Dream Journal
The parking lot at the high school was very full, but I managed to find a parking spot on the side of the street. I walked up the icy hill quickly, careful not to slip. I was almost late.
I followed my classmates down the hallway toward the theater stage. The auditorium was filling up with parents. I saw a girl with really long hair in front of me, and wondered how that could be when Lynea had cut her hair after graduation.
Back behind the stage, I waited with the rest of the band. I peeked out of the curtain and saw Melissa standing center stage, pacing nervously before the curtain rose. A number of band members sat around her in a semi-circle. She wore wide-leg jeans cut into assless chaps, held on only by a belt. Under her chaps she wore black panties that didn’t fully cover her butt.
I knew that she had cut the chaps more than Mom had so that she would be showing more skin. I tried to get her attention to let her know that she would be in big trouble if she performed wearing that. But she didn’t see me.
It was a bright and sunny afternoon and I was in the middle of a car race, and I was ahead of everyone by quite a large distance.
Steve, sitting in the passenger seat, pointed toward a warehouse toward my left, but I was too concentrated on driving fast and winning to take my eyes off the road and look to see why he was pointing.
Steve pointed again and, glancing out my left window, I saw a small street market with tents and a lot of people in front of the warehouse. He wanted me to drive through the market, sure it would be a shortcut.
I was skeptical of the shortcut, but gave it a try anyway. I drove through the congested market, and we popped back onto the course just behind the car now in first place. I was upset that the shortcut had cost me ground.
I pushed my car to its limits and won first place by a nose. I drove to my parents’ house and prepared for the crowds to follow and congratulate me on my win. I knew that they would ask how many vacuums I own, so I went to the root cellar to count them.
I pushed Tiger out of the way because he was sleeping in front of the door. I counted two vacuums plus the one out front. I turned off the light and closed the door over Tiger. I pushed him a bit with my foot si that he fit under the door better, and then I went upstairs.
Melissa and one of her friends sat in the living room and asked me a question. I didn’t know how to answer.
I brought Steve to the airport to send him back home.
B and I were at my parents’ house, and we were going to have dinner. I went into the basement and saw Steve’s legs poking out of the covers of the couch’s hide-a-bed. Sure the legs weren’t real and that I was just seeing things, I grabbed his legs and he woke with a start.
I growled at him to get up and get dressed because B was home. He grabbed his pile of clothes and ran into the upstairs bathroom. I walked by the door and saw him putting on his costume overalls from Halloween.
B starts to walk into the kitchen from out on the balcony when I stood in the doorway and blocked him. I said, “You know what I would like? It’s such a beautiful clear night and I can see all of the Homer lights perfectly. I’d like to eat dinner on the grass outside.” He was surprised, but willing to change plans.
I asked B to go downstairs and grab a blanket to sit on while we ate, but he insisted in coming inside first. I worried about him finding Steve, but Steve had slipped out of the bathroom. In the dark, Steve came out of Melissa’s room hunched over and mumbled an excuse before going back into the bathroom.
B looked at me, rolled his eyes, and said that Melissa had some of the weirdest friends.
Themes: Airplane/Airport, B, Melissa, Steve
I was with Melissa and my parents on the boat. There had been previous damage to the boat, and I was trying to hold the mast with the crow’s nest up straight ant tall because it was very wobbly and I didn’t want it to break. I asked my dad if I could let it lean back against the boom, but he got very angry that I had even suggested it.
The waves got bigger and bigger; one was so big that it flipped and flopped the boat all around. We swirled under water with the boat as it spun. Everything got dark as we went under water, but I had a pocket of air and for that i was grateful - I was sure no one else had a pocket of breathing air.
The boat’s spinning and twisting slowed down and I wondered if I would be stuck in this pocket of air under water not knowing which way was up. When I finally found the surface, my parents and Melissa were nowhere in sight. I knew that they had gone for help.
The boat had righted itself and I went into the cabin to wait. I sat for a while when I noticed the boat was heading too quickly into a very small cove. The cove had cliff walls on all sides and I knew the boat would hit the cliffs if I didn’t do something. I rushed to get into the top house, and my feet kept slipping on the wet stair rungs.
Finally up in the captain’s chair, I stared at the levers and couldn’t remember which ones did what. I needed to put the boat into reverse immediately.
I turned around so I wasn’t looking at the cliffs and pulled on the levers to my left as hard as I could. The boat sped up a bit, so I pulled them in the opposite direction. The boat stalled and pushed backward a very little bit.
I was proud of myself for thinking of it and for being lucky, but didn’t want to turn around and see how close it was. I wondered if I should try to drop the anchor or if anyone would look for me in this little cove.
Then I was waiting in line with the other kids my age from the church as they were getting recognition for certain things. We each had a different vegetable sliced and arranged on a plate to present, and I held the tomatoes.
Tina said something to me and I slapped her, unappreciative of her attitude. She laughed to show me what she had said didn’t mean much of anything. A church deacon called each of our names, and everyone went up one at a time to present their vegetable and get recognition for their work during the previous year.
I waited and waited; since I was the oldest I would have been called last, but he never called my name. He had moved on to some other topic and I was very hurt that I had been left out. I had accomplished just as much as everyone else that had been called, and I still held the plate of bright red sliced tomatoes.
I looked at a graph of all of our cooperation over the last year, and mine was just as much as anyone else’s. I didn’t understand why I had been left out.
Then I was on shore eating a very fancy dinner with my family. One girl at another table kept jumping up to wave to her fiancé who was leaving on a ship for a very long time.
She wore a very nice but simple long white dress from an older era. She noticed the ship had stopped moving forward, and she knew that he was coming in for one last goodbye. She jumped up from her table very excited that a few other patrons, my father included, went over to the window to look at the ship.
I went into the kitchen to get away from all of the ship talk. When I came out of the kitchen, she grabbed my hand and asked me to bring a tray for her fiancé to take off his coat. The only thing I could find was an old, greasy and rusty baking sheet, but she had me follow her anyway.
We met her fiancé outside the restaurant and when she offered to hang his jacket over my baking sheet, he turned his nose away. I offered to hold his jacket with my hand, but he didn’t hear me and kept his jacket on.
We followed his straight back and fancy uniform inside the restaurant. I didn’t like him.
Judy had invited me to Jayme’s birthday party despite having just divorced B. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and I sat at an outdoor table with Judy and another woman.
I was having a very nice time and was in the middle of telling a funny story when Melissa snuck up behind me and kissed my forehead so lightly that it tickled. I giggled, rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand, and turned around to tell her to not tickle.
When I had turned back to the table to resume my story, Judy had sat back in her chair when previously she had been leaning forward and engaged with my story. She was rolling her eyes and shaking her head in disapproval.
I didn’t understand why she was so upset that my sister had interrupted my story. I got up from the table and went inside the cabin where the others were.
I excused myself from the party and went into the tree house to use the bathroom. When I sat on the toilet, a man opened the door. He saw me sitting on the toilet topless and apologized for interrupting. I wondered why I had taken my shirt off and told him that he wasn’t interrupting.
He came in and went to the other side of the room: it was a large sewing/craft room with a toilet in one corner. I reached to the floor on my left for my shirt and wonder how weird it would look without my bra on. I thought the man was very attractive, tan, broad shouldered, and curly sandy blonde hair.
I was watching television on the computer downstairs when I realized I late for school. I had dripped food onto my new white pants so I changed into jeans. I searched around for my introductory school papers. When I found them, they said I could start at 8:15 instead of 8:00 if I do all of my paperwork at home and watch the movies in class. The clock said 7:59.
I changed back into my white pants after seeing they weren’t stained. It had only been water that had dripped onto them. I could hear my mom waking around downstairs, so I quickly went up the stairs and out the door before she could hear that I was still home.
I walked over to my car and saw that Melissa’s friend had parked it very crookedly. I pushed the unlock button on my keychain and heard a car behind me honk. I looked again and the car in my spot was a brand new silver hummer.
I turned around for my car as saw six vehicles parked three deep at the main door. All of the cars were covered in dirt and had trees growing out of the windshields.
I walked slowly around the cars wondering how that could have happened overnight. The trees didn’t look like anything that grew natively in the area, and the tree growing from my car’s windshield was the biggest of all. There was a rope attached to the top branch of this large tree.
I pulled on the rope and it unrolled and then rolled back up like a yo-yo. I pulled again and a creature jumped to the ground. The creature was grey, doughy and scared. He wanted to visit with the creature underground and he lunged for the elevator but I managed to grab him and pull him back.
The creature from underground came up and after a very long moment of staring at the thing in my arms, I introduce the two. They both smiled and went back into the elevator.
I bought a new red bicycle. I should have shopped around a bit and not have bought a bicycle as an impulse purchase, but I liked the bike. While I was putting it into the back of my mother’s pickup, Melissa tossed hers in with ease.
She bragged that she had been able to load up her bicycle all by herself for years before I was ever able. And I still struggled with it.
I stacked our two and some other bikes near the back of the pickup cab, tired of her braggins. She stood in the back of the pickup and I stood on the ground handing bikes up to her.
Themes: Melissa
I stood with my mom and dad in tall wetland grass next to a lake. My dad goes into a long explanation of a large stump in the back yard. My mom had cut it down little by little instead of pulling it out properly. He said that other little trees had started growing from its stump, so now there were 100 little trees growing where we hadn’t wanted one.
Testing me, he asked why all of the little trees had attached to the stump, and I repeated his reasoning that the water was doing it. I didn’t want to be a part of this conversation at all.
He pulled me down on top of the stump with a hundred new growths. Another girl was kneeing on the stump already. She was naked from the waist down and facing away from us so that we could see her butt very prominently.
He reached down to caress her butt, but I wouldn’t let him. I was sitting with my legs tucked beside me and he put his hand on my hip. I stoop up quickly and announced that I would not be going to the store with him, even if he did let me drive and bought me coffee. I didn’t want to go and that was that.
He left for the store with Melissa and I stayed and helped my mom clean up the dishes. I washed away every trace of him off me and down the kitchen sink with the rest of the dish water. Finished in the kitchen, we could then somehow see what they were up to.
The two that had gone with my dad had rope of some sort and they were using it to fend him off. My dog Lacey appeared on the stump and I knew I had to send them a better rope to help. The only way to get the rope to them in the other dimension was to have Lacey swallow a strand of pearls.
I put my pearls in her mouth and rubbed her throat to encourage her swallowing, like when I give her medicine. She couldn’t swallow the pearls because they were too big; she started choking on them so I pulled them out. I had to find some way for the dog to swallow them so I could send her over to fight my dad.
My parents, Melissa, and I were going somewhere and there was a lot of mud. The roadway had flooded so much that someone had erected three-foot stone walls on the road shoulder to keep a path dry-ish for walking, but the water was threatening to spill over the wall.
We walked carefully and tried not to disturb the water, sticking to the driest places we could, but when we reached our destination our feet were soaked and muddy. We stopped at a small house to change our shoes and socks, and we saw something on the floor inside the house. I couldn’t tell what it was, but mom told me to hurry changing my socks and get back outside.
Once outside, I repacked my bag and watched Melissa pull out brand new dresses, costumes and shoes: a whole bunch of stuff she had bought on the trip. Some of her new things were wrapped in plastic and flattened like cardboard.
I told her that not everything would fit in her bag, but she didn’t care: she loved the new outfits she had purchased. She put a few of them back into her bag, zipped up and was ready to go. As my parents started out I told them to wait. I went behind a table where I found all of Melissa’s old clothes and some of her new ones that wouldn’t fit into her bag: she had stashed them to leave them behind.
I pulled the clothes out, handful after handful, angry that she was being so wasteful. I wanted to throw them into the flooded road, and started to do so until I realized that my parents had paid a lot of money for them and they would be very hurt if I did that.
My mom told my sister to pack all of it, but she couldn’t fit it all into her bag and she was very snotty about it.
I was on a yacht with Melissa and another girl. I sat down hear the failing to eat and dangled my feet over the edge. I’m not wearing any shoes but the other two girls are, so they stay away from the edge so as to not drop their shoes into the water.
Other people arrive in a small boat and I go down to help them. I held the tether with one foot in the boat and the other on the dock. They all got out of their boat an headed up the dock. I was annoyed that everyone had left me to tie up their small boat. I tossed the rope I was holding up to the railing where I had been sitting and tied it off, proud that I had remembered how.
Then I was in an upstairs room getting dressed, wondering what to wear. Peggy Hill — from King of the Hill — had a huge fight with her husband Hank. She decided she would wear her wedding dress to the party, but she would alter it first. From the top of the stairs I could see she was beautiful in her flowing white dress and wind-tossed hair.
Her wearing the dress was a symbol of her independence from Hank. I knew it irritated him, but he didn’t know what to do about it. I went back to my room and was unhappy with my dress options. A friend came in wearing a long sating slip dress, and I wondered if that would be too informal.
I was driving a car at night with my mom and Melissa. We pulled up to a stop light behind a large white delivery van. The short male driver got out of the van, walked to its back, and opened its back doors. One of the doors smashed into my bumper as he opened it, but he didn’t seem to notice or care that he had dented my car.
I got out of the car and yelled at the man for damaging my car. He turned to face me and dragged me back behind my car. Yelling at me and keeping a firm grip on my arm, he told me to put the lemons and the sugar he was holding into my gas tank.
I grabbed a cut lemon and slowly squeezed its juices into my tank. I acted like it was no big deal because I didn’t want the man to think he was getting to me, but also because I knew the lemons wouldn’t harm my car at all. I took my time because I also knew the sugar would cause major damage to my car.
He pulled me back around front and I could see that inside the car, sitting on the back seat beside Melissa was a large tray with baking soda. I knew that if all of the lemons and sugar got into the gas tank, they would combine with the baking soda and the car would explode.
I was then sneaking down the fire escape at my parents’ house. I needed to leave but didn’t want to explain to everyone. I saw Bruce going up the fire escape with a backpack slung over one shoulder. We talked for a while and I agreed to house sit in his apartment while he was gone for a few weeks.
His apartment was just down the hill a little bit from my parents’ house. One day my father saw me coming out of Bruce’s apartment and got very, very angry. He grabbed me in the parking lot right next to my car and held me to the ground, yelling at me. I struggled to get up, but he was too strong.
I was at the Anchor Point church for a wedding. The church was tiny and the sanctuary only had two rows. B’s family sat in the front pew; I smiled and walked briskly past them, almost pulling B by the hand behind me.
Around a corner I saw the rest of the pews, but there will still only three or four rows, with others sitting in them. My group of friends sat in the front pew and left no room for me so I walked to the next to last row and sat down.
A woman standing in the aisle to my right held a guitar and began playing for the audience, but I quickly realized she was just plucking the strings in time with some background music: she wasn’t using the frets at all. I had a guitar which I laid flat on my lap and plucked along with her, happy that I could play along and that I had discovered how untalented she really was.
Melissa sat in the row behind me, and when the guitarist sat down Melissa got up and stood in the aisle while the next musician set up. The next musician started playing and Melissa started singing and dancing animatedly. The people around me were uncomfortable with her display, interrupting the performance as she was, and they looked at me to do something.
I watched her for a bit more before standing up, taking her by the wrist, and pulling her to my pew. I sat on her left and told her that she was interrupting, so she had to sit still next to me. I put my right arm around her shoulders and squeezed her.
After the music stopped, we were in some sort of video game where we did tasks and searched out items and were awarded points. Dick and I were a team, and we wandered around to see the other teams’ progress.
The game took place in underground tunnels and caves. We went just left of the central game headquarters into the biggest, darkest cave in the game to check on another team. They were deep into the cave and were working on a project that required wooden planks. They needed one last plank, so one of the team members pulled a plank from a wooden gate near where Dick and I stood.
I looked at the ceiling structure of the cave, and noticed that a little deeper in the cave walls turned from rock to cement. Standing at the intersection of wall materials I could hear traffic above me and determined we were under a bridge.
Studying the intersecting wall materials more, I realized that the wooden gate from which the other team tore their last plank had been supporting the bridge. I tried to inform the group that the concrete infrastructure would likely collapse on top of them, but they were too engaged in their project to listen.
Dick and I left them and went back to the central game headquarters, a large, open cavern. The cave we had been in exited on top of a tall cliff in the cavern. I grabbed Dick’s hand and swung out over the cliff face, setting my feet on the cavern wall to the side of the cliff. Dick lost his balance, however, and fell over the cliff.
I swung back to the edge of the cliff and increased my grip on his hand. He started to pull me over the edge, but my weight had slowed him down enough that when I did go over we didn’t fall very fast. We landed at the bottom safely.
There was a wedding being held at my parents’ house. I arrived from Fairbanks just in time to get ready. I went into the room I used to share with Melissa to get changed, and found her in a beautiful long, red bridesmaid dress brushing her hair. I realized that I had forgotten to pack my makeup, that I had left it in Fairbanks, but decided it was too late to worry about it.
Themes: Melissa
Dad took Melissa and me to a greenhouse to buy plants. Once we got inside the greenhouse we discovered that the shelves and pots were empty. We were late and most of the plants had already been sold.
I wandered around for a long time while Dad talked with some of the other adults. There were a lot of people in the greenhouse standing around talking, but none of them were in any possession of plants. I found three flats of ferns in one corner and grabbed them even though I didn’t like them.
I went upstairs and saw that it was similarly empty; Marty and Stephanie were up there goofing off but I just wanted flowers.
I saw a glimmer of pink and purple across the room and dashed to one pot that appeared to still have some flowers. Upon closer inspection, however, I could tell that whatever had been planted in that pot had been removed and three little flowers had been pressed to the side of the pot and dried there.
I hurried to get to class. Showed up and it was Jazz Band: I was early, but I sat down at the piano and started dinking around when Mr. Searle handed me some sheet music. I looked around and saw that Ryan wasn’t there and because I was sitting at the piano I was to fill in for him. I was worried about having to sight read all of this music, but figured I would give it my best.
After band class I made my way to my second class. There were only a small handful of people in the class, and we all stood in a small room. When class started, I looked up and saw Michael come into the room and move to the front of the class. I dropped my gaze to the floor, slightly embarrassed that I had not known he was teaching the class.
He explained to everyone what we would be doing today, and how we would quickly and effortlessly get down the mountain. I looked up and caught his eye; he was not surprised to see me in his class.
Michael handed every person a large round piece of fabric. We were to hold onto our fabric pieces a specific way as we jumped off of the mountain.
At the top of the mountain, I could see the beauty of the mountain range for many miles. I briefly wondered how we had gotten so far up the mountain in such a secluded area.
I stood and watched the people before me jump: they fell only a short distance before they and their piece of cloth disappeared. When it was my turn, I jumped and almost immediately found myself at the bottom of the mountain. The piece of cloth acted as a transporter.
Back at home, some evil people were coming to kill an older volunteer, Meg. I still had my piece of cloth, and decided to use it to jump down the small canyon and escape the evil people. Meg, Melissa, and I ran over to the edge. I told them both to grab on to me and we jumped.
When we jumped, Melissa’s hold on my arm was not firm enough and she let go. I tried to grab on to her before Meg and I were transported, but I was unable to grab her. Once on the ground she was nowhere to be found.
After making sure Meg was safe, I went back to my room at my parents’ house and fell into bed. I slept and had a very long and upsetting dream. When I woke, I went into the computer room and, lying on the piano bench underneath some blankets in the middle of the room, checked my email.
I saw that I had an email from Michael. This piqued my interest as I had not gotten an email from him in a very long time. I saw that he had copied out the dream I had had the night before and, highlighting one specific spot, said that I had yelled that exact line in my sleep the night before.
I could remember mumbling in my sleep, but not that I had yelled anything, though I wasn’t surprised. Then the door opened and in walked Michael. He walked around me and I, continually turning so I could see him, told him that I figured I had yelled something in my sleep.
He sat leaning against the arm of the couch, his legs stretched out. I reached over and grabbed his arm, putting my arm between his and his torso. I knew I shouldn’t be touching him, but it was nice to do so. I was happy to see him again, and I smiled.
It was during the middle ages. I and another, younger, girl had been taken captive. The master had become attached to the girl and told his goons to not harm her. The goons were jealous of his attachment to the girl and spent all of their time making her life miserable, which meant they basically ignored me.
One night I had gone to her cell and found that she had been sliced in two with a sword, right through her belly button so that her legs and pelvis were sitting next to her torso. As I stared wide-eyes, I was told, “The master ordered it.” I wondered what the master would do if he knew.
I watched one of the men go to slice her in half again, down the center of her cheast, and I left not able to bear the thought of her torure. I wondered how much more she could live through. The master later found the goon sitting with a glass of blood. He raised the glass at the master and said, “Look how much we got from her!” The girl’s head laid severed in his lap.
I sat up in a pool of dirty water and felt someone’s arm tight around me. I turned and saw the body of a dead man lying with me. I stifled a scream and tried to move, but the body was heavy and held me down. I saw that we were on the stone floor of the master’s dungeon. I looked back at the body and remembered that he had loved me, and I was probably the reason for his death.
The body started moving; he had come back alive. He grabbed my arm and told me that he loved me and wanted me. I was scared and stood up. He stood with me. His body had been decaying on the flood, but the decaying process was just starting to reverse.
I put my arms around him, still a bit scared but knowing that he wouldn’t hurt me. We kissed passionately and it seemed to me that we were physically connected by his arm somehow, that he wouldn’t be able to remove it from me if he tried.
I wrapped my right leg around his waist and put it on a stool. We were both naked, and I tried to maneuver so that his penis would slide into me. But every time I bent my knees he bent his, moving his penis further fro me.
Melissa and I stood on top of a large hill looking at a map. I pointed out the path we had taken to get to where we currently stood and we discussed whether to take a different return path or backtrack the way we had come.
I could clearly see on the map that all of the rivers and lakes had frozen over for the winter and was able to verify that by looking out over the valley: all of the bodies of water were blocks of white even though the surrounding areas were a summery green.
We got back into the Jeep and headed down the hill, having chosen to take a new path down the mountain crossing two frozen rivers and one frozen lake. I pressed the gas pedal to the floor and loved the rush of speeding down a hill through thick brush.
As we came to the lake I noticed moments too late that it was not frozen as it had appeared on the map and from the top of the hill, but instead was filled with boiling lava. The Jeep immediately burst into flames, but we were traveling fast enough that we were across the lava before any permanent damage had been done.
I stopped the Jeep and we managed to get the fire out quickly. We turned and looked at the lava rolling through the previously frozen lake, and then Melissa said that we had to get off of the hill as quickly as possible. I looked across the Jeep’s hood at her, and without saying anything more we both jumped back into the car and sped off, the speed being more panicky than fun this time.
The next river we came to was also flowing with lava, but I was able to prepare for it because I could see it for a few miles before we came upon it. I told Melissa to hold on and gunned the accelerator. At one point halfway across I was sure that the Jeep would be pulled under, but we just barely made it to the other side of the lava river.
We got out of the car and continued on foot down a large staircase almost as steep as a ladder. I led the way, holding on to the both railings and skipping as many steps as I could while not getting hurt. I yelled a comment to Melissa about how running from boiling lava had cured my fear of steep stairs.
Themes: Melissa
I sat at the computer and opened Michael’s cam page. He was sitting at a dining room table and I knew he was using his new laptop. I said something aloud to him and he walked over to my computer; he had been in the other room. He sat with his back to my computer at another dining room table and Melissa stood on the other side talking to us.
I turned my chair to engage in the conversation, and while explaining something to Melissa I somehow grabbed Michael’s hand. Not missing a beat, I dropped his hand and continued my explanation. I knew that I could grab his hand again below the edge of the table and Melissa wouldn’t be able to see, but I couldn’t get his attention so that he would move his hand closer to me.
The three of us decided to go to the state fair. We stepped through the gates and the skies were overcast. Melissa decided to go off on her own and I linked my hand with Michael’s. I had heard that he had won some award for his writing, and I suggested we go find that.
We went into a small building and were approached by three male workers. They all knew Michael and congratulated him on the award. I browsed the items on the walls and shelves while the four men all sat down in plush chairs.
Michael was now B and had worked with the three men before. They talked about whether anything had changed at the shop, and B asked if the trash was being taken out. He was assured that it was, but he and I went around to all the trash cans, emptied them into large garbage bags, and then put the bags into the alley behind the store.
I sat at my parents’ dining room table in their basement. My mother, sister-in-law Jen, brother John and I were mass-producing a large number of cupcakes. I had brought a few cans of spray frosting to make the process go faster. I handed one can of frosting to my mother and I took another. The frosting came out of the cans very fancy and pretty. I frosted a few cupcakes when my frosting can sputtered and splattered frosting everywhere. I said, “Fuck!” and knew immediately that I shouldn’t have said that in front of my mother, but chose to not say anything or look guilty so as to draw any more attention to it.
Since that had been the last can of spray frosting, I announced that I would make another run to town and get more frosting cans since they seemed to be working nicely. I ran up the stairs and out to my car in the parking spot next to my mom’s car, the one I used in high school. Melissa was sitting in the passenger’s seat of my car ready to go.
My dad was leaning into the open driver’s side door. I saw him grab a plastic container about the size of a piece of paper and had a bubble at one end to hold one of my new contacts. From the porch I could see him place the bubble up to his eye and push the contact onto it. Then he turned and ran off.
I was angry that he had taken one of my contacts. Melissa stood out of the car and asked me to run back inside and grab the jacket she left on the pool table upstairs.
Back inside I walked towards an upright piano that sat on stage in a concert hall. I sat down at it and fingered the ivory keys. I needed to urinate on the keys, but before I was able to even stand I heard someone tell me to play something. I looked up and Bjorn was sitting in the third row. He was leaned forward, anxious to hear me play.
I turned back toward the piano and tried to remember one of the songs I had memorized back in high school. I could hear them in my head but could not remember where to put my fingers. I wished I had my sheet music with me.
I stepped into my mother’s Sunday School classroom and caught my mom’s eye. Sitting at a short table, she nodded at me for encouragement and then looked across the room. I followed her gaze and saw Melissa standing with her back to the door helping a child with the day’s project. She was dressed very nicely in a pair of slacks and her hair was pulled up on her head and very curly.
I stepped back into the hall and pulled two preteens into the room with me. One of the kids with me was my niece T, and I helped her walk over to Melissa. She said, “Aunt Melissa?” and Melissa turned to face us. She was so happy to see T and gave her a really big hug. I noticed that T was almost as tall as Melissa and their hair looked almost identical.
I went back over to the door to talk with my mom when Dave, my youth pastor, opened the door and came into the room, pinning me behind the door. He wore kneepads and wrist guards and immediately apologized for nearly hitting me with the door.
He asked how I was doing and I told him, pointing towards T and Melissa, that I had brought my niece and my nephew who stood closer to my mother. He was distracted by the day’s craft and didn’t look up. “Is he the retarded one?” Dave asked. I was angry that he would not only call my nephew that word in a public situation, but also that he was so flippant about it.
T, my nephew, and Melissa had all gone through the same tests that were supposed to help them, and they all suffered in different degrees from the testing. I turned to leave with Heidi, the children’s mother, and she wondered aloud if those tests were what have been causing Melissa’s insistent headaches.
Themes: Melissa
I stood in a long line with Rachael outside a large bus or trailer. Rachael was first in line and I was second. A woman, the owner, guarded the entrance and was wanting to get rid of all of her stuff.
In order to do this, she handed each of us a pack of 26 small, colored sticky notes. When I stepped inside just after Rachael, I could see she had laid out each of her items very cleanly and spaciously, one to a chair. We were to browse through her items and place one of our sticky notes on the chair of an item that we wanted. Each person got a different color of sticky notes, and after everyone had used their sticky notes we would be allowed to go back through the items and take only three things that had our sticky note color on its chair. This was to facilitate a fair distribution of the items.
I wandered through the aisles of chairs and placed one of my bright pink sticky notes on a chair that held a nice sweater. Only then did I notice the chair already had a bright sticky note. Rachael had gotten pink sticky notes as well, and I knew that would confuse things greatly. I hollered to Rachael who browsed a few aisles away and told her that she needed to put her initials on her sticky notes so as to not confuse them with mine.
I continued browsing and found, back against the far wall, the woman’s large Blue Flower porcelain collection. I was certain that she wouldn’t be trying to get rid of the porcelain items, but then saw a sticky note on one of the pieces and figured I might as well try.
B and some of his coworkers came over to look at the porcelain, and he told me that he hoped we got the porcelain bassinet for our baby. I agreed it would be perfect. Above the porcelain collection hung a large glass windshield perhaps three inches thick. B and his coworkers were immediately interested and the woman came over to talk about it with them.
Outside, I got into the driver’s seat of one of B’s work vans and headed out towards his work site. I went a ways out of town and came to a large, muddy piece of land that had many large and dangerous metal things sticking out of the ground. It looked like a bleak wasteland. I pulled the van into a place where I couldn’t easily swing around, so I did a three-point turn and turned off the engine.
I jumped out of the van and walked over to B who started laughing at me. He told me that no one had ever had to back up a work van in the history of the glass company. I was hurt that I had tried to do something nice for him and he made fun of me, so I walked back to the van and left.
The van then became my car and Melissa was sitting in the passenger’s seat. She had her window rolled down and the midday sun warmed us. I drove down Baycrest Hill towards Homer and we passed a group of teenagers just let out of school.
Shelby ran over and jumped onto the running board of the car. Melissa chatted with her for a bit and then turned to me and asked if we could give Shelby a ride. I agreed and told them that I didn’t have time to stop but that I would slow the car down. While going 20mph, Shelby managed to get the back door open and herself into the car safely.
At the bottom of Baycrest after riding my brakes the whole way, Melissa asked me if I had realized we went through a school zone at 20mph when we were supposed to go 8mph. I hadn’t realized that.
I said goodbye to Melissa and the moment she walked away I remembered that I was holding a present I had forgotten to give her. I had wanted to give her an oval American flag belt buckle, but it was too late. She was gone.
Themes: Melissa
I was in my mid-twenties and in Homer. Sitting on a stool next to me was a female midget. She had wrapped her arms around herself and looked quite traumatized and withdrawn. She had been on my father’s fishing boat earlier that day, and I wondered what had happened to her.
I left Homer, and when I returned I was still in my mid-twenties, but everyone and everything else had aged five years. I had been gone for five years but I hadn’t aged. The female midget was now a mother and had a lesbian midget partner who asked me if I knew a particular midget in Fairbanks. She was described as always wearing flannel shirts with the sleeves cut off. I did not know this particular lesbian midget, but I thought that her description could have applied to all of the lesbians and the midgets in Fairbanks.
I entered into a different room and found Melissa sitting on the dining room table. She was beautiful, taller, and older than me since I had not aged while I had been gone. I ran up to her, crying, and threw my arms around her. I told her that I had missed her terribly. Crying, she said that she had missed me as well.
I noticed that Melissa was wearing a red, white, and blue striped shirt. A friend of hers walked in from another room also wearing red, white, and blue stripes. I knew that these matching costumes had important symbolism. Looking down, I saw that I, too, wore red and blue stripes separated by thin white stripes.
I turned to the midget and told her that her baby is my dad’s. She looked shocked, but knew that I was right. She left to confront and acknowledge her past.
I was then sitting in the middle seat of a minivan that was driving towards Homer from far out East End Road. My father-in-law sat in the passenger’s seat. He was very skinny, perhaps too skinny, and divorced from my mother-in-law. So much had changed in the five years I had been gone, yet I had not changed at all. I wondered if I could still call him ‘Dad.’
I called Melissa and was very sad when her answering machine picked up. I wondered where her roomate was, and decided to not leave a message.
I hung up the telephone and when I turned around Melissa stepped out of her old room wearing a towel around her torso and another around her head. She had just gotten out of the bath. I chuckled and told her that I had just called her place and thought it was weird she didn’t pick up. I didn’t know she was at my parents’ home.
She stood just inside her bedroom door looking at me. She did not say anything, and I wondered why she was acting weird.
Themes: Melissa
I walked Melissa to her classroom and handed over her books that I had been carrying. She stood inside the door and I on the outside facing each other. I smiled and told her to have a good day. It was the first day of school.
The hallways were empty. I went downstairs to the main office and placed all of the random stuff I carried on the counter, wishing I had a backpack. I told the guy behind the desk that I was here to sign up for some classes and register. “Yes,” I said, “I need to register for classes.”
He told me that all new students needed to see the nurse for a pregnancy test before registering. I knew I wasn’t pregnant and headed to the nurse’s office. Once there I found one empty desk and sat down, waiting for class to start.
Themes: Melissa
Melissa stood before me and told me how horrible her current situation was and how much she wanted a change. I stepped closer to her and slid my arms around her slender waist. We hugged each other hard, I did not want to let go.
I told her that she should come to Fairbanks and live with B and me. She could sleep on the couch for a while. I knew that if she wanted to stay longer that B and I would rent a 2-bedroom apartment, would fold her into our family. We would do anything for her.
In the laundry room I met a man and his teenage daughter. I had never seen them before, but they said that they had just moved into the apartment upstairs. I was glad that the partying girls had left.
He went upstairs and I chatted with the teenager who turned into Melissa. She was very excited to have her own apartment and to be so close to me.
I went to Kara’s wedding. Kara stood at the head of a long meeting table in an elaborate purple and white gown. She held out her guestbook made of cake and frosting, and asked KatiAnn and me to bring it to the kitchen downstairs.
I took it to a corner of the room and waited for Melissa to arrive at the wedding. She needed to sign the guestbook cake before I put it away.
I waited and waited but she still didn’t show, so I went to get her. In her bedroom, the room we shared, I saw she was still in bed. Closer I could see four feet under the covers, hers between two male feet. I pulled at her feet and she rolled over off of the man.
He was much, much older than her. I chided her for being late to the wedding and for being with this older man. She seemed happy with him, and I knew she would not be staying wtih B and I.
Themes: Melissa
My parents and I were standing in Melissa’s old bedroom talking when we heard sirens in the distance. The sirens got louder and louder, closer and closer, until I could see lights flashing outside Melissa’s curtained windows.
I knew that the fire trucks were in our parking lot, and wondered how Lacey was doing with the sirens. She was downstairs sleeping in my old room under the blankets, and I heard her start to whine and howl. I called her name and she ran to me. I covered her ears with my hands trying to block out some of the painful sound.
My parents and I walked outside towards the trucks, who had parked in front of my dad’s shop. Two firemen were inspecting the 500 gallon gasoline tanks.
They explained to me that the hoses were clogged and they needed to fix it immediately. They squeezed the handle to clear the hose of its blockage and asked me to do the other hose.
We pointed the hoses into the weeds across the parking lot, long powerful streams of clear liquid. I worried about getting the gasoline in my mother’s garden, knowing that her garden lay just bejond that patch of weeds.
I looked at my mother and she furrowed her brow, probably worried about her garden as well. The liquid streaming out of the hoses turned into a bronze color, more like gasoline should look. We let go of the handles and turned the hoses back towards our feet.
Damon and I visited my parents at them home. We went inside and I sat in my dad’s chair in the living room.
Damon wandered around, went downstairs then came back upstairs; he was getting ready because we were going out. He grabbed a small wig from the dining table and put it on over his real hair. It looked the exact same as his real hair in color, length, and style.
Melissa stood in the living room as I worked at putting my hair into a long ponytail. I told her that the function we were going to is very particular about hair.
A volunteer from work came inside and said she was tired of waiting in the car. With her is a medium-sized dog that I leaned down to pet on my way downstairs.
I told B that I was ready to go while the volunteer talked with Mom and Dad at the bottom of the stairs.
I heard the motorcycle start outside and was a little miffed: B’s ankle was still hurt and he should not have been riding the motorcycle. I started up the stairs to tell him we should go in the car when my dad, standing on the very bottom step, reached out his hand and brushed my arm, then my butt.
I stopped five steps above him, turned around, and threw myself at him. He stood on the floor holding his bare foot—he hurt it when he slid down the last step.
I was certain that my action sounded like an accident, that I fell and caused him to fall down the last step, but I wanted everyone to know that I acted purposefully.
So I screamed at him, “Do not touch me! It is inappropriate, inappropriate to grab my ass! I hate you! I hate you for touching me!”
He ran up the steps halfway after me to forcefully shut me up, but I retreated into the dark landing at the top of the stairs and he backed off.
I continued to yell at him, getting closer to the bottom of the stairs as I did. I yell about him touching Melissa and how I would never forgive him for that. He, my mother, and the volunteer all backed into the downstairs kitchen while I continued to yell.
Dad was embarrassed at making a scene in front of the volunteer, so he hand wrote a note on a letter-sized piece of scratch paper, folded in in half, and handed it to me while I yelled. I paused to read the note.
The note was written in a tight cursive and looked nothing like his real handwriting. His note said that Melissa had told him one of her brothers had mistreated her, and he wanted to protect her from that. I looked up at him, Mom, and the volunteer, knowing it was a lie.
Then I was standing with B beside our fish tank in a darkened room. I was feeding the fish but became distracted by the yelling in another room. I dumped a ton of fish flakes into the tank and laughed about the excess.
I opened the frog food container and pinched a few pellets to drop into the tank. B held the bottle for me and started spooning the pellets into the tank.
The bottom of the container was much shallower than the sides indicated, and I though it odd that the manufacturers would want to deceive everyone into thinking they were getting twice as much food than was actually in the container.
I told B that he would make the frog sick and tried to grab the container from him, but he laughed.
I pulled my car into a parking lot late at night. The front tires of my car were dangerously close to the edge of a cliff.
I started to get out of the car when the edge gave way and the tires fell over the edge. I knew that if I got back into the car it would continue to fall from my extra weight, so I picked up the front end a bit and bound the car back away from the edge.
Inside was a laboratory that opened up over the deep ocean. We had placed strong and expensive machinery at the bottom of the ocean and were monitoring them. One large piece of machinery had just been moved when I arrived—a shark had pulled it over to the edge of the cliff and pushed it off.
There was one more piece of machinery, shaped with a large round disk on one end and a long piece connecting it to a smaller cube at the other. I chased the shark that carried the second piece of machinery and managed to grab hold of it before it tumbled over the cliff.
I wasn’t able to hold onto it and it slipped from my fingers. Back on the walkway, my mom was looking through our database for one of the kid’s parents’ phone number. We couldn’t find it.
Then I was in my parents’ home. John and Heidi came in after me and Melissa and Carrie followed them: they had all driven down to Homer together. Heidi went on and on about how wonderful Carrie was and told John that Carrie had made their bed for them.
She told Carrie that Heidi would do something tremendous for her, and Carrie seemed embarrassed about all the fuss. I was jealous that Carrie and Melissa were focused so much on John and Heidi and barely said hi to me.
They left to go see their bed and B and I went for a walk through town. At one street corner he asked me if I remembered a specific incident back before we got married; I did remember it and was surprised he had remembered it.
We headed to a party. Inside there was a main check-in type counter with hard joke-y male thongs hanging below it and plastic toys on top that resembled genitals and hair. I didn’t get a good look at them but knew they were supposed to gross people out.
I was carrying a giant black thong in my left hand and swung it around when I walked by the desk, knocking a bunch of them onto the floor. I told the guys behind the counter that I had my own thong, thankyouverymuch, then became self-conscious of its size and wondered if the guys noticed it was quiet large.
B and I walked down a trailer hallway and I needed to use the bathroom. There was no handle on my side of the door, so he helped close it from the hallway and I locked it with a tiny slide latch.
I sat down and was about to empty my bowels when the door and wall shook. The wall was not made of wood, but of a heavy canvas and so it moved quite a bit.
I thought B was playing so I yelled for him to cut it out. I could see the shoes through a little gap under the wall and they did not belong to B. The man in the hallway dropped to the floor and stuck his head under the wall.
I jumped up and, with my back towards the intruder, pulled up my underwear and pants, but I was still naked from the waist up. I turned around with my arms over my breasts and saw that the man was Bruce.
I yelled at him to get out, but he couldn’t undo the door lock. I unlocked the door with my left hand, my right still covering myself, and he stood in the hallway muttering.
B walked by with a cigarette in his mouth, freshly lit. I was shocked that he was smoking, but the intruder needed to be taken care of first. I told B what had happened and that I was quite upset, expecting him to become upset that his friend had barged in on his naked wife in the bathroom.
He blew smoke into the hall and walked away muttering about how he was “going to do something” about it. I was shocked and hurt that he was taking it so lightly and wasn’t going to do something right then to uphold my honor.
I was sharing a bedroom with Melissa and we both got new pets. I had a pet bear (in the dream I could remember dreaming this before). The black bear was a cub-sized fully grown adult. He slept on my bed with me.
When I woke in the morning, I saw the clock read 8:15. Melissa got out of her bed across the room and sleepily walked towards the night stand.
I told her what time it was, but she was too sleepy to comprehend. I shook her shoulder and said loudly, “Eight fifteen. We are late.” We dressed very quickly. She grabbed her backpack and headed out of the room and downstairs to the lobby.
I needed to do something with my bear otherwise he would tear up our room while we were gone; he had done so before. I emptied a large cardboard box (which took a while) and placed him in it. It was just tall enough that he couldn’t jump out.
Out in the stairwell, Melissa told me to hurry up because the bus was there. I bent down to grab my backpack and my Bible, not having enough time to put my Bible into my backpack, and went out the door.
Melissa was standing behind a wall so that the bus driver couldn’t see her. She told me that the bus had almost left at one point, but then it had come back. I asked why she didn’t go out and tell him to wait. She told me that she didn’t feel comfortable with the other person waiting for the bus.
As we walked through the double glass doors, the bus - a short yellow school bus - drive away. It was still dark outside. I ran after the bus waving my hands, knowing that the driver would see me. He stopped the bus on the other side of the parking lot and got out to walk toward us.
He asked where we had been waiting and I apologized for running late. We climbed up the stairs and were the only ones on the bus. I thanked him for waiting for us.
Themes: Melissa
I was on a long walking journey with a large group of people. Melissa and I were lying in the shade of a stone wall resting from the bright sun when a male member of our group came around the corner of the wall with a weapon and laid on me.
He said that he won’t hurt us, but I have to let him see my breast. Crying, I refused. He moved to hurt me, so I lifted my shirt and exposed most of my right breast. He said that wasn’t quite far enough, so I lifted my shirt the rest of the way.
He kissed and caressed my right breast while I looked to my left, towards the wall and away from Melissa. I felt aroused a little bit, and then ashamed for feeling aroused.
After he left, I ran up to my mom and whispered in her ear, “He just raped me,” then corrected myself and told her that he didn’t really rape me, but he did molest me. And in front of Melissa, no less. I didn’t feel safe with him in our group.
Themes: Melissa
Pam, Melissa, Loren Absher, and I were at a night club partying. When we got back to the church parsonage it was very late and very dark. We were putting our regular clothes back on when the youth pastor’s wife Cindy came over from the church and demanded to know where we had been and what we had done.
I got into her face and asked why she needed to know all that stuff about us. She told me that the church needed to track all of our spending and asked what we had bought and where we had gone. Speaking for the group, I refused to give her any information, saying that we had as much of a right to privacy as anyone.
Themes: Melissa, Pam & Tina
I was walking on a path through the woods with five or six others. We came to a clearing in the middle of nowhere. It looked to be a reasonably well-kept piece of property that was surrounded by a low fence. The path passed directly below the clearing. We stopped at the gate and peered in: the ground sloped up from the gate.
Melissa walked through the gate and I followed. Standing in the center of the small field, I saw an old bald man at the very top of a spruce tree watching us. I looked at Melissa but could tell she hadn’t seen him; I looked back and he was gone.
The man’s appearance and disappearance worried me. I physically pulled Melissa back through the gate and onto the path. I knew that if we had stayed in the field any longer that man would have kept us prisoner.
I convinced the group to move on before someone else went through the gate. That piece of land was haunted.
Themes: Melissa
I was in gym class at school. There was a large metal grid laid out over the ground like an enlarged drain gate. Melissa and the other students jumped feet first into one of the grid holes that led under the ground. I stared down the hole where she jumped for a long time before trying it myself, but my hips were too big and I didn’t fit in the hole.
I went into the coach’s office to explain the problem to him. He sat behind his desk and said that if I didn’t complete the assignment, I would fail the class. I knelt on the floor, sitting on my feet, and stared out his window.
I put my face in my hands and cried with every ounce of energy I had because Melissa was dead and never coming back. The coach stood behind me for a bit, but then walked out of the office because he didn’t know how to handle my crying.
I was then in math class. The math teacher made the students come out onto the floor and form a circle. She walked around and the other students followed her.
I stood waiting for some verbal instructions, and she yelled at me for not moving with her. I told her I was waiting for instructions, and she told me that I would fail the class. I left the room and wondered if my schedule could take dropping both math and gym.
My boyfriend was in the hallway, and as I hugged him I broke his necklace. I pretended it was an accident even though I did it on purpose. Because of the math teacher, I was no longer allowed to see him.
I got really brave one afternoon and rang his doorbell. My mom answered the door wearing a bright red vest. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said. She was very happy to see me.
We walked into an extremely large kitchen, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed the last time I was in her home. In the very tall wall over the stove was a large glass tank filled with hundreds of gallons of water. Instead of fish, there were chickens swimming in the tank. She told me that chicken is always better when they are live and fresh.
B stood in the hallway and was very happy to get to see me. We embraced.
Melissa and I had driven hundreds of miles to a friend’s mansion and we planned to walk back. With an extremely long hike ahead of us, I tried to consolidate my two backpacks into one so I could carry my stuff easily. I packed on water bottle and went to drain the second when I realized I was so incredibly thirsty that my throat hurt in a burning, scratching sort of way.
I refilled my bottle in the bathroom where the sink is covered and opened like a grand piano: a piece over the top opened left to right, and a piece over the front that pulled up.
My companion, now a male instead of Melissa, checked on my progress. I stood up and was at least half his height. I reached my arms up like a child and he stooped to pick me up. I bent back down and placed my water bottle on the ground, then jumped into her arms.
I wrapped my legs around my torso. I felt so close to him; he was my lover.
Themes: Melissa
Melissa was in prison and I went to visit her. I stood behind the cell and saw her slumped in a chair with a hooded sweatshirt pulled over her head. There were ten or more other people sharing her cell, all of them sitting in chairs and on beds facing the front of the cell.
I came back later and sneaked into her cell, but she was gone. I sat next to Carrie, who told me that she had escaped through a crack in the back of the cell near where I had sneaked in. I planed to escape in the same manner during the night.
During the afternoon a youth group game to minister to the prisoners. The youth leader was slimy and I could tell he wanted me sexually. I sat in her chair and pulled a sweatshirt hood over my head so the nuns who ran the prison would not notice her absence. The group did many performances and finally left.
I got up, kissed Carrie’s cheek, and went to the crack in the wall. I found a skinny hidden door that opened large enough for an adult to squeeze through. I wondered why no one had used this before Melissa.
I sneaked down the hallway and prayed no one would see me. I turned down the main hallway that led to the main entrance and saw Josh Garvey also enter the main hallway. His hair was long and he had a curly beard: he had been in the prison for a long time and had just escaped.
We traveled quietly together and once outside ran as fast as we could. I could see my parents’ house just down the hill and knew that Melissa was there - I needed to see her and hug her as soon as I could.
Themes: Melissa
I was at a wedding. The bride had shoulder length blonde hair and a round face; Melissa was the groom.
Just before the ceremony started, Melissa and the bride left the sanctuary by the back doors. The bride came back and, instead of waiting for Melissa, pulled one of her bridesmaids over next to her and proceeded with the ceremony.
I watched all of this happen from behind a half wall on stage behind the minister. I walked down a side aisle and saw Melissa standing on the balcony at the back of the sanctuary. I could tell she was hurt and angry that the bride had gone on without her.
Afterwards I put my arm around Melissa and guided her towards the exterior door to leave. We passed an office, and inside sat the bride talking on the phone. I left Melissa in the hallway and went inside the office.
She got off the phone and I asked her, “What the fuck were you doing?” I then slapped her rather limp-wristedly and called her a bitch. I knew that my slap didn’t hurt her.
Themes: Melissa
I was lying on top of B on our couch kissing. All of a sudden I was lying on top of his sister. She pulled me closer and kissed me at the base of my neck near my clavicle. I turned to my left and saw Melissa sitting at our computer watching us. I wanted her to leave us some privacy, but didn’t want to move to a more private location. I turned back and reached down to grab my partner’s butt with my left hand, and she turned back into B.
I had a dream that a girl I knew had a twin sister that I didn’t know about. Her sister had very curly hair while she had straight hair. I saw this girl the next day, and told her about my dream. She told me that she did have a twin sister, but her sister did not have curly hair. I was astonished that my dream had been so accurate.
Her sister walked in the door and the three of us sat talking for a while. They told me that their younger brother had just died, and wanted to know how I had handled my sister dying. They asked me if she was younger, and I said she was younger than me but, motioning to Melissa who was around 10 years old and sitting next to us, said that she was older than Melissa.
Themes: Melissa
Melissa was very young: perhaps three years old. She wore a white dress with pink flowers. She stood among the adults beaming up at them. She was so sweet, so cute, so adorable.
Themes: Melissa
I was driving with a group of people in a blue fourteen-passenger van from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Near halfway, we stopped at a house filled with African American orphan boys. The living room of the home had been converted into a large gymnasium where the orphans practiced tricks on the tightrope and trapeze.
The oldest orphan came up to me and we spoke for a while; there didn’t seem to be any adults in the house. I agreed to take him with us to Fairbanks.
When we drove into Fairbanks, I realized that Melissa was no longer with the group. We had lost her during the trip somewhere between the orphanage and Fairbanks. I knew she didn’t have her cell phone with her, but I did not know where her cell phone was.
I called all of the places we stopped on the trip, but no one has seen her. I suggested to Damon that we try to call her cell phone and see if someone answers—hopefully it would be the person she gave her cell phone to. Damon asked me what her number was, and the number I gave him belongs to my dad’s cell phone in the waking life.
I call her cell phone from a pay phone and a woman answers. I knew that she was a fifty-year-old waitress in a Nevada truck stop wearing a bright red blouse and a lot of makeup. She said that Melissa had been there but had continued on to Hollywood.
It was so far away, and I knew I would never see her again.
Themes: Left Behind, Melissa
I was in the bathroom when I saw a very large wasp-like bee walking on the floor. Two more wasp-like bees enter under the door. I went into the hallway and saw giant bees marching in a long line like ants. They were coming from a closed doorway that might have led to the basement. At the end of the line stood three gigantic queen bees. They were each six inches long and had small baby bees (not larvae) on their backs.
I grabbed a bottle of cleaning chemicals in an aerosol can and jumped up onto the kitchen counter. I sprayed the line as best I could from on top of the counter, and I could hear them screaming.
The three queen bees scurried over to the counter and jumped as high as they could to try and get me. Thankfully, their jumps were just short of reaching the top of the counter, but I was still scared.
Melissa came into the room through a different door and froze when she saw the giant jumping queen bees. I tossed the aerosol can to her and told her to kill the bees. She kept her finger on the nozzle and soaked down the entire line with chemicals.
She sprayed so much of the can that I could see the fume cloud in her face. I wanted to warn her to be careful about the fume, but I can’t. She sat down on the couch with Seby on her right and Glory on her left. Glory passed out because of the fume, and I knew that Melissa would be next.
Themes: Melissa
In the bedroom I shared with Melissa, she slept soundly. It was the middle of the night and I stood silently over her bed. I lifted the covers and tried to coax the dog out of her bed. I would not reach under the covers to pull the dog out, but it was of the utmost importance that the dog come with me.
Themes: Melissa
I was in the computer room of my mother’s basement. Melissa stood in front of me wanting to play with me. I grabbed the jump rope but it is too short for both of us to jump together. It had bright pink handles and was made for a child - both of us are grown.
I turned her around so that her back is pressed close to my stomach. I said, “Ready,” so that we could synchronize our jumps and spun the rope around our heads. We both jumped over it, but it isn’t long enough to swing it back around.
I don’t try again.
Themes: Melissa
I was sleeping in a bit in the morning, and B leaned over the bed to kiss me goodbye. I saw that he wasn’t wearing his uniform, and I told him that he was going to get in trouble. Even though it was his last day at work, he still needed to wear his uniform. He grinned, knowing full well that his boss couldn’t do anything about it.
After he left, I got out of bed and went into the living room. Melissa was sprawled on top of our air mattress in the middle of the floor watching television. She looked up at me when I grabbed Lacey’s leash to take her outside.
I opened the apartment door and there stood two tall teenage boys about to knock on my door. Lacey barked at them a few times and I apologized for her, but they hardly noticed. I asked if I could help them, and they said they had something to show me in the parking lot.
As we walked outside, the taller boy told me he was backing up and got a little too close to my car, and he was really sorry. I knew there was a ding, and was prepared for something really bad.
We got to the car and I looked at the front hood and couldn’t see a scratch. He pointed me to the driver’s side door, and I saw that it was so badly bent the door would not latch.
There was a lot of traffic on our little street that morning, and I looked up to see a black truck illegally pass a little white truck, then slow down in front of the white truck. The white truck got squished between the black truck and another vehicle, and then careened out of control onto our lawn to my left.
The lady in the little white truck looked determined to get where she was going, and turned on her emergency lights: she was an ambulance. She sat near the intersection waiting for people to stop so she could go (though I wasn’t sure if she was headed to the scene of an accident, or if she wanted to catch the black truck).
She stepped out of her little truck as a large red fire engine barreled down the cross street towards the intersection. She waved her arms frantically trying to get the driver to alter the fire truck’s course. The truck swerved to the left and plowed right through my neighbor’s apartment.
I panicked. Then I remembered that my neighbor had a two-bedroom apartment, and while the fire truck smashed through one of the bedrooms, maybe she or her little boy was still safe. I knew that I would go in to get whoever was still in the safe bedroom.
My eyes left the huge hole the fire truck left in the apartment building and swung over to my apartment window. I screamed Melissa’s name.
Themes: Melissa
I was sitting in the driver’s seat of my car and Melissa sat in the passenger’s seat. I pulled into the Nomar parking lot in homer and park the car. B’s 4” steel diving knife is stuck between the dash and the windshield.
Melissa grabbed the knife, removed the sheath, and pointed it at me. She was angry and yelled something at me. I grabbed the knife away from her and plunged it into her left thigh.
We both sat silently in shock staring at the knife in her thigh. She pulled the knife out and blood gushed all over the seat and floor. I started the car and drove toward the hospital; I know she needs stitches. But I get lost on the way to the hospital. I passed the bank a few times and ended up pulling into the grocery store parking lot to ask directions.
I am very upset that I can’t seem to find the hospital.
Themes: Melissa
I stood in the middle of a high school cafeteria with Ryan Derry. We are both much older than those around us, and much more confidant; we came to pass out fliers to the students at the high school.
The students sat at small round tables like those found in a coffee house. I saw Melissa and Marquella at a table on the other side of the cafeteria and make my way towards them. I sat down and noticed Melissa had a nose ring. I thought it looked really good on her, and wondered how she had slipped it past our parents.
Marquella left the table. Melissa and I finished our lunches until she had to go back to class.
Melissa is sitting on the edge of the couch telling Mom, Dad, and I about how she accepted Jesus as her Savior. She had gone to a local Lutheran church youth group. Hearing that, Dad begins yelling at her for going to a Lutheran church. I know that he is angry her salvation didn’t happen at his church, didn’t happen his way. I wanted to tell him to shut up and just be happy for her, but I didn’t say anything.
I was pregnant, and I could feel the baby pressing against my cervix, but there was no pain. I tried using my hand to keep the baby inside of me.
I was in a white dressing room with Lacey. There was a nurse outside of the room handing me towels and such. This was one of my scheduled checkups. I opened the door to hand the nurse some stuff, and saw that she was bundling up a bunch of chicken pieces and lettuce from the back of a blue pickup (the tailgate was down) to shove under the dressing room door next to mine.
She said the girl’s name, Tina, to get her attention. The nurse had left a few pieces of lettuce behind, and I went to grab them but she said it would be fine without them. I knocked on the door and said, ‘Tina, sweetie, are you alone?’ She said she was and I knew that it was the Tina I knew. I opened the door and gave her a big hug because I knew she was pregnant and going through it all alone.
We picked up all of her stuff and she moved into my dressing room. While the door was open Lacey tried to run out of the dressing room, but I managed to restrain her physically. Tina kept saying that it was so weird that I was pregnant, though I thought it was much weirder that she was pregnant, being unmarried.
Melissa was then there and Lacey gone. Melissa and I lied on our elbows on the floor with pillows, stretched out watching Tina as though we were having a slumber party.
A waiter in a tuxedo came to our door and asked if we needed anything. Melissa told him that she really wanted to go, and she wanted to buy the silver Porsche that was idling at the curb. He told her that he was sorry, but such a purchase would require a loan, and they did not do loans there.
She was very upset. I told her that if she wanted to go somewhere, she could borrow my new car. It was even silver.
Themes: Melissa, Pam & Tina
It was close to the end of the world - buildings were going up in flames, the sky was an eerie dark mustard color, and very few people were still alive.
My dad, Melissa, and I were all that was left of our family. We took two puppies and went to the community disaster center at the church. I decided that we needed to claim a sunday school room before they all get filled up.
I walked down the hallway and checked out each one, but the only one available was at the end of the hallway across from the surprisingly full nursery. I didn’t want that room because, being at the end farthest from the main section of the church, felt too exposed. Instead, I figured I could snag the nursery when the people come to pick up their kids.
We piled all of our bags and food and other possessions in the foyer of the church. Melissa and I sat down on top of our clothes and coddled the two puppies who were being very obedient and not running away.
We watched alien prisoners of the enemy aliens file into the church for safety. They were refugees, and were steel gray in color. The enemy aliens bomb the end of the church and a large fire erupts - I was then very glad I chose to not take the empty room on the end of the hallway.
Melissa, Damon, Bridger, and I managed to get out of the church and ran to a cabin back in the woods a ways. We felt very safe, but we had no supplies and needed milk. I mentioned that I had milk in my refrigerator back at my apartment. I told the group that I didn’t know how long the power had been off, but the door hadn’t been opened since so it should still be pretty cool inside. I continued that if the milk was bad, I had some powdered milk under the counter that just needs mixed with water.
We were then crawling down the shoulder of a wide dirt road. There were a lot of abandoned cars parked along the edge, and we crawled behind them. As aliens marched up and down the center of the road, we prayed that they would remain oblivious to us.
Themes: Aliens, Dad, End of the World, Melissa
I was driving around in a large, expensive car near a sandy beach with a guy and stop at a beach house. We go inside and Melissa starts yelling at me for something I did wrong. I cannot handle her yelling at me, so I run from the house and run down the street.
I hide behind another building, but Melissa and the guy drive up to me in my expensive car and get out. Vicki from work is there with dark black hair and was smacking gum. Melissa yells at me some more, and then I have my chance to say something.
I yell back at her through sobbing tears, telling her that I’m sorry I’ve been such a rotten sister and that I didn’t do what she wanted me to. Vicki moderated our argument, but never interfered.
Themes: Melissa
Dad and I pulled into our driveway in his truck and parked in front of the house. I could see smoke through mom and dads bedroom window. I ran inside and asked mom if there is a fire. She said no, but told me I could check if I wanted. I opened the door to their bedroom and saw a naked person. I hurriedly shut the door and then, realizing it was Melissa who was naked, went back into my parents’ bedroom.
There were three teen couples lying on the bed and under the covers; all of the boys were wearing clothes and one of the girls was naked. I tell them in a rushed manner that they need to get their clothes on ASAP because my parents were out in the hallway. The naked girl was hunched down trying to cover her nakedness.
The girl on the left, Melissa, and the one on the right threw back the covers revealing they were naked from the waist down. I kept telling them to hurry up and get dressed. Only then did I notice that the room was filled with marijuana smoke.
Later, the boys had spread through the house and tried to disguise that they were masturbating. The three that were in the bedroom with the girls sat on the couch watching a movie and rubbed their crotches; they were hardly subtle. One boy kept running from upstairs to downstairs as if he couldn’t keep himself from masturbating yet was ashamed to do it in my parents’ house.
The last teen was playing electric guitar. He was really good. But after a while I realized that he, too, was masturbating but hid it quite well with the strumming of his guitar.
Tina, Melissa and I got onto an amusement park ride. The ride was brand new and was a bright blue and lime green. Once we were strapped in, the operator (my old band conductor), asked me if I wanted to control the ride for its first spin.
Very excited about it, I got out and quickly went to the control panel. Pressing a large white rubber pad starts the ride. When I pressed the pad, nothing happened. I pressed it numerous times and yielded the same results. Tina and Melissa get off the ride and go to the bathroom while I work on getting it started. I press the white pad with both of my hands and most of my weight and the ride starts while Tina and Melissa are still gone.
Next to the white pad are a number of colored square controls that make the ride move in random ways. The ride is situated inside of a room with paneled walls.
I pushed on the red pedal; it made one part of the ride elevate. This part scrapes the wall of the room. The room is not large enough for everything this ride can do. I press the red pedal again to make the section go back down.
Themes: Melissa, Melissa, Pam & Tina
Tina, Melissa and I got onto an amusement park ride. The ride was brand new and was a bright blue and lime green. Once we were strapped in, the operator (my old band conductor), asked me if I wanted to control the ride for its first spin.
Very excited about it, I got out and quickly went to the control panel. Pressing a large white rubber pad starts the ride. When I pressed the pad, nothing happened. I pressed it numerous times and yielded the same results. Tina and Melissa get off the ride and go to the bathroom while I work on getting it started. I press the white pad with both of my hands and most of my weight and the ride starts while Tina and Melissa are still gone.
Next to the white pad are a number of colored square controls that make the ride move in random ways. The ride is situated inside of a room with paneled walls.
I pushed on the red pedal; it made one part of the ride elevate. This part scrapes the wall of the room. The room is not large enough for everything this ride can do. I press the red pedal again to make the section go back down.
Themes: Melissa, Melissa, Pam & Tina
Mom, Damon and I were looking for Melissa in homer: she was lost. We drove through town very slowly keeping our eyes alert. At the main intersection, there was a large stop sign floating above intersection. The sign was hand-drawn on an oversized piece of cardboard.
Mom drover her Yukon and Damon and I stood on the back bumper. The back seat of Mom’s car was secured sideways to the outside of the car with packing tape. We made a stop at bowling alley and Mom ran inside to see if Melissa was in there.
Damon and I re-taped the back seat to help secure it better but it’s dirty. While Mom drove farther east, going towards home, the seat fell off. The seat had wheels on one edge and it rolled down the street until it crashed into an oncoming car.
I am now in the parking lot of the high school with my classmates; my band conductor was yelling at us to pack up all band equipment that is spread out over the entire parking lot; we need to pack it into the yellow bus. I kept looking around, but Melissa was not there.
Themes: Melissa
I had woken up and stepped outside of my apartment; it was very cold. I was then in my parents’ dining room sitting at the table. A rotund man comes to door says name; I am amazed to have met someone by this name. I didn’t know they really existed. He asks for someone who is unavailable then stands by the door to wait for them to become available. He has a bag slung over his back.
Mom and I had lip sores and spilt lips from the cold weather. She tells me that it was minus 100 degrees when we were outside. No wonder we had split lips. We decide to stay inside.
I know that I am going to die tomorrow, and I tell my mom. She hugs me. Melissa and Rodney come around the corner and into the dining room. I wondered if everyone was going to cry and hug me as I left because of my death tomorrow. I wanted to be able to say goodbye and know that I am loved.
Melissa and Rodney hardly look at me and continue talking about their road trip tomorrow. They were going for a few hundred miles and stopping at a lake.
Themes: Melissa
I am watching a man sit at a table in a restaurant with his father, his girlfriend, and her friend. In the middle of an otherwise lively discussion, he reaches over to her and hits her quite hard with his fist on the side of her face. The father and friend nervously laugh the incident off and continue the discussion with the man.
I do not understand why no one will do anything or acknowledge it. Again he reaches across the table and strangles her. His face is red with anger. The father and friend watch as he slams her head into the table. Unable to help this woman, I get Melissa and ask her to watch my dog.
I climb into the back of a large van. An older man sitting in the back seat - I recognize him as a movie actor - pulls a blanket over me to help me hide. A large group of college-aged people get into the van and drive off.
I return to find my dog sitting obediently and at attention in the middle of the hallway with her leash at her feet; she is not tied to anything. I am very happy that the dog did not run away, but am disappointed that Melissa didn’t think to tie her up.
Themes: Melissa
A group of people and I step into the airport; we are all traveling somewhere together. I tell everyone that our gate is on seventh floor. One of the men in the group, probably in his 40s, decides to take charge. He and another guy in his 20s argue about whether to eat at Chilies or Chili Steakhouse before our flight leaves.
I am carrying a few pieces of luggage and three coats stacked on top of each other. The top coat is brown and has a fuzzy collar as if it were made of sheep wool. The wool is brown too. We decide on Chilies and sit down at a long table - the waitress had pushed a few of the smaller tables together.
Melissa is sitting at the very end of the table and I am on her right. I put my stuff in the chair on her left directly across from me and ask her to make sure my brown coat doesn’t get dirty. She picks it up and tosses it to the floor. When I ask why, she says she that was keeping it out of the way of the greasy food.
I leave dinner early because I don’t want to miss my flight. I take the stairs up all 7 flights and arrive at a dinky gate with one counter. The room looks very old and is covered in brown paneling. A middle-aged lady at the counter starts checking in my luggage when I turn around to look out the window
When I turn back to the counter, the lady has her computer turned towards the counter. Some screensavers are playing and she asks me about them. I tell her they are not mine, but it is like she is hypnotized by them.
Themes: Airplane/Airport, Melissa
Melissa was lying fully clothed in my parents’ pink bathtub with her head at the nozzle end while I stood at her feet looking at her face. I could tell she had been dead for some time because her skin was blotchy blues and greens. It was soon going to be time to bury her, but we had to wait for something before we could commence with the burial.
She had my hair on the top of her head instead of her own, and it had caught in the drain causing the water to back up. Her face was just under the water, but no other part of her body was wet. I reached over and pulled her (my) hair away from the drain so that the water could go down.
Worried about how long we would have to keep her in the tub before we could bury her body, I went and got a large saltshaker from the kitchen and sprinkled it all over her skin to keep it from rotting.
I yelled to Mom, who was sitting in the living room, and told her how Melissa’s head was under water. I told her that I had let the water down the drain and then coated her skin in salt. Mom told me to fill the tub back up because it was to help keep the body from rotting. I knew this wasn’t right, but I did it anyway, moving her hair back into the drain to keep the water in the tub.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her; I was so worried about the condition of the body. I didn’t know when we could bury her, but I hoped it would be soon—for her sake.
Themes: Melissa
We were going to go for a drive in Heidi’s new white truck. When we got outside, Heidi told us that the starter was broken and so we couldn’t drive it.
Damon and B opened the hood and poked around inside to try and fix it. I stood over their right shoulders watching and saw a shiny new part around the engine: it was a brand new starter. I looked down and saw footprints that belonged to Jake Wise - he was the one who had fixed it.
We are all standing on the passenger’s side and go to get into the truck when Melissa asked me to get in on the driver’s side and sit by her. She is 5 years old, and I know that I am 8. I run around the truck and get in the back seat with her.
The inside of the vehicle is now my mom’s old red suburban - the vehicle she had when we were all younger. I am sitting in the middle of the center seat with young Melissa on my left and adult B on my right. Damon is sitting in the front passenger’s seat, Heidi in the middle of the front, and John is driving. John is clutching the wheel so tightly that I can see his knuckles turning white.
I keep my head turned to my right and try very hard to pay attention to what everyone is talking about. The conversation is so dull and adult-like that I turn left to Melissa. We giggle and laugh and ignore everyone else.
John parks the suburban in the middle of a forest and we all climb out. Damon leads the way on an unclear path. We go up and down numerous mogul-like hills that increase in size. The last one we come upon is a rather large hill: giant for a mogul. I decide to take a safer, easier route around the side instead of straight up to the top.
On the other side, I grab hold of a cliff ledge and inch my way across the cliff to the other side. I can see John, Heidi, Damon, B, and Melissa standing in a small circle talking on top of the cliff. Almost to the other side of the ledge, I watch Melissa come over to the edge 15 feet away from where I was.
The ground gives way and Melissa slides down the hill, barely catching herself in time. She hangs there struggling for some time until she manages to pull herself back up. As she runs back to the others, I think that I ought to have tried to help her instead of hanging on the edge of the cliff like I did watching her struggle.
The scene then replays itself: Melissa comes to the edge of the cliff, the ground slides away, and she hangs precariously on the cliff edge. This time I go over to her and help push her up. Certain she is now safe, I resume my journey to the other side.
Themes: Melissa
I was running through a locker room trying to find a place to urinate. I passed rows and rows of toilets without stalls, opting for the row at the end of the aisle.
When I turned the corner into this last row, I saw a large number of teenage girls dressed up and dancing - they were performing a sacred ritual. Not wanting to interrupt, I backtracked a row and selected a toilet in the middle of one wall; stalls lined the opposite wall.
As I turned to sit down, one of the girls involved in the ritual appeared directly in front of me; she was dancing. Not being able to wait any longer and no longer caring about disrupting their ritual, I sat on the toilet.
I was wearing a light purple thong and instead of pulling it down to my knees, I pulled my legs up until they were sticking up into the air and then pulled the back of my thong away from my body.
Melissa was now sitting on my right and watching to make sure I didn’t get any urine on my thong. At that point, a small group of guys in their early twenties appeared in the aisle heading towards the ritual row. I was embarrassed to be in such a compromising position.
I was in Sam’s Club with Melissa walking down the aisle of checkout counters; we were hungry and decided to get some food from the little diner. We turned left to look at the diner at the back of the store: it was just closing for the night.
We were a little discouraged but were so hungry that we decided to settle for the small deli off to the side of the store. Through the glass on one side we could see that it offered rolled up pieces of sliced ham sitting in a pile, on the other side was a pile of sliced cheddar cheese.
We turned around and saw Dani and one other person eating an ice cream cone. I wondered where she got it.
While standing and talking with her, the view was as if there was a camera directly above us zooming out. The camera, as it were, could not pick up any sound of the conversation.
I was in my parents’ house. Hundreds of pictures of Melissa covered the counter in the kitchen. I started down the stairs to the basement and saw my entire family having a yelling match in the stairwell. I told dad to get over himself and quit being a jerk. All I wanted to do was go downstairs.
I was sitting on my couch and Melissa walked into the room from the hallway. She was holding a small tray of nail polish bottles. She sat down on my right. The tray was in front of me on the coffee table, but she also had it in on the back of the couch above my head.
She was looking through the colors, trying to find the one she wanted to show me. I saw in the tray on the table that there was a small bottle of Orangina, the drink. I picked it up and saw that it was half full.
I put it back and asked her what she had thought about it. She told me that she really didn’t like it all that much. Teasing, I said that she must really like it. She told me that she didn’t, and again I said that she loved it. More emphatically, she told me that she hates it.
I said, “So what you’re really trying to say is…” She hit me really hard on my bicep.
Themes: Melissa
I was at a large nightclub with Melissa and a group of girls. I saw my cousin Misti walking up a flight of stairs. She was wearing a skirt too short and I could easily see her underwear. Misti’s mom, Cris, came up to me with a cocktail in her hand. She told me that there was too much porn at the club.
Some people I hung out with in high school were standing by a long row of touch screen monitors. I joined them and saw that they were playing a geography game on the monitor where you draw and identify a country of the world on a virtual globe.
Marton Csokas (the villain in Triple X) took a turn at drawing, but did more than his turn by drawing in numerous European countries as well as the Sahara Desert.
I turn around and look behind me. All of a sudden I am in a pent house type suite and am looking out large picture windows at the Sahara Desert. The house is Marton Csokas’ home and is beautiful. The floors are marble and the area is very spacious and set up as one large room; it is only one floor tall.
Our group is swimming in the indoor pool. I am sitting on one edge of the pool naked and holding some sort of bar or long pipe over my stomach. Marton Csokas scoots up next to me and I am overwhelmingly aware of my white breasts and un-perky nipples.
Now evening, I hop out of the pool and take a walk past the outside pool while Marton Csokas follows me. In the distance, a tower stands on a small hill. At the top of the tower is a beacon light. The light stops blinking and a man steps from behind the tower. It is too far away to make out his identity. Fog rolls in, causing the tower and the man to disappear. The beacon light begins blinking again.
Back inside, I run and jump into the inside pool. I realize the other people in the pool are the servants, not my friends. I decide to ask them about Marton Csokas. They gush wonderful things about him and emphasize how good of a dancer he is. The lights in the main room come up and large group of people are swing dancing. Marton Csokas is dancing with someone and I am slightly jealous.
Themes: Melissa
I was in a small blue gray car with Dad and Melissa; someone else was driving. We were on our way to bring me to college. At the top of our driveway, we saw B’s family lounging in my grandparent’s lawn. We stopped and I got out to invite them along. His dad and two sisters agreed to come along.
Getting everyone in the car was quite a hassle: we had 7 people in a car that only has 5 seats. We decide that someone could fit behind the back seat; Melissa was volunteered, and we dropped her back there.
Jayme sat in the front passenger’s seat. In the back seat, left to right, was my father, me, Sarah, and Dick. Every time I sat back, Dad would poke or pinch me on the hip in such a way that it tickled and hurt at the same time. This made me scoot my hips away from him and the back of the seat while my shoulders stayed put.
I snapped at him to stop it, but he wouldn’t. Every time I scooted forward, I made the already scrunched back seat more uncomfortable for everyone. I became livid at him and no longer wanted to sit next to him. I did not feel safe.
Melissa and I were in a large room filled with people - we were probably in our mid-teens. Our entire extended family was also there, but we made a point to avoid them as much as possible. Our dad cornered us and told us to sit at a table way up front. We wanted to sit with our friends at a back table off to the side, but he demanded we sit with the family.
Once sitting at the proper table, my grandpa stood up and talked a long time about all of his and grandmas many travels. He was glad everyone could come to their anniversary party.
At this moment he began the slideshow. The screen was huge as we were sitting in the very front. All of the slides were pictures of rocks, hills, caves, and rocks. He described in detail every slide - this rock is named this and that rock is blah blah blah. Melissa and I looked at each other and groaned. We slouched very low in our chairs. The slideshow lasted over three hours, and we had to sit way up front paying attention the entire time.
Themes: Melissa
Melissa and I were walking away from someone with whom we just had a conversation. This person asked to see my frog tattoo because it was peeking from under my tank top.
I lifted up my black tank and showed this person my tattoo. I glanced at Melissa’s back and didn’t see any tattoo. I was a little worried that I was covering part of the frog, so I pulled at the fabric, rearranged it, tried to look at my back, and kept asking the person if they could see it. The person didn’t answer, and Melissa looked on.
For a few minutes after waking it didn’t dawn on me that Melissa is the one with the tattoo on her lower back; mine is on my shoulder.
Themes: Melissa
Melissa and I are in my parents’ back yard behind the shop at night. We are looking for a hidden entrance to something. Poking near a barrel, a small explosion happens to scare us off. Back at the house, we get a prophetic message that the entrance is under the barrel.
We return to the rear of the shop and pull the barrel back - its quite heavy. Behind it is a hole in the ground with presents and old toys mixed in the dirt inside the hole. The hole is only three feet deep, but it connects to a small tunnel below. She hops down in, hunches over, and disappears left into the tunnel. Just as I worry about her, she reappears.
We turn to go to the house and see an old abandoned car sitting about 20 feet away - it hadn’t been there before. We run to the house and return to the secret entrance with more people: Rodney, Jen, B, and one other girl.
B and the other girl spot the abandoned car and she goes over to inspect it. She returns to the group and says that the car has a deep fat fryer in it and therefore is no harm to us. Rodney, Jen and Melissa hop into the hole; Melissa asks if I’m coming. I really don’t want to and say no. B sits in his car a few feet away, the other girl stands beside me.
Even though I don’t want her to, Melissa has to go into this hole and stop whatever evil is brewing down there. She doesn’t have any other choice, but she accepts it.
At first the hole looks so small that they have to shimmy on their belly. She tells Rodney and Jen that in a few feet they’ll be able to stand up; they disappear into the hole and head left.
Wanting to watch them go, and wanting to see what the tunnel looks like, I climb into the hole completely intending to not go any farther. Dropping into the hole, I make a sound that Melissa hears; she turns around and asks if I’m coming after all. I look at her and see they have entered a well-lighted, tan colored carpeted tunnel, and they are able to stand comfortably. She walks towards me and I see some blue stripes in her ha