work, but I've gotten ready in 5 minutes before.

As we near the corner where we make our first turn, there is a thunderous boom, as if someone set off a dud firecracker. Immediately after that is a rumbling sound accompanied by major shaking of the ground. I actually watch the road in front of me ripple like waves in water. The pavement cracks up and chunks of it disappear into the ground. Instinctively, I put the van in park as the bumps and jolts jostle us all over the place. Then, I grab my son's hand. His eyes are as wide as they can get. I can tell he's shocked and horrified. I'm pretty sure the expression on my face isn't helping. I'm terrified of earthquakes.

There is nothing we can do. We're shaking too hard to have any kind of controlled movement, and we don't have any idea what is going to happen. There isn't some shelter to go to where we can get away from the earthquake, like you can with a tornado.

The shaking makes it hard to hold onto my son's hand, but I do not let go. I tell him to just hang on, that it will stop soon. Behind me, there is a crashing sound, and I turn my head to look . The house on the corner has fallen into a hole in the ground that was not there before. It looks like the house in the movie Poltergeist, crumpling up and getting sucked into a void at the end, except that it stopped at the crumpling up stage. God, I hop no one was home!

There is a crack coming from the hole. It's not headed toward us, but I throw the van into drive and try to move it forward anyway. I have to let go of my son to do that. I don't want to, but I need both hands to drive, and I need to get us away from that hole.

We move forward a couple of yards, but the shaking makes it really hard to steer. We get thrown to the side. I feel the whole van come up off of the pavement as the ground launches us upward. Then, we slam back down with two tires up on the curb. I keep driving. I can see in the rear-view mirror that the crack has completely crossed the street behind us, and it's getting wider. Traffic that was back there is making u-turns and driving the other way to escape it. The other side of the crack is also lower than our side. All I can see of the cars is the top of the windows and the roof of each as it turns. The city bus is taller. I can see the driver's frightened, determined face as he turns the bus around, running over the curb in the process.

In that split second I took to glance in the rearview mirror, another crack has opened in the pavement in front of us, this one along the center of the lane I'm in. I barely manage to steer around it before moving on, but it keeps opening and remains parallel to us. I drive over the curb and through the yard of the house on the next corner, onto a side street. As I do, I see smoke coming from the crack, and there is another boom. Something inside tells me this isn't an ordinary Earthquake.

I punch the pedal and drive through the neighborhood, speeding away from the shaking ground. The further away I get, the less shaking there is, until finally we stop in a location where we can feel the car shimmying, but the ground beneath us isn't bucking and rolling any more. I look back, and there are huge, billowing clouds of smoke behind us, coming from the direction of the gas station/convenience store where I work . There is a third boom, this one sounding almost cartoonish, and now I can see flames. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the clock . It is not yet time for the school to even open its doors. The entire experience so far has taken all of two minutes.

People are coming out of their houses. A man in pajama pants, a bathrobe (but no shirt), and slippers approaches my car. I roll down the window and tell him how and why we ended up in his neighborhood. He says, "You don't know what's going on, do you?" and I answer "no, but I think there is a fire."

He tells me that the gas stations are blowing up. First (my station), then (the station across the street), and it sounds like now (the station on the opposite corner) just blew too. The first explosion took out a natural gas line, and they're worried about (the three gas stations down the street) going up next. The fire from (my station) has spread to (the neighboring business) and is starting to ignite the houses in the neighborhood. They've all ready called every fire station in the metro area to fight the fire.

My son says "What about our apartment? Can the fire reach that far?"

I tell him we can't worry about that right now. We're alive, and we're safe, and that's all that matters. I say that if that many firefighters show up, they will probably be able to contain the fire. They aren't going to let it spread, because it's too close to the military base. The soldiers will probably be called to help fight it. In my mind, though, I am thinking I may be wrong. A fire like that could spread quickly through the neighborhood, and they may have their hands full just trying to keep it away from the base. I can tell my son has his doubts, too. It's all over his face.

I remind him that at least none of us are caught in the fire. We're safe, and we (and his father, who is at work) can get further away whenever we want.

The man's wife comes outside with a portable radio. I can hear the DJ saying that my son's school is canceled for the day due to risk of the fire spreading, and for one stupid second I panic about having to call off work ... then I remember I don't have work because my workplace has exploded.

Oh, my God. My work place has exploded. There was probably no warning, either. My co-workers are probably dead. It's Monday. I think about who was there, and realize that if they didn't get away before the explosion, the two totally single moms I work with are both dead. Who is going to take care of their children?

The hitting home of the thought must show on my face, because the guy asks me if I am ok . I look at him, and tell him that I work at (my station.) Then it hits my son. He looks at me and says, "You could have been there." I can see the horror rising in his demeanor, and I try to calm him down, but the tears hit anyway.

At the same time, the man turns to his wife, and says, "She works there. She's one of them." I don't know what he means, but his expression suddenly hardens into deadly seriousness. He reaches into the van, as if to grab my shirt. I shove his arm back out, throw the van into drive, and speed away. The man actually chases me for several yards before giving up. I can see him pull a cell phone out of the pocket of his robe and start dialing. I turn the corner and pull out onto the main road, driving away from the neighborhood.

I call my husband's number and leave him a voicemail stating that no matter what, he is not to go home until he hears from me, that I don't know what's going on, but (my station) just blew up and a neighbor just called me "one of them" and tried to grab me. I call my parents and tell them about the incident, and that my son and I are headed their way. I call the hub of my social group, with whom I've been hanging out since college. I tell her what I've witnessed, and advise her to get her family, all of their meds, and their important papers (things she can grab quickly) out of the house and out of the neighborhood NOW. Before hanging up, I tell her about what the man said, and that I don't know what is happening, but something is very wrong. I tell her where I am going, that my son is with me and my husband is not, and ask that after she has her family to safety, she check on him. She agrees. She tells me she is glad to hear from me and know that I was not at work .

I call another very close friend, also a hub of another social circle that kind of overlaps with the first one, and go through the same discussion, though she lives a few miles away from the neighborhood, while my first phone call lives close to me.

I call my husband's mom and leave a message letting her know that we are all ok, and none of us were in the fire.

Looking at the clock, I can see that only another two minutes has passed. We have to pull over into a parking lot to let emergency crews drive past us toward the fire. They are coming down both sides of the divided road... during rush "hour" (which lasts half of the day in our neighborhood). I take a moment to once again try to calm my son, reminding him that we're safe, I wasn't in the fire, and the important thing now is to stay levelheaded and deal with the situation as it is. He looks shaky and teary-eyed, but he nods and says ok . He asks if we're going to Grandma's, and I say yes. He asks why the man called me "one of them" and I admit I have no idea, but that it bothers me enough that we're getting out of town until we find out. Then, the emergency crew is past, and we get back on the road.

We start driving. We are away from the fire, and from the nearby gas stations, heading out of town. Behind us, I hear a succession of small explosions, and a whooshing sound. It occurs to me that this is probably a natural gas explosion. At the same time, the whooshing sound gets really loud, and something slams into us from behind. Our van is picked up and thrown forward. We land on the flat bed of a semi that is in front of us, as if it were transporting us. The semi is still moving. It swerves, and we go flying sideways off of it and onto the grass. The whole time, I'm still trying to steer. When we land, I stomp the pedal to the floor and drive back up onto the road, passing several crashed vehicles until I find an open space. I can feel that there is damage to the van, but I keep driving. There is one more popping boom behind us. I hope my friend has gotten her family out of the house.

I grab my phone and dial my husband's number again. This time, he's on break and he answers. I tell him what has happened. I tell him to leave work and get out of town. I tell him a place where I'll meet him outside of the metro area. I tell him he needs to let our friend know he is all right, because she's going to check on him if he doesn't. I start to tell him I've called his mom, when there is another explosion behind us. This time, I think it may be someone's car blowing up. My husband hears the sound come across the phone, and he asks what is happening.

This is where I woke. At the same moment, I had a feeling of relief that stuff was not blowing up at his location. 

In real life, my son has had no such ridiculous school assignment. So far as I know, there is no such movie, either. Homework assignments are sometimes made which require last minute acquisition of materials which are a challenge for us to get, and that does frustrate me.

I have not recently been scheduled to go to work on the half hour, and probably won't, but it's not that odd for it to happen, and it used to be a regular thing. The three gas stations on the same corner are real, and so is one down the street that I dreamed about, but it's a mile or more away, not that close. The rest of the stations were just part of the dream.

If something like that happened, it would take longer than two minutes for the news to pick it up and start reporting on it, and if we landed on and slid off of a flatbed semi like that in my big old van, we'd probably roll. 

About half an hour after I got up this morning, there was thunder and rain. I'm wondering if there was thunder in the night. Maybe the sound of that inspired the dream. On the other hand, it could be that I've dreamed this because of the upheaval in my life. 

There is a lot of stress right now related to work, family, distance, and pressure my son is dealing with at school. In real life, my boss is kind of gaslighting me. What she doesn't realize is that I know it's happening. I've noticed that my lack of response to it is really pissing her off, and I'm kind of having fun with that. In the meantime, though, she is being rotten in other ways I'm going to get into here.

I think the detail about the homework was inspired by some real life stuff that is happening there. There is an undercurrent of political agenda, (mostly union related) but nothing I can directly confront, and I do find it threatening and annoying. However, I am able to discuss school reality versus real life reality with my son, and help him to come to rational, logical conclusions about what he is seeing and hearing there.


Anyway, I must have tensed up in response to the shaking... I feel like I had a workout last night, and possibly like I have a mild case of whiplash. Darned fibromyalgia!