2:25am
The lights had been out for quite some
time, but I simply couldn't force myself fall asleep. My hair, still
wet from my shower, was dampening my pillow and causing a consistent
chill. My eyes pressed shut, I tried to imagine him here with me...
...when suddenly I found myself in a
kitchen, intended to be my parents kitchen, but not my parents
kitchen. We were celebrating, I'm not sure what, maybe the fact that
I was home. There was lots of hugging, and extended family were
present. And there were men wearing wife beaters, looking like they
had just finished working on some part of the house.
One of them was an old high school
crush, who reached out and pulled my mom into a big bear hug. I
blushed as if I was in 11th grade all over again and with
my eyes down, pretending to be nonchalant, I prepared my arms for his
hug as well, only to be pulled into the grasp of a scruffy, dirty
blonde. Not that his hair was dirty blonde in color, just that he was
dirty and blonde.
And in this odd dream coma, everyone
was much, much taller than me.
There was an elderly aunt in the
kitchen, but it was blurry, and I couldn't make out her features to
know which aunt it was, so I squinted, only to find her features
becoming more melty with a terrifying Voldemort look about her nose
(or lack there of.) I stared only because I was so horrified I could
look away. She pulled me into a hug and then held onto both my hands
as I pulled away, curious for another glimpse at her face.
And this elderly,
Voldemort-impersonating aunt, also a giant to my small frame, closed
her eyes and tilted her head from side to side, as if praying, I
thought. Until her head began to jerk from side to side violently,
and I thought she was possessed, and I wondered what voice would come
out of her when she finally did speak, and what the voice would say.
I unsuccessfully tried to yank my hands away and move toward the
dining room where everyone else was gathering for dinner, but she
pulled as well, and soon we were swirling, and spinning and swelling
around the kitchen and through the dining room and into a wide, open
universe, with limitless stars scattered across a black sky.
I gave myself over to the sensation of
flying through the air, weightless, spinning, but not to the point of
dizziness, so much so that I let it continue for longer than I would
have expected.
We spun around and soon we were
floating in a dance hall, with an open roof, and other people
floating and swirling, and there were lasers, but not the cool
rhythmic kind you'd see in a club, more like, one or two, that gave a
pink and green hue to the whole room.
And that part of me that was still me
somewhere in the recesses of my mind, still awake, still in control,
began to say, This is fun, but if this is something demon-y, I
belong to Jesus.
Just FYI.
...yep,
I totally said it...
And then I was driving. Apparently, I
was a camera man/photographer for a local news station. I was
traveling with a reporter down our small town streets. A man dressed
as the local team's mascot (a chicken) was beaten and battered and
bloody signifying yet another loss by his team, and he kept jumping
in front of our car, feigning being run over. He was cute, so I
slowed down and played along, then rolled down the window and said,
So if I park the car, will you lay under it like I ran you over?
Sure, he agreed with a bigger
smile than I thought possible.
I dropped off the reporter and parked
the car on a side street, then ran barefoot back toward them with my
camera. I could hear momentary screams escaping the building entrance
where they stood, a building that seemed to be a museum or sanctuary
of some sort for all sorts of exotic spiders and tarantulas. I, of
course, freaked out and ran back toward my car.
Crash!
Oh shit! A man's voice rang out
down the street.
I knew I should,
but I just couldn't look away, mostly because I couldn't figure out
what was going on, and I was so curious. There stood a giant turkey
with several black squiggly, worm-like things hanging from it's
mouth, and two men standing back from the scene, laughing callously,
perhaps a bit fearfully. I was mesmerized by the whole thing, and
kept walking closer and closer, only to realize that the crash had
been a cage, which was shattered on the street and the squiggly worms
were actually the legs of a tarantula. Thankfully, the turkey was
winning.
It was hunting the turkey and the
turkey just grabbed it! one man
exclaimed.
At least there
was only one, I thought to myself.
Then,
a huge clump of dry dirt lunged passed the turkey and onto some
grass. My eyes, wide with terror, couldn't look away as the
dirt cracked apart to reveal a spider, a jumping spider, that in one
bound had leapt it's way across the parking lot.
Frozen with fear, I watched in slow
motion as he lowered his body toward the ground and launched himself
off the pavement, his eight legs spread eagle, gliding, soaring
straight for my face.
...and that's when I woke up...or,
rather, that's when I ripped myself back into reality...
Shudder. I'm not sure I'll be sleeping
tonight.
What was in that spray tan?!
Never again...never, ever again...
