Slasher Movie; Parking Lot

2/20/10

A horror movie. It was complicated. I couldn't tell if I was making it or watching it or in it from minute to minute. Never sure if a scene we'd made over and over was real.

At a college. We're supposed to be cleaning up the grounds. I think my best friend Alexis is the killer. She took a shovel and used it to kill her girlfriend. Is she already lying in a grave, or just on the ground? I try to turn away but watch as she hits three times. I know that's the number it's supposed to be. One in the forehead, one in the chest, one in the neck. It leaves holes like a hole punch. Her girlfriend is the librarian, a plump woman with black curly hair, who's a stranger to me. Then Alexis went back with the shovel. Then she went back to the girlfriend. Hard to tell if Alexis is the killer or the victim now. She and the girlfriend hold each other, crying as one of them dies, and I'm hoping no one will give away who the killer is. Maybe it's me?

There are boys too, and they're all my lovers. I can't tell if they're villains or trying to be protected by me. David and Gabe are there.

One time I was the killer and trying to throw people off. I decided to take a bath in the large, luxurious bathroom. The water was only tepid. I had trouble getting the orange soap to lather on the sponge. I rose up out of the water suddenly panicked, and called for help. Part of me knew it was still a trick. But when the door started to open I was frightened. It was David. I went to him and told him my best friend was dead. He said he didn't care and was excited about his costume. He was going to dress up like a shark in a Gary Larson cartoon. I said yeah, the wife shark is very content in that cartoon. She knows she's associated with power.

At a movie screening with Myla. After, it wasn't clear if the horror movie director was there. I got onto a small raft and went down an idyllic river. To amuse a little boy on the bank, I picked up a fat goose floating on the water with my feet.

The climax of the movie. We thought everything was over. Tim and I embrace and then go down, towards the subway or a farm cellar. We have to do the scene over and over, and I realize the point is to have a series of turnstiles/red grilled doors close between us, separating us or trapping him. Even knowing this is the point, I follow along. Finally we're trapped. Tim has turned into the young accordian guy. The killer comes out. She has a knife or sliver of glass. I beg to let him go because she's my friend and I know her problem is with me. She says she will but first she has to cut him. She tells him to hold very still and he does. She slides the blade just a little into his eye. He blinks but doesn't flinch and he doesn't lose the eye. She cuts crescent shaped gouges into his cheek.

The killer is finally caught. She and I weep and promise to be cell mates. We don't have enough female friends.

I go out feeling good but drained. I'm in a parking lot. A truck pulls into an intersection. Everything is moving very slowly. Men stand up in the truck bed and pull out long spindly guns. They start shooting people. I slowly turn around and start heading back to the building. I realize I'm not going to make it so I crouch between two cars. I see my friends too and I make them lie down and push their heads down with my hand. I think, I'm part of somehting huge and no one will have to go to work tomorrow. One of the men with a beard sees me and aims his gun at me. I wish I had a gun. I slowly raise my arm to protect my face. He doesn't shoot me. He gets out of the truck and on to the lawn. He unfolds a big scroll and I see it's his manifesto. I'm appalled at the thought of having to listen to the whole thing, so I get up and leave.

This was one of the best dreams I've had in a while. It was so detailed and so full of relationships and emotions. It was beautiful. The bathroom where I took my deceptive bath was white tiled and sort of dim and shadowy. The boys were so wicked and ardent except for Tim and the accordian guy who were tender and helpless. I loved how quickly things shifted from watching to being in the story to being the killer. I think of this like layers of information. If you're the killer, you know something no one else does.

Interesting that the dream ended with that shoot out sequence in the parking lot. When the guy turned his gun at me and I knew I was about to die I had this moment of frustration but also knew I could do it. I could be dead if I had to. It was a terrifying, exciting moment.

Interesting also--even in the parts where I was the killer, it was just the hiding and deceiving part, not the actual violent part. I saw a lot of violence, and got some kind of kick out of it, but didn't perpetrate any. Unlike last night, when I got into a fight over something stupid in a bookstore vestibule.