The House of the Three Rats; Garden Party

I saw/was a man in a small, spooky town was looking around his affluent neighborhood and realized there was something wrong. I narrated to myself, "It won't be too long." People wore pale clothes, old-fashioned suits and long white dresses. It was a coastal town. I went down the coast to a shabby house where a grubby boy was standing by the fence. "I need to see your mother," I said. The boy set up a sort of laundry-line transport, a long, frayed string would pull me to the house. The string was thin and soft under my hands and I thought it might break but I didn't care. I went through the quiet, sunny pine trees to the house. "Someone told me she'd dyed her hair." I knew this meant the widowed mother of all the children was desperate.

In the kitchen of the house, an older, homely woman with dyed black hair was cooking. There was a little girl with her. It was actually hard to tell how old she was. I knew that the woman was planning to sell or give away the girl because it was too dangerous to stay here. Other children kept walking through the kitchen, getting something ready.

An older boy, teenaged or in his twenties, caught my attention. He seemed confident even though there was a disaster coming. He wore a black vest and there was a tattoo on his shoulder of three rats. I went to him and asked him about it. He stood in the hallway right by the back door, almost out of it. He was leaving on a mission, but he stayed to tell me. "Our house is full of rats and bees. We tell a story about taking a bee's stinger and stinging three rats. The first two kept running and fighting until they burned off the poison, but the third one hurt so much he just wanted to lie down. That's what made him die." I knew he was telling me that we could leave and survive. By now I was myself, and I kissed him and licked his tattoo. We went outside.

It was a beautiful garden party. My friends were there and gave me a crazy pair of red sunglasses. I knew we would be safe.

Field work spider; the post-apocalyptic beach community; soft

I woke up in a bed at my field work, disoriented. I knew I wasn't supposed to be working there that day, and I hadn't known they had a bed there. Then the people who had interviewed me for next year's work came in and were being shown around. I was embarrassed but also kind of annoyed, since I wasn't even supposed to be there and just trying to sleep. Then I noticed a big cockroach on the shoulder of a colleague. I went over to surruptitiously wipe it off him, but it kept sort of sliding out of the way and then rising up and I saw it was a spider hanging from a thread. The closer I got, the bigger I realized it was. I got close and then realized I couldn't get away fast enough if it decided to drop on my head.

Then I was part of a post-apocalyptic beach community. There were some apartment buildings nearby, super-crowded. I got an allotment for one and had to squeeze myself through a small door to get in.

Then I was in a fancy restaurant with a childhood friend and the waiter was trying to bully me into some dessert I didn't want and part of the service was that he was cutting my hair.

On my way out of town, I noticed two very big, soft birds sitting on fenceposts. I went over and gave them both a squeeze, knowing they were too scared to try to fly away. They were delightfully soft.

Investigation

I was staying at a farm house. Someone had found the shoe of the woman who had lived there, or some other sign that she had disappeared and something bad had happened to her. I finally looked up and she was suspended in the air, dead, like she was hung but just floating. One of the scariest moments of a dream I've ever had.

Then I was part of the investigation into her murder. All the police or specialists were super smart, super nerdy women, dressed in neon graphic tee shirts or big dorky sneakers, with jewelry made of little plastic toys. I had to join them because I had found the body, and I wasn't sure if I should tell them I'd dreamed her death before it happened.

We went back to the farm house to look for clues, and I opened a door with a photo taped to it and it pushed me back into the memory of when it was taken--a blond guy and I had fallen in love and made out in the bathroom, then he went to a local salon and started getting his hair dyed brown. I decided not to wait for him and started walking home, and realized I was only wearing a towel and started running. A man in the park stopped to offer help, but I knew I couldn't slow down or stop. I vaulted over chain-link fences and ended up back in my apartment, where the investigation was still happening. No one had noticed I was gone.