I'm at my Grandma Dorothy's house with a bunch of people I can't quite identify, and I'm negotiating to eat as little as I can because everything is a brownie or pie or something and I've already had a huge dinner.
I settle for this sandwich with a layer of pancake-style bread on both sides and in the middle. I'm kind of dismantling it to eat whatever filling with just one side of the bread.
Then without transition, my mama is dropping me off at the house of K, a high school friend I haven't seen since the summer after graduation. Another high school friend, M, who I saw last summer, is there, too.
I'm inside the house, putting on a sort of Old South ballgown with half hose, and we're running late for I don't know what. So, I'm rushing with them to the front door only to find that the stairs down to the McMansion-ish foyer are short shag carpeted, super steep, and just barely wide enough for a sideways foot.
I get about halfway down--I'm in the middle; K is in front of my and M in back--when I realize I can't make it because the hose are too slippery on the carpet and I forgot my cowboy boots, which are back in K's room. I ask M if she'll get them for me (she's closer to the top) but she says no.
So, I go back up myself to put them on, but then when I leave the room, the dimensions of the second floor have changed. I end up running around, asking directions from a faceless someone who's there for no apparent reason and eventually find and carefully descend the stairs, holding tightly to the rail.
By the time I get the front door open, M and K are gone. I seem to remember walking there, to the house, even though I was dropped off, so I start running, looking for a second group of outdoor stairs, which will theoretically lead me out of the Pleasantville-meets-Stepford suburban neighborhood.
Everyone I pass is vaguely surreal and doesn't seem to know what I mean by "out."
I find a young girl, who invites me into her home and asks her father who is sleeping on a hammock on the back porch. He tells me to run down the street, as far as my legs will carry me, to the first right and then to turn right again.
I start following his directions, but I feel uneasy, because it hadn't seemed so far on the way in.
I stop into a shop to ask a young clerk for directions again, and he looks at me suspiciously and says, "You're not from here are you?"
And something about the way he asks it scares me, makes me feel like a Frankenstein-esque mob will gather, torches and pitchforks, so I start running again, still in the ballgown and cowboy boots, like some heroine out of a Margaret Peterson Haddix book, uncertain as to whether I'm going the right way. Then I wake up.
Dream analysis, anyone?
Spooky News and Links
Inspired by yesterday's spookcyn post, S wrote asking what a "former Hallmarker" is. It is someone who used to work for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, usually applied more to those who've worked in the corporate offices than in the stores (like my aunt Gail).
Building on yesterday's news about the L.A. Times review and signing for A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire by Amy Butler Greenfield (HarperCollins, 2005), surf over to hear "Seeing Red," an interview with Amy about the book on "The Exchange" from New Hampshire public radio. Available on Real Audio or Windows Media.
