Why do we have bad dreams? I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream and woke up thinking I wish I could stay in the dream forever. They’re always bad or strange— like last night I had a dream where I was with my family and we had to get on a train and we needed to show a lightly steamed stalk of asparagus to get on. Where does that come from? Why aren’t dreams good— visions of Nirvana or Elysian Fields? This one, you would think I spent all day playing violent video games and doing drugs. I also find it strange how we know things in dreams, like at the end of this dream, I’m in my house, I know I’m in my house, and yet it does not look like any house I have ever lived in or even been in.
I’m in a hotel room. It must be the seventies since everything is avocado and gold. Shag rug. My abusive husband is not in the room. A prostitute comes in. She is also from the seventies with thigh-high gold boots, short curly hair, big ombre sunglasses, chewing gum; she doesn’t say anything to me and I don’t say anything to her because I have decided to escape. I take some things and leave. Now I am in like a community room. I’m sitting at the head table, which is one of those formica folding tables, with some people on both sides of me. People are sitting in front of me in folding chairs. It seems like this is some sort of community presentation at a police department about protecting yourself from abusers? I’m talking about how I learned to use guns. I sense that my abusive husband is near. I don’t actually see him, I just ‘know’ he’s there.
I’m leaving in a car with other people. I see him in a sumo suit with a gun hiding behind a mailbox. He starts shooting at me. I shoot back with my machine gun. My aim is really sloppy but i hit him and he falls to the ground. I know he’s only dead not really dead like in the movies.
I am on the stairs in my house. White walls on both sides, a cheap railing, horrible ugly carpeting and he’s coming up the steps with his gun. He’s really crawling up the steps because I had shot him and he’s almost killed. He has his gun, I take it from him; I start shooting him but only gushes of muddy water come out.
The end.