the nightmare

I woke up at 5 this morning, from a pretty scary nightmare. I was driving with my dad along a beach, looking for a body. The beach was actually strewn with bodies, of women with their hands tied behind their backs, looking like you would if someone had beat you with a sack of oranges. Toward the end of the beach I saw one of them move. This woman had short blonde hair, now I can’t be sure if she had glasses or not. But she was definitely missing the bottom half of a leg. She looked like all the other women –naked, bruised, hands tied behind her back- but she was alive! Obviously, someone had left her there for dead, on this beach where apparently it was ok to leave dead bodies.

My dad turned the car around and I felt we should do something, even though it seemed scary to stop and talk to her. Kind of like how it would be scary to talk to a ghost. So I rolled down the window and asked her if we should call 911. I know it sounds weird now, *asking* if we should call emergency, but it made sense at the time.

In the next scene my dad and I were being interviewed by some cops. I thought they seemed slightly suspicious, like they thought my father was responsible for this woman’s attempted murder. THAT was scary too. What if he WAS? I remember one of the items in that scene was a notepad where there were words written in red pen, the kind of pen my dad had said he preferred. I don’t know, it was all bizarre. The REALLY scary part for me came when I offered to get the men some coffee or something.

I went to the other room, and I was just thinking how much I enjoyed doing that: getting coffee, serving them all and making them feel good, when I saw a strange man at the window! The window was open, he was obviously not friendly, and I felt paralyzed. I tried to scream but nothing would come out. It was awful. Finally, I managed to run out the room into where my dad and the cops were. And that’s when I made myself wake up and think about something else.

***

The other Axel has thoughtfully sent me something called The Four Truths of Buddha. He says it helped him and he hopes it will help me. I’m just happy to get it.