Return home from the mission

It is the beginning of the horror movie when all of the characters first meet as they assemble for some common cause, preparing for a seemingly innocent mission into a dangerous place. In this case we are art history students and we have to go on a mission to the unexplored end of the catacombs of Paris, where no one has been for centuries. I lead the group into the tunnel, knowing that we must procede slowly, according to the horror movie formula. However, the dumb blondes get overly enthusiastic just as I make a remark about the halfway point indicated on the ground, and they rush ahead. Of course, chaos erupts and we are all sprinting back towards the entrance of the tunnel as two of our team members are eaten. I make a mental note of what a horrible horror movie this is making, as we are not even ten minutes in and two people have amready been very predictably eaten in a cave that isn't very scary.

From the cave, I emerge out of my parents' bathroom into the waiting reception of family members milling about in the bedroom. I tell them that regrettably, I am not back for good, our work just got further delayed by the accident.

I arrive back at my apartment, and have never been happier to see it. Somehow it has expanded and acquired a lot more light switches and walls. I walk through, gleefully testing all of the switches. My brother pokes his head out from behind a curtain that presumably leads to the kitchen, as a could of steam billows out as well. He is helping me prepare a luncheon for all of my family, who are going to come and welcome me home again. The carrots may not be done in time.

Again

This time my grandma comes over to our house for our birthday party (they are two days apart; we always celebrated together). She is still able to walk, although with some difficulty; the Parkinson's has begun to progress.
Again, I feel guilty for thinking she had been dead. Really, she has been alive this whole time and I haven't seen her since last April because I was too busy. This has made her very sad, and I feel so terrible, and horribly confused.

Not Again

My grandma, the one I thought had been dead since least April is sitting in front of me. She gives me important advice, which I cannot grasp. I keep shaking my head and saying, "I'm sorry, I thought you died. I'm so sorry, they told me you were dead." She assures me that she is alive and well, and she recovered from Parkinson's as well.

Adventure Is Not Always So Amusing

I - and a few others in my adventurous party - slowly approach a desert city, in awe of the towering walls and open khaki-colored houses on top.

In a place some people might call a church, a monstrous wasp or mantis is suspended bottom-down by its thorax. The mottled brown exoskeleton blends with the intricately carved teak walls and the marbled flooring. The insect's head, far above, is invisible in the dimly flickering gas lamplight.
The shape of the abdomen causes condensing water to run to the point, where a large piece of papyrus has been spread underneath. Suspended like a pendulum, the insect wriggles and sways, forming intricate designs on the paper depicting each of four parts of our quest that will lead us to the ultimate treasure. The swirls and scribbles dissipate quickly, so we hastily memorize the next step. We hurry out of the room, afraid that we might soon become a meal.


In a strange house, everything is in shades of blue and grey. I glance out the window - we are perched on top of a hill - the town below glows with the aura of what must be death. I come to the conclusion that I am in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, and that the killer will soon be arriving here. Waiting, I lounge about in the kitchen as passing cars illuminate the refrigerator in locomotive bars of light.
A young, unpreposessing man steps from the bedroom closet. Genially, he asks me if I want some coffee, I decline, but he makes me some anyway, then pours some for himself.
"You don't have to kill all these people," I say. "It's just a movie."
He raises his eyebrows and grimaces into his coffee cup. "Obviously you know very little."

That wasn't supposed to happen

Kathryn and I are working at Solstice, and we are keeping the cafe open late for a show of some sort. I feel alright about this until we try to use the cash register and the "3", "00", and "cash" keys are broken off. In a panic, I try to get the espresso machine mechanic to come back and fix it, but he has already left. When I turn back, someone has started a list of everything sold and convinces me it will be alright. Matt, A-Strike, Jacob, Eva, and some other band members approach, and I greet them warmly. Later, they are over talking to Devin, who I think is also helping with the event, and I overhear A-Strike say, "Yeah, and I keep getting these e-mails from the dream blog- we all have, since our names were first mentioned it put us on its e-mail list and won't stop sending us updates!"
I can feel my cheeks burning.I say, "No... not all of you?"
A-Strike says, "Yeah, we're all on the list now!"
Shit! I just had a dream about making out with Matt. I turn to him, and he looks at me for a second before turning away in embarrassment. I ask, "Matt, can we talk outside for a minute?" He nods, and we step out into the alley. I say, "I'm really sorry, Matt, that shouldn't have been something you had to read."
He says, "No! Look, it's okay, don't worry about it Jenny!" much in the way Kris said I shouldn't worry about being a jerk.
I continue, "I just think, well, it wouldn't even have been weird if Andrew hadn't mentioned it and-"
"Exactly!" He cuts in enthusiastically, and says, "Good, I'm glad we're clear on that!" and he hugs me, and we both get a little too intimate.

I am on an a hike with a group of classmates, including my secret lover, and a teacher. We reach vantage point on a steep cliff, overlooking the sun setting on the ocean. Everyone begins to move down the steep path to the beach, and I quickly try to find a way to indicate to my lover that we should stay behind. Just as the last student rounds the bend, I turn around, and almost stumble over a body lying face down on the ground. I gasp in shock and then decide the man is probably taking a nap. I shake his shoulder and say loudly, "SIR, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?" several times, before backing off and realizing I probably shouldn't touch the body. I do spot a wallet nearby and pick it up. I pull out photos of a man, who I presume is the body, although I can't see his face. The name on the credit card says "Wilder". I yell to my brother, who appears at my side. "Nick! Do you recognize the man in this picture? You had Mr. Wilder for English in high school, didn't you? Is this him?"
Nick nods.

I find myself suddenly underwater, unsure of which way is up. There is too much pressure and I need to get to the surface. I do i somersault, looking for the sun, but there are odd glints of light in the dark water in every direction. Suddenly there is a powerful rushing, something shooting up beneath me from great depths. A giant iron capsule nearly slams into me as it rushes to the surface.
I get a flash of the future: the scariest mutant sharks I can imagine are thrashing around in the water around me, having been released from the capsule when the chain anchoring their isolation chamber to the floor of the ocean snapped-
I am underwater still but there is no sign of the capsule or the sharks. This time I notice a chain leading down into the depths and I understand it leads from the capsule at the bottom to a buoy on the surface. I immediately start swimming to to the surface, knowing I have to get away before-
The capsule explodes from the water near me and shoots into the sky. I frantically swim towards the same cliffs I stood on before with the body of Mr. Wilder, hoping I can get away before the capsule falls from the sky and the sharks are released.
Now I am with someone, a friend, possibly my lover from before. We are still about a hundred yards from the base of the cliff, but we can see the bottom is not more than twenty feet away. We hear yelling from the cliff- we are saved!
But then we get a better look- the figures line up, each one carrying a large stone over his head. One by one they throw the stones, and all I can do it sit there and think, "Are they really throwing stones at us?" until one nearly hits me over the head and I have to dive underwater.

I examine several packages of macaroni from the cupboard, reading the instructions and trying to decide which one to prepare. They all have strange complex instructions, though, such as, "At 4900 feet, boil 10 quarts water for 30 seconds, then remove half, saving one cup for later use. Add half package of macaroni..."

I walk across campus, soaking wet, giving a tour to the same group that was at Solstice earlier, now also including Anna, Kellen, and Alex. We arrive at Red Square... but it is white. I assume it is ice- they must have removed red square, installed a lake, and it froze over. Kathryn suggests, "Let's go swimming!" Everyone agrees, the weather is as nice as can be (cloudy), and starts removing their shoes.
I am the first one ready, running backwards as fast as I can with my elbows out behind me to break through the ice. Alex and Kathryn are close behind. When I reach the "shoreline" and throw myself backwards, however, I do not crash through ice. I get tangled up in the white butcher paper that is actually covering the lake, and my feet get stuck, in what I fear is mud.
"Stop!" I yell, "You're going to get covered in mud!" Alex is already in, though, and he explains that the bottom is paved, with stairs leading down from the edges.
A campus police officer blows a whistle and walks up to us across the butcher paper surface of the lake, explaining to me as I sit tangled in the soggy paper that Alex is right: red square is actually a paved pool, but it is closed for the winter. We thank her and crawl out of the pool, moving into the lobby of a small art gallery to wring ourselves out.

Anxieties

The band is putting on a concert that is the culmination of a lot of hard work. We have taken a bus to somewhere nearby, where we will wait for our turn to perform.

I join my friends by the buses. Anna and Micaiah say no, I can't come, and everyone leaves me standing on the sidewalk, mouth agape, to eat lunch by myself.

In the practice room, I am excited to prove to Matt Perry that I have finally found my mouthpiece. I pull it out of my backpack and display it proudly. I realize that it is almost time to perform and that none of my friends have concert attire on. I open the door and smugly tell them that they're late. It is good to one-up them, as I'm still sore at them due to the lunch circumstance.

We are onstage, ready to perform. My father is conducting. Instead of sitting in chairs, the horn section has small cots on which they can recline. My father raises his baton, and I realize I don't know where any of my music is. I have been given several books full of music, but unlike the rest of the band, I haven't taken the time to locate the songs we will be playing. I frantically shuffle through the pages as the music starts. I can't find any of the music I need. I throw the books to the floor and curl up on my cot to cry, furious at myself for not preparing properly. My father sees that I am distraught and cuts the band off, running to my side. I'm mad at him now, for placing me above the band, when they've all worked so hard to be here. As the curtains falls into place over the stage, I trudge out the back door, rather than face the wrath of the band and my so-called friends.

I am in a jungle. Rather, it is a very, very large room, filled with flora and fauna of an Indian climate. I have circled the premises once entirely and am now trying to find a way up. a large elephant swings his trunk over my head and back again; I try to grab it. However, it is smooth and I fall off every time. I know there's something else I need to find before I can climb the elephant.
Unfortunately, my failed attempts have set off a flood, which sweeps up all creatures in its path. I let it carry me along, aimlessly, until the waters have receded somewhat. I look around for a log or something to float with. Grabbing one, I tell my sister that it isn't floaty enough, we have to find something younger. I see a monkey floating by, trying to pull a large armored cart. It is not succeeding, and is pulled into a whirlpool. I lunge forward and try to save it as it goes under, but the monkey I come up with is only pulling a wicker basket, not a cart. I panic, those monkeys must be saved,
The jungle personnel clear the water away, and where the whirlpool was is a plastic bubble. Inside are the monkeys that were pulled under. I rejoice - this means we can save them - but the workers shake their heads sadly. They say they cannot save these monkeys; I do not understand. I frantically try to convince them that we can get the monkeys out before they run out of air, but the employees just stand there stonily. They say I saved one monkey, isn't that enough? I scream at them, no! but they gaze at me with their hard eyes and I see there is no hope.
I crouch in a corner, saddened and infuriated at the loss of life. I cannot tear my gaze away from the bubble as the monkeys run out of oxygen and slowly collapse.

The owner of the park is equally saddened by the loss. She says oftentimes she wishes the waters will not come, but then - she opens the front door and shows me the destroyed jungle, covered in a fine layer of snow - this happens, and she wishes she had not wished such things. I stand in her garage, trying to understand. She wraps her thin bathrobe sadly about her and turns to go back inside.

Eighteenth century French literature invades my pop culture dreams

I am a Bond Girl in an action-packed adventure. People are dying left and right, but we have little time to think of them. When James gets bitten by a snake Felix and I hide him under a piece of rubble from the ceiling in the bathtub so the enemy won't find him and get any information from him before he's dead. To tell the truth I'm glad to be rid of that bastard; he was such a dick.
A little while later I think that there is something wrong with this picture. The main character of the series isn't supposed to die, and the woman and sidekick share the spotlight... but then I remember that the Bond movies were written by Voltaire, so he must come back later in the story, somehow having miraculously escaped death. How disappointing.

Very Suspicious

I will be living in a small, rundown cabin on the south end of campus next quarter. It used to belong to someone's grandparents; they are either dead or they don't know someone is letting me stay there.
Inside there are two stoves, one that looks like a small electric cooktop, and another which looks like it could be the kerosene stove my grandparents described from their first home in Alabama. It is encrusted with black grease, and I decide to test it out to see if it still works. I turn the knob on the righ burner. Nothing happens, except it makes a single loud pop. I lean in to listen for the sound of gas and it pops again. I realize it's probably a really stupid idea to stick my head next to a popping stove and quickly turn the knob off. I smell for gas in vain, then stupidly repeat the process. When finished I decide I should leave the cabin, expecting it to explode at any moment.

In the parking lot below I meet some schoolmates, and the orthodontist is implied. I think I was supposed to go in months ago, and the flourescent lighting was especially suspicious.

Driving through Normandy Park in the wrong direction I try to eat breakfast at an undergound restaurant with Alex, but instead I find myself on stage, at the dress rehearsal for my dance recital. I am in the class of three and four year-olds, dressed in a yellow tutu, and singing to Mary Poppins. I don't remember ever taking this class, and I hope my body will remember what it suppsedly learned. It does. I tap dance along with the rest of the (very old) four year-olds, fly around stage, and sing loudly and off-key.

Now I stand in my grandparent's kitchen. I walk across the room towards my grandmother, who is making cookies, but as I approach she doens't get any bigger. I stand behind her and she only comes up to my belly button. Her hair is very soft. I think she must be dying. She walks in one direction to the living room and I go around the other way. I say confusedly to Laura that she must have shrunken, and my grandma nods uncomprehendingly from her seat on the comparatively giant sofa.

Epic

We begin the saga on a flat, featureless prairie. We are on the outskirts of some sort of amusement park, but there are ominous overtones to the place. Standing by a water slide that is reminiscent of hamster mazes, we discuss the issue of the park's evil overlord and the many deaths that have recently occurred. We decide that escape is a necessity.
I go to saddle my horse, only to find that I never unsaddled him yesterday. He is quite disgruntled at that fact, and when I lead him out of the pen he bites my arm and will not release me. He is carfeul not to hurt me, though.
As we ride out of the yard, we are confronted by a large, rusty, hovering robot. It cackles evilly. I try to ride around it, but it is having none of that.
It morphs into a pyramidic wizard, clad in purple robes and hat. He transports us onto a flate plane of ice, where the sun shines glaringly and there is nothing but ice and sky. As he flies around us, he leaves a technicolor trail of slime behind him, which we must avoid in our escape. As my horse and I are fairly adept at avoiding him, he summons two beings, one female, one male. The man, which I gather to be the sun, glimmers with moving colors on the cool end of the spectrum. The female, the moon, shines with orange, magenta, and yellow, much like the slime in Mario Sunshine. I avoid their balls of slime, galloping across the ice, and scoop up the penguin that they are suddenly attempting to obliterate. We make it past a stand of pine trees and are transported out of the ice plain.

I am standing on the sidewalk along 1st at night. I am wearing some sort of spandex suit, bright yellow, designed to keep me from being seen. My companion, a veteran at these nighttime excursions, is clad in white spandex. We are trying to cross the street. He claims that if he flashes a very bright light from the stoplight above, the people in the cars will not be able to see us and we can cross in safety.
Doing so, we scoot across the street and to the pet store. My friend picks the lock and we sneak inside. I look through the bin of colored plastic snakes for the ones that will provide us with a key, as he goes to the back to look for something. Sorting through the snakes, a notice a small child standing in the doorway, curiously. I decide they will not do any harm and go back to my snake-sorting. Glancing back up at the child I realize it's actually a skunk! I exit hastily.

I am a butler for a wealthy victorian family. I have found an estate for them to live on. Visiting the house, the real estate agent says it will be good publicity to have an idyllic family living here. In a yellow and green bedroom filled with sun, the wife says she'll not be idylllic if she were paid a million dollars. The agent looks disappointed, but sells us the house anyway.
Some time later, the daughters are seen playing on the lawn as a procession of dignitaries winds its way up the drive to the house. As a wealthy man gives a speech, the wife comes downstairs and announces that her husband is dead. At this, the man speaking goes stiff and dies, too. They try to bring the husband down the stairs into the room, but realizing that two dead men in a room is bad luck, they stop hastily and try to backtrack. The only succeed in dropping the dead man, much to their consternation.

Dark Staircase

Kellen and I decide to visit Holly at the video store. We go inside, but beyond the counters there are no movies, but instead the interior of a house. Holly tells us to put our bags down by the shoe rack. "Good thing you're both wearing black," she tells us. I look down and realize that I am wearing the same black ball gown I wore to winter ball. Kellen isn't actually wearing black, but apparently Holly hasn't noticed.
Cameron comes from behind the counter (he and Holly are both wearing their black work uniforms). He tells us that the party us upstairs, and he'll see us up there as soon as we're ready. As they both leave, I notice that the house is very dark, and the gray carpeting seems to glow where the moonlight shines through the sliding glass door. Kellen and I can hear muffled music from the party going on above us. We start up the staircase, even though we can't see the top because of the darkness.
We reach a square landing after only ten stairs, and the next staircase doubles back, quite like the emergency stairs in a multi-story hotel. I can see a balcony across the room, maybe three more stories up, where people are dancing. They are all wearing black.
I begin to notice that the stairs are getting steeper and narrower, although they are still carpeted. After five more flights, I realize that we should be at the party by now. But although I can still hear muffled music, I can no longer see a balcony, just dark walls. I wait for Kellen to catch up with me. Her black hair has come undone and is falling out all over the staircase. For some reason this does not worry me and I tell her we have to keep going.
Finally we reach what seems to be the last flight of stairs. It is so steep that, when I look up into it, it feels like I'm looking down into a deep chasm. The muffled music pulsates from deafening to inaudible. Kellen is terrified; she grabs my hand and tells me not to go up but I feel like I have to. I climb up one step, which by now is about two feet high and maybe six inches deep. As soon as my feet leave the ground, I feel myself being pulled upwards. Suddenly I am terrified. Kellen grabs my legs and pulls me back down, and we sprint back down the stairs until we are back by the shoe rack.
"We have to get out of here," I say, but I can't find my bag or my keys. I am frustrated by my dress. It won't let me move as quickly as I need to. I know we have to leave before the thing at the top of the staircase finds us, but I can't find anything. I decide to take off my dress. I have regular clothes underneath, but as soon as I get my dress off, the regular clothes begin to morph back into the dress. Finally I spot my bag underneath the shoe rack, and I lay down on my stomach so I can reach it. When I get up, Kellen is gone. The music is almost deafening. I know that I am going to die.

I never believed in an afterlife

I sit in front of the coffee table preparing rootbeer floats with my dad for Doan's birthday party. First I have trouble finding glasses. We have pint-glasses, but then all I can find in my grandma's dishwasher are like giant martini glasses with no stems. We use these anyway. Then, the only ice cream we have is Godiva chocolate raspberry truffle. I am not convinced this will make the best tasting rootbeer float, but my dad starts scooping anyway because it's melting. Then, I start slicing orange poppyseed bread from work to put in there as well, because we have to use it before it gets stale. Finally, we run out of ice cream entirely, so I head up to Kathryn's to borrow some from her.

As I pass by Shorewood, I pause by the basketball courts to rest. It is starting to get dark. As is sit there, a shadowy figure crosses the field and steps up to the fence by te sidewalk with a vendor's tray and a ziplock sack. He whispers to the nonexistent passersby the goods he is selling, which include candy such as pixie stix and cocaine. I start to worry that if he notices me he will think I intend to tell the police and maybe kidnap me or something. I decide to try and continue on indiscreetly.

I slowly start tiptoeing down the hill towards Kathryn's house. When I start walking more normally I hear footsteps, but i can't tell if they're mine or the drug dealer's. I walk faster and the footsteps get louder. Finally, as I turn the corner, practically running, I turn halfway around and say,"Can I help you with something?" to the guy, but keep walking at a slower pace. He is probably younger than me, but is seriously tough-looking with cornrows, a black bandadna, and I think a gun as well.

To my surprise he asks me some totally innocent question that I don't know the answer to. We're still walking towards Kathryn's but it is so dark now that I am completely blind. The drug dealer, on the other hand, is completely fine (because those drug dealers, you know, they have night vision). I stumble and grab his hand, and he guides me the rest of the way to Kathryn's house. By the time we get there he's really friendly, which makes me really uncomfortable, but when he reaches out to hug me goodbye I comply because he has a gun. Then he kisses me twice on the lips, and once on the neck as I take his arms off me and turn away.

He stands in the driveway for a few moments to make sure he's brought me to the right house, and finally leaves. I walk up to Kathryn's basement window, looking to see if anyone is up before I knock on the door, since it's 3:30 AM. Then i figure, if it really is 3:30 AM it would probably worse to be spotted suspiciously looking in windows. Then I realize that none of this is relevant because it's actually 8:30 PM and I knock on the door.

Kathryn's dad answers and lets me in the front door, but leaves me enclosed on the landing behind a waist-high gate. I wonder if it would be rude to just step over this small gate. Kahtyrn comes upstairs before I can finish wondering and lets me through. I turn to her and say, "Kathryn, you won. You know what this means, right?" She nods and says, "Yes, and I haven't changed my mind either. I want you to have it all." It is understood that Kathryn has won a huge sum of money, and she cannot accept it for moral reasons, but she wants me to have it because I will do the right thing. I'm not entirely sure Kathryn has the right idea, but I don't argue, because, as I tell Kathryn, "Aaron, Holly, and Sally are already on their way." She nods and I turn around to lock the door. I get the gate locked, then try to lock the door, but can't reach it. Instead of stepping over the gate again I unlock the gate, lock the front door, and the relock the gate. Aaron Smith is already in the driveway, and he will claim he prize for his own religious purposes if I do not get to the prize office with the official scroll. Kathryn tells me we can escape through one of the barbershops on the east side of her house. She leads me through a hallway, and I start to ask her again if she is sure of the decision,when we enter the kitchen and I finally look around her house. It is a wreck. All the furniture is broken, the applicances are all gone, the linoleum floor has been ripped out, and everything is covered in filth. Kathryn and her family have been living in poverty, and I didn't even realize it because I hadn't seen them in so long. I tell her, "Kathryn, you know you have to take some of this money, right?" She nods and leads me further back into the house.

By now Aaron is in the front door, and working his way past the gate. I open a door and see room with a window leading outside, so I go inside. Kathryn says, "No! That's Robert's bedroom! You have to go through one of the barbershops!" But I'm already halfway out the small window. Kathryn soon emerges outside from a room next door. Aaron is coming down the hallway, has almost found us, so we toss the scroll I had been carrying into the bushes and rush across the street. There is a giant cedar tree in the neighbor's yard, so I leap up, seize the end of a branch, and swing into the tree, pulling Kathryn up with me. Just then, Sally and Holly pull into Kathryn's driveway as Aaron comes out through a window. He tells them, "No sign, but there's still time." As Sally and Holly respond, I swing unnoticed over their heads on a particularly springy branch and pick the scroll out of the bushes. As I fling myself back over to the branch next to Kathryn, Devin walks down the street and informs me that the party will not take place until next weekend, because Kellen and Doan are both out of town. Sitting next to Kathryn on the branch, I unroll the scroll to see that it has already alotted Kathryn her share, appropriate for buying a new house and repaying er family's debts: $119,000,000.00. I don't remember the exact amount of my share, but it was something like $439,500,000.00. I ask where Kathryn thinks her family will live now, and she points across the street to a house like a grey cement wedding cake and says, "Well the neighbors have a nice house for sale." I try to confirm that I will perform the appropriate deed with her money, but I can't remember what it is.

Next we are standing in a room I have never been inside before in the care home where my grandma last lived. I am crying, and when Kathryn asks what's wrong, I say, "She had a stroke. She was supposed to be dead, but she had a stroke." Two nurses with a defibrillator move away from the bed, and reveal my grandma laying there. My dad is nearby and the rest of my family is around somewhere. I am hysterical. "Where have they been keeping her since she died?! What have they done to her?!" My dad looks a little hurt, but then gives me a small, understanding smile, which I do not return, and gets up and leaves.

My grandmother rolls over, gets out of bed, and puts on her robe. She walks out of the room, past my brother in the hallway, to a nearby kitchen. There she turns on the stove and bustles about, making breakfast. Apparently a few months dead have cured her of Parkinson's. I'm standing there next to Kathryn, who looks at me questioningly, and Nick, who is calm. I ask him if he knows what is going on, and he just shrugs. My grandma hums to herself and flips a fried egg of the griddle. Then she serves a scrambled eggs to my dad, and a poached egg to my mom. Then it looks like she's trying to flip another egg, but has trouble. She turns around, glancing at me briefly and saying, "Look at me, I can't even make a proper grilled egg for you." I realize that she has made each member of my family our favorite type of egg. She pries open a waffle iron to reveal that my egg of choice is a waffle-egg. I start crying.

Now my mother is taking our entire family and many friends on vacation to Gig Harbor. We paddle up to the floating dock at the marina in our tiny rowboat and hop off. I have the directions and lead the way to our motel. To get there we go up to the street first, which looks like Pac Highway, where there is a strip club across the steet with huge plate windows. However, all we can see from the outside are sleezy men sitting in chairs. The dancers, it seems, are encased in mirrored columns. I assume they are the two-way mirrors, (which doesn't make sense, because then the dancers would be seeing out and the viewers wouldn't be able to see in.)
I puzzle over how that works and continue leading the way to our motel. The directions lead us out onto another floating dock, with components that look like a combination between a giant put-put golf course and a playground castle. This is the motel. "Thanks, mom," I say sarcastically. "Another great choice. This one is right up there with Hotel Diva". As we reach the end of the dock, we meet the manager, who is the grandpa who died when I was 5. To get into the hotel we have to climb over the tiny castle rooftops and through an opening.

At this point our mission becomes clear. My grandpa has been holding my grandma captive, under heavy sleeping pills, but we can wake her up and must take her away. My mom and dad distract my grandpa while Laura and I make our way to the bedroom. There we each kiss my grandma on the forehead, like we did when we said goodbye for the last time. Her eyelids flutter, and she opens her eyes and smiles, in a very Sleeping Beauty-esque fashion. She gets out of bed, and puts on her dressing gown, very similar to before, but now she is much younger, probably in her forties. She begins to feel like our mother; I think Laura becomes Aunt Vicki and I become Aunt Anne. In any case, we are in a hurry to get away, but not because grandpa might find out she's missing. Now we just have to make the next ferry from Bremerton to Seattle. I run down to the dock where my brother has my grandpa's old rowboat ready, with my sister's friends Michelle and Modessa inside, and My mom has some kind of small barge, and a tiny one-person floating pod ready. I want to ride with my grandma, but my brother tells me that to balance the weight out, Laura and I must go in his boat and our grandma will go with my mom.

I get in the boat last, and am surprised when I step up to my knees in opaque black water. Nick says the boat works fine like this and tells me to sit down. Now I am up to my waist in black water, getting ready for a long boat ride, but when Nick starts rowing, the boat submerges, and becomes an unenclosed submarine. There is a window in the bottom, and I watch several clumsily-drawn silhouettes of manta rays swim underneath. I want to make a joke to my mom about manta rays being "strictly underwater", but she is too far behind. Then a clumsily drawn silhouette of a shark swims underneath. I point it out to my sister, and she makes a remark about what a shame it is that we're no longer able to make art projects like that. The view under the boat becomes thumbtacked to the wall as a watercolor painting that one of us had painted at grandma's house years ago. The shapes of sea creatures are still moving, and I see another shark coming closer. It opens its mouth to reveal messy, but sharp white teeth and almost eats me.

We quickly surface and enter the Bremerton ferry terminal, which is organized like an airport, and decorated with giant wreaths with purple bows. I direct my mom and dad through the food court, where everybody from our group picks something to put on our tray. We end up with Vietnamese-Mexican-Greek food, among which I am proud to point out to Kris' cousin Clayton is my family's own homemade hummus.