[Afternoon nap.]

Someone was driving when I noticed he was about to hit the stop sign at the edge of the grass. It fell over, so I got out to restore it while explaining to the driver why I hadn’t been able to make my mouth work to warn him. The bottom of the sign seemed to fit in a stand I found in the grass, and I set both on the corner. As I did, I noticed that the stand would fit perfectly into a compartment on a hitch on the back of a parked car, so I set both the stand and sign there instead. Something didn’t seem right, and I realized that when the car drove off the stand and sign would go with it. That didn’t make sense.

Somehow I was lured out of my apartment, which was taken over by sinister-looking boys. Through the windows they threatened me with lollipops, then threw them at me when I seemed determined to get in. I threw them back, wondering if they were poisonous or explosive.

I was terrified of them.

While I was walking behind a cow, a hand reached out from under its tail and grabbed mine. At first I thought little of this, but it held mine more and more firmly as the cow tried to lead me somewhere, I knew not where.

This happened several times with other animals, including a donkey. Each succeeding hand held mine more tightly, making each harder and harder to get away from. The animals, if that’s what they were, and the hands were trying to lead me somewhere bad for me. I never found out where, although I was very curious.

With someone I was watching similar farm animals and camels burst into racing speed for a short distance, then stop. We analyzed their movements, which were coordinated and graceful and contributed to the surprising speed they attained. We learned it was due to the influence of alcohol.

I woke up afraid, especially of the hands.

In a recurring dream scene, I returned to college to find that the campus and the neighborhood were utterly unfamiliar. The dormitories had become Borgian labyrinths, modern and strange, yet dark and cluttered. Outdoors I expected to find the usual bland streets and city lights, but, as I usually find, there was a magnificent oceanscape and natural area, just a few blocks away. As always, I wondered why I hadn’t spent time there back then, although I hadn’t known it existed and wasn’t sure it actually had. I mourned the lost opportunity.

Some friends and I went to a restaurant in a crowded block of storefronts that looked more like San Francisco than Hyde Park. Someone drove me and others home in a yellow convertible roadster. When she parked in a narrow alley, I could feel the car inching forward after she had gotten out, refusing to stay put. She noticed it, too. I called for help, but the others had left. She and I managed to stop it, and she drove it forward onto what looked like a hilly country road in Pennsylvania, around the bend. In the twilight, the car suddenly looked pink.

The car’s refusal to behave, the changing landscapes, and the altered color combined to frighten me. I felt like I must be in a virtual funhouse, happy one moment, terrified the next.

A well-dressed man held a group hostage in an elegant dining room at a mansion. They may not have known it, but I could tell he was a vampire. If they didn’t comply with his wishes, which were unknown to me, he would perform unspeakably gruesome acts.

He pointed to what looked like an ordinary coffee mug and handed a girl a twig, almost like cinnamon bark. She, under his control, dropped the twig, a drug or poison, into the cup, although part of me wondered how he would force the people to drink it. I knew him to be evil, though, and in my mind I saw all of them tortured and dying if they drank what was in the cup.

I don’t know if I was the girl, or if I was an opposing power who controlled her, but she tipped the cup so its toxic contents slowly and quietly spilled out. The vampire seemed unaware, and I felt certain she would not be caught or punished.

With the cup, the balance of power seemed to have tipped in my favor.

I was at a party given by my parents, but the trailer was nothing like it used to be. The rooms were dark and different, as though they had been rebuilt within a different shell. The main room now sported an impossible cathedral ceiling that made it feel oppressive instead of open and airy. My closet, although full of scattered boxes, was much bigger than my bedroom and was covered with black paper. Despite its crammed space, it had become the focal point of the party.

I saw my dad from behind, staggering as though he were drunk. As he never drank, I suspected he was gravely ill and tried to catch up to him to help him, but he somehow kept eluding me like an illusion.

Something was terribly wrong with my world, and I was frightened.

I remember a few elements from my dream this morning, which, I think, took place at a school.

I was with some girls at the edge of an enormous indoor pool in which marine mammals swam. One or two of the girls, my friends, jumped into the water, which was strictly forbidden. Guiltily, I ran away, not wanting to be associated with such behavior and not wanting to be caught (in the sense that I didn’t stop or report them). I worried about this, and about the mammals catching diseases. I worried less about the girls being hurt.

I went into breakfast. The boy or man at the end of my bench started to shake voluminous amounts of salt onto the head of the girl next to me and then mine, so much so that I had inches of salt on my head. Yet I did nothing because I didn’t know what to do. It was something I couldn’t or shouldn’t stop because it seemed to have some meaning.

Outdoors, a series of tiny but menacing airplanes came toward us. I didn’t know what to do as I didn’t understand their intention. Vaguely afraid, I caught a few of them in my hands and turned them around. More planes came, and I did the same. I am not sure what happened to the ones I didn’t catch, although I think they continued on Then, thinking that that battle was over, I looked up and saw enormous tanks coming straight for me, rather than for the group. I could do nothing about them as they weren’t robotic miniatures but the real thing. I mentally prepared to die.

Instead, I was kidnapped. The kidnapper was a man who seemed smooth, charming, and ambiguous — I could not tell whether he was evil or not. He talked to me a great deal. I didn’t know his intentions.