death kinda smells like roast beef

Some kid and his friends came into our house while we had some people over and kidnapped someone. He pulled out his gun and forced this girl we knew to go home with him. After they were gone, the party continued without comment so I got pissed and stormed out, yelling "I'm gonna go get her back!" Brice ran out after me telling me it's a bad idea: "Don't worry about her, she'll be okay." and I was like "Yeah right!" and Brice got really pissed and sighed really sharply and gave me that look he always gives me that says "You are being so irrational but I'm not going to argue because unlike you, I pick my battles wisely." Then he rolled his eyes and got in the car, telling me he wouldn't let me go alone. "Lissa, are you nuts, those guys have guns! We don't have anything!" I said, "So?! We have to do something!"

At the guy's house, his mother opened the door for us, pointing a gun at us. "Oh, you've come to be heroes, have you? Get in here!" When we were inside she lowered her gun and cackled like a witch and flipped her arm towards the basement door. "He's down in his room." She took a swig of whiskey out of a glass bottle. She was clearly wasted.

We ran downstairs to see the boy hanging from the rafter on his ceiling--like he was trying to hide or do pull-ups or something. Brice had gotten the drunk woman's gun somehow and was now pointing it at the boy. "Where is she?" The kid starting laughing and mad-rushed Brice quickly, somehow getting the gun out of his hand and pointing it at us in the same movement. He was schizophrenic, talking about crazy shit and muttering things. He reminded me of Kenny, this crazy guy from my high school. He had a sinister smile. "Let's go," he told us. His mom helped him tie our hands behind our backs and get us into a big brown station wagon. Then they took us to his friend's house. There was some sort of party going on there. It reminded me of a typical Midwestern wedding reception.

The kid left us at a table with food on it and went to another room, probably to do some drugs. He wasn't a very cautious captor. I saw Nikki, a good friend from high school, at the next table over. I hadn't seen her in five or more years. She smiled really big and came over to my table and we hugged. "What are you doing here?" she asked me. "This guy has taken us hostage," I told her. She rolled her eyes: "Yeah, he has me too." She said it the same annoyed sympathetic way she might've said, "Yeah, I'm on my period too." I was like, "What?! We have to get out of here, Nikki! He's not watching us, let's go." Nikki said, "Yeah, let's get out of here." Then she looked at me solemnly and said, "He's only fifteen, you know?"

I started laughing so hard. We'd been kidnapped by a child. It was too ridiculous. I woke up.

murderer!

I had a dream that I KILLED SOMEONE!! And it was my friend Aurora! We were on the beach. I don't remember how or why, I just know there was blood everywhere. Then I watched the burial of some undetermined person I saw get murdered, without feeling any remorse. The family was in tears and trying to figure out who did this to their son/brother. And I knew and I didn't tell them and I didn't even care.

player piano

I lived in an apartment that was in a suburban office building. What a weird place to live. I was in the kitchen of the apartment and Neko was there too, batting something around on the floor. I had a piano in the front room of the apartment and it started playing on its own.

I was home alone, just standing in the kitchen, cutting up vegetables, the whole house silent, and all of a sudden the air is blasted with some upbeat jazz-type song. I jump and scream, drop the knife and start shaking, petrified. Scared to go into the other room and see who's in there. I put both of my hands on the counter and take some deep breaths. I call out. No answer, the music keeps playing. I pick up Neko and hold her tight, because I'm horrified and she's the only other living thing in the room and I don't want to be alone. But she doesn't understand my fear and mrows and struggles to get out of my arms because she hates being picked up. After several minutes of deliberation and trembling, I throw open the door and rush into the room. No one there. The piano is playing by itself. The white keys are slammed down by invisible fingers and some crazy ragtime-sounding thing pours out. I scream and run out of the front door without looking back.

The first person I run into is a nicely dressed man in a suit, who must work at one in one of the offices in my building. I grab his shoulders and whimper and tell him what happened. He stands there awkwardly and pats my head, offering to come up to apartment with me. He tells me I probably have an old player piano and I just didn't know it. And I keep crying and screaming at him that it's my piano and I would know something like that. When we walk into my apartment, all is silent again. I'm so confused. The man looks at me like I'm crazy and tells me he has to get back to work. I leave when he does. I know the piano is trying to make a liar out of me and I don't want to be alone with it or whatever is in the room playing it.

ATF bust!

I was living at my dad's old house in my old room and I'm laying on my bed reading something when my older brother Kenny throws the door open abruptly and enters with two guys. He says "Hey Liss, we need to find something we hid in here" and they start pulling up the mattress on my bed and beating on it with a hammer. They go around the room frantically opening drawers and digging things out of my closet, saying "Come on, we have to go! Move!" I just sit there in shock wondering what the hell my brother is up to, getting angrier with him with each object of mine they destroy. Then all of a sudden the window blinds raise up by themselves and I'm staring at the huge square window that's in the front room of the house I live in now. It's six feet tall and probably six feet wide, and there's a stained glass panel on the top of it...it's a hundred year old house. And I sit there in confusion, wondering how I got to that room so fast. Then I see armed, uniformed men with suction cups on their shoes crawling on the window. They look like FBI. They have a loud speaker and tell us to freeze, that the house is surrounded. Kenny and his friends start to panic and scream "FUCK! SHIT!" Then the agents break the window and leap into my room, quickly handcuffing my brother and his friends and pulling massive bags of cocaine out of my mattress. They tell them they are under arrest and walk them out of the room. As they leave I ask "I can stay here right?" and the last officer out says "Yeah, you're cool."

no, not mah monies!!

This dream happened right before I woke up, which made it seem very real. I was looking at my bank statement and saw that I was overdrawn by $900. Then I saw that I had bought two round-trip plane tickets to Mexico--one to get there and come back to visit, then another to go back. It all cost $1700, twice as much as I had in the account. I couldn't remember when I had bought these and started freaking out because I was positive I didn't buy them. I felt like someone was messing with me and I was now completely broke. I pulled my hair and screamed.

dang tards.

In the last dream I remember, I had somehow gotten a job teaching special needs children. They all had a learning disability of some sort; some had down's syndrome, others schizophrenia, autism, and other assorted mental maladies. Brice asked me how my job was going one day and I told him I hated it and I hated working with retards. I felt so aggravated and annoyed by the pleas and requests and needs of the retarded kids I was there to serve. I couldn't understand why I even had this job except for the fact that it paid $30,000 a year and that was enough for me. I kept using the word "retard" over and over. Then I started using it at school, in the presence of my students. The principal called me into her office and scolded me: "You just can't say "tard" or use the word "retarded" in even a vaguely insulting manner!"

The principal hired a teaching assistant to help me manage the class and she herself was retarded. She was able to help the students though. She too scolded me about my derogatory remarks towards the people I was supposed to be helping. The last I remember is her look of disgust and frustration with me--she intimidated me with her scowl and her dull-colored fish eyes.

lost in mexico

I was on vacation in Mexico with Brice and his family and I somehow got separated from the group and couldn't find my way back to the hotel. After a few hours of looking for the hotel and asking anyone I could find who spoke English where it was, I was panicky and in tears. A Mexican couple saw me crying and invited me back to their house for dinner and said I could try to work things out there. I tried calling Brice, his mom, and his sister from the peoples' phone but there was no service to their cell phones. I was frustrated and sad and knew deep down that I would never find them again and they couldn't find me either and they were just going to leave the country without me.

The Mexicans were having a birthday party for one of their sons, so there was drinking, dancing, and laughter all around me, but I couldn't enjoy it I was so scared and trapped. The next morning the woman gave me a sack lunch and told me to go to the embassy. Before I left she grabbed my shoulders, gave me a very serious look, and gave me a warning: "Don't speak Spanish. Your Spanish is too bad; they'll find you."

updatin' and hatin'

All I remember from a dream a few nights ago is my supervisor from work saying, "it's okay, I smoke weed too."

Last night's was another one from a slasher movie. I was with Brice and two co-workers of mine at this old house in the country that resembled my dad's old house very much. We were walking around exploring the house and goofing off. One of the coworkers went out one of the windows on the second floor onto the roof and there was a bunch of barbed wire on the roof and he was fenced in and trapped in some way I cannot now explain. The three of us were in the yard looking up at him and he was laughing at first, then seriously trying to get down and we all realized he was trapped. Then I saw a man with his hands bound behind his back--he looked like he was sleeping. There was an apple on the roof a foot or so from his mouth. It was creepy.

We started panicking. One of the coworkers said, "Oh no!" and grabbed a huge tree trunk from somewhere. He threw it up on the roof and somehow broke through the barbed wire. "Come down!" He yelled at the other guy. The guy jumped down into the yard and at the very same instant the sleeping man's eyes flipped open and he started squirming out of his bondage towards us.

I realized at that instant that he was trying to kill us and now he was awake. "Shit! RUN! That guy is alive!!" I screamed, and we all ran to the car. The guy was really close on our tails, but we all made it to the car, panting and shaking. The psycho was throwing rocks at the car and running really fast, keeping up with us even though we had to be driving around 70 m.p.h. We got away.

Later on in the dream I was back at the house, getting a box of my things I just had to have (the house was somehow now my dad's old house...the logic of dreams, you know). I saw the box of my prized possessions that were apparently worth risking my life for. I felt brave even though I knew there was a serial killer in the house somewhere. I was being quiet and careful so he couldn't hear me. Then as I was leaving, I was aware I was making enough noise that he could hear me, and I heard him stirring in the room on the second floor. I ran out of the house as fast as I could with the box. There was some sort of complication that prevented me from getting into the car so I had to run down the street with the box in my hands. There was music playing as I left the house (all I can recall is a slow, steady drum beat). It got louder and all of a sudden caught up to me when I was halfway down the street and realized he was right behind me. I ran around someone's house into their backyard (this was in my old neighborhood in high school and lake lorraine was right there past every backyard). Opened their back door under their deck. It was dark and I was terrified it would be locked and thinking 'who the hell wouldn't lock their door?!' but it was unlocked and I ran up the stairs and locked the door to the basement. I heard the psycho go "hmmph."

It was exactly like a horror movie---the killer was determined, hellbent on catching me and stabbing the shit out of me. It was almost comical, his face pale, blank, stoic, yet dogged, set on one mission.

I was terrified. I woke up terrified, and it was dark outside.

jawsome

Last night's dream:

Conor Oberst was in my kitchen singing me songs!

I had somehow met Conor Oberst a while back. And I was bitching about my life as usual and he was frustrated about my whining and sat in my kitchen and belted out a song about how it made him feel. He was strumming and wailing and I forget the words but it was something like "She's always sad about it but you know she's just acting blah blah blah."

Fuckin' sweet.

whiskey cat

Last night's dream was a scrambled blur and I only remember parts of it.

In one part, I was at some sort of party with adults older than me whom I did not know. We were standing around in a room eating all kinds of good food and talking about how horrible it was that some girl had just died. The conversation was grim, but there was so much good food. I remember the texture of the chocolate pie I ate. I remember the fancy tapas. At one point I picked up a "fruit burrito" and thought it was very odd that a whole unpeeled orange was just sitting in a tortilla. I thought it was kinda trashy and lazy and against the general fanciness of the rest of the food. But I took it anyway, and walked into a room where my ex, his last girlfriend and some mutual friends of ours were sitting and talking. I said, "Hey guys, look--a fruit burrito!" and then the orange fell onto the floor and they started laughing at me and saying that I was pregnant with fruit and that I pooped fruit.

In the next part of the dream I was yelling at Brice for not fixing the water yet in our new kitchen. I was mad that he was just playing games and I couldn't get around to it because I was always at work and he could. We had a different house and we hadn't moved into the kitchen yet. There were two kitchens, but this one wasn't connected to the house--just a building outside like a detached garage.

The last thing I remember about the dream: a bunch of people and myself were sitting around in the kitchen/garage and laughing at my cat Neko because she was pawing things and knocking things over. It was so cute the delicate way that she touched things with her paws. Then she slowly poured some vodka into a shot glass. Yeah, my cat poured a shot. Then she knocked the shot glass over and the vodka spilled onto the floor and she beat the glass around with her paws. We were laughing wildly--in hysterics that the cat poured a shot just to knock over the glass and chase it.