Uninvited guests

I am passed out drunk on the couch and I hear my dad's voice and realize that he has somehow gotten into my apartment despite having no key. He comes into the living room, followed by my mom and my brother — the 12-year-old version of my brother, that is — and they are looking around at the mess and I give them hugs and try to wake and sober up and am just stricken with embarrassment and guilt that they've caught me in a severely mortifying moment.

apocolyptica

is it any wonder that i believe my fate lies in the gnashing teeth of the risen dead?

we were in a compound along with three other families that we didn't know. we had built up walls and fences around what looked like a small suburban neighborhood. my mother rushes in to our house and starts sobbing and thrusting family heirlooms into my hands while saying 'don't forget any of them. put them in your bags and keep them safe'. and i do, even though i think she's being irrational and impractical. i don't know why, but i know that we have to leave soon.

we are all waiting in the boat house for everyone to be prepared to leave. i'm bored and cold. there's a tv playing staticky re-runs of a 1970's sitcom and some of the guys are playing cards.

suddenly, there are zombies filtering through the barricades we'd set up. they fan out over the compound grounds and some find their way to the boat house. i can hear gun shots and banging as the zombies break down the large sliding door. they are slow, but not rotted. they are very strong. there are more of them than us and two men fight off a cluster at the entrance. i'm up on a large fishing boat and i start to panic. then it happens, not in slow motion, but more deliberately than i would have thought. i don't have anything to fight with, so i'm pushing the zombie's head into the gear shift of the boat and trying to shake its grip. i think to myself that once i've killed this one, i'll be fearless and able to kill anything. i'm the last one wrestling with my foe and they are gathered around me, encouraging me but also waiting to jump in if it takes a turn for the worse.

it is at the moment that i succeed in pushing my fist through its forehead that i realize i'm also the only girl left alive in the boat house and my first thought when i wake up is of my mother's heirlooms.

I got worms

I wake up, either from an afternoon nap gone awry or way too early in the morning. On my way to the bathroom, I encounter my male roommate in the hallway. He's wearing boxers and a t-shirt, which does nothing for my inability to gage the time of day because he's so damn peppy and in my face. (I've never met this person in real life, which is a symptom of dreaming I always find creepy. Who are these people?)

"What's up with your face?" he says.

I go to a mirror and find that each and every one of the pores in my face is oozing a wiggly, threadlike worm. I sit still to make sure they're moving and not some overnight curse of oncoming middle age. Sure enough, they're moving the way worms and Stevie Wonder do. I turn back to my roommate, who has moved on to something else in our happy homestead but is still available for shouting at from another room.

"It's cool," I say. "They wash right off."

I get in the shower and, sure enough, they do.

Closeted

My friend Jay is sitting in a closet. I come up to him and begin kissing him. I notice that my mouth is dry. He kisses back and we make out pretty passionately for a while, hands going everywhere. He pulls back and looks me in the eye, smiling intensely. He does not leave the closet, though.

A Steven Spielberg production

Last night, I had an alien dream. It wasn't just aliens running all over the place either. It was like a movie was playing out the way areas came into focus.

I was at a lakeside house along with some blond guy and a bunch of friends. I guess he was romantically linked to me although we didn't act that way. Everyone else called on me with issues related to the guy.

It was some sort of typical college-kid party where people carried red Solo cups and "rebellious" music played in the background.

Something was wrong with the blond guy's dog. He and I were in a room where the dog's leash was attached to the wall. The leash ran down the length of the room on the floor, out some sliding glass doors and down a floor to the sandy beach below. The dog had plenty of lead to run and play on the beach, but it was laying down close to the house when I looked.

As the guy told me how the dog approached some creature he'd never seen before, the leash rose off the floor as though charged with an electric current. Lights began dancing outside like something from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the camera view shifted from the second floor where we were to pan down behind the dog. The lights out on the lake danced behind some trees as the dog barked furiously.

The dog had enormous ears like no domesticated species and a horribly short, wrinkly face. It raced toward the trees where the light emanated and pulled the leash taut.

The scene shifted back to the second floor where I was with the blond guy. His eyes had become red and alternately flashing like a child's toy. I was sitting on the floor as the blond guy crossed the room, his eyes flashing, saying, "I told the dog not to go over there. Stupid dog. I don't want to lose it, though."

All at once, the dog stopped barking, the lights stopped flashing and the blond kid dropped to the floor. His eyes had returned to normal colors and he could not breathe. He laid clawing the carpet and at his chest trying to take a breath.

I called for help and knelt over him as he grew more frightened. "Breathe!" I bellowed. He took one gasp. "OK, you can do this. Come on!" I encouraged. "One, two, three, BREATHE!" and he took another gasp as other people entered the room curious as to what was happening.