Exorcism

The dream begins in a well-lit, nicely furnished living room. There are many people, and one girl is possessed. The rest decide she needs an exorcism, and the violence begins. At times I am her, at other times I am participating in the exorcism, at other times I just watch. The pin her down to the floor, one on each arm and leg, one sitting on her torso, she writhes, alternating between moans and screams. She escapes, rips apart the room's furnishings, they capture he again and try unsuccessfully to physically force out the demon from her body. She begins to tear things apart with her mind, ripping the roof off of the car parked outside, and starting a great wind.

I get tired of watching and move off into another part of the room. My brother has returned from the ranch, and we wanders about in a floor-length red-orange chiffon nightgown with a blank look on his face. This is the mos terrifying thing I have ever seen. He speaks in a monotonous voice of facts he has learned, showing no personal connection to... anything. He sits down with me and my parents at the dining room table, and begins to mark x's on a piece of notebook paper, describing that each x represents a dosage of a drug on a given day. There are many rows of them, up to seven in a row for each day of the week. Then he begins to explain what each drug is and why he takes them. I interrupt and ask about the chart, because I don't understand the system. He responds, "No, There's one for every time per day. And this one is for when I feel anxious, and this one is for when Jenny makes me feel inadequate, and this one..."
I'm so shocked that I get up and leave the table to go back to the exorcism. He was supposed to get better, not become a zombie. The people on the other side of the room haven't made much progress, so I go grocery shopping. I am looking at the cheeses when I run into Ariana. We exchange the typical greetings, Hi how are you, How have you been, etc., and Ariana responds that she was doing fine until the first part of the quarter, but then her upstairs neighbor began bringing home this guy, and they made so much noise having sex that Ariana couldn't concentrate on her studying anymore.

Bald Men and Bikinis Do Not Mix

Sunnydale now sits in a large Californian valley, with grass spanning the distance to the hills behind it, and a small sort of hicktown/trailer park across the street. I run down the hill in the loping manner that one must on inclines and make my way towards the school.
I am in a panic. I have recently received word that one of my family members is in the Emergency Room, and I am trying to locate the rest of my family so that we can go to the hospital. Running pas the windows, I see my sister in her old Nationals outfit, dancing for a large crowd. I round the building and enter, passing through a dim, grimy linoleum corridor to one of the classrooms. I find my mother, applauding while my sister takes her bow. I tell her that we have to leave, it's urgent, Dad's in the hospital, but she says, no, we can wait till Kyra's finished. It'll take about twenty minutes.

Resigned to waiting, I leave the classroom to explore the school grounds. Wandering through the dim hallway, I find myself in a courtyard on the other side of the school. It is cloudy now, and the gray light turns everything, except the towering evergreens, a similar shade. There are scores of people here, and the air is filled with smoke and strange smells. I conclude that this must be the Addicts Anonymous meeting. Feeling disgusted, I try to hurry through the corwded picnic tables, but I am fascinated by these lowlifes. I wonder aloud, "why would you do something like this to yourself?"
A homeless woman and a dirty-looking man catch me by the elbow and they begin to explain their reasoning. They motion forward a thirty-something bald rocker (much like Chris Daughtry, or the guy who recommended Blades of Glory to us at the Metro) He pulls from his jacket something made of clear blue plastic - it looks like a combination between a flashight and a stick of deodorant. Holding it up to his face, he pushes a small black button on the side. Frightened that he is about to burn his face off, I try to knock the thing out of his hand. Before I can get to him, though, writhing threads of yellow plastic emerge and make contact with the stubbly chin. It seems he is addicted to the feel of synthetic tubes on his skin. I begin to understand.

Tired of waiting for my sister, Jenny and I journey forth into the valley on a quest. We are trying to locate something, a treasure, perhaps, or a famous artifact like the Ark of the Covenant or something. We run along the one road in the valley, surveying the area for anything that looks like it might provide a clue. As we reach the top of a hill above Sunnydale, we spy to large rocks standing alone amid the brown grass. We clamber up towards them. Reading the far side, they tell us something important, they tell us where to go. My vision blurs slightly and they mesh together to form an image or text. Something magical occurrs, and we know the next step in our quest.

My father drives a moped while I sit behind. His blue helmet matches the dated bike, and I'm sure we look quite the pair as we weave through traffic in a country suburb. We are looking for a place that is likely to give us our next clue to the treasure. We pass all types of ruins and run-down places. I see the Parthenon, and other Greek constructions. The roof has caved in on the dinosaur museum, and ivy has twined artfully up a fake T-rex's legs. A large warehouse has been turned into some sort of store. The garage door is open, and something about the upturned boat in the driveway seems familiar. Written on the side are the words "the rocks in the valley," jarring my memory.
"Dad! There it is!"
"What? Where?"
"There! That boat said, 'the rocks in the valley,' that's got to be it!"
Typical of my father he saw nothing, but he believes me and we shoot off onto a side street to turn around. It is getting dark, but I recognize where we are. An elementary school is nearby. Two boys on bikes obstruct our way, and I curse because for some reason we are in a hurry.
Entering the main stream of traffic again, night has fallen and it is rush hour. By the time we get back to the boat, it has been dragged inside and the shop has closed. We park the moped in the dirt by the shop and leave our helmets on the handlebars. We enter the shop occupying the rest of the warehouse.
The room is warmly lit by many lamps, and is some sort of tourist trap, selling useless keychains and with wall-to-wall racks of women's bathing suits.
"Why is this all they sell here?"
"Because that's all we wear."
A balding man similar to the first, except older and slighter, pushes his way through the bead curtain at the back of the shop. He is barely covered by a spangled turquoise string bikini. His daughter, behind him, is slightly more modest in a red halter top and boy shorts. The man I find slightly lecherous, but the daughter seems very normal to me. I barely manage to keep my father from buying a bikini for himself from the charming young lady at the counter. I tell him that we are here on an expedition, and not a shopping one. We manage to leave the shop with just a keychain as a souvenir of Bikinitown.

Man, I am a terrible host

Kory takes our class on a field trip to show us the three "principles of dance":

Number one is a fake scepter placed on a velour cushion. I lead the group up to the porch of the cabin to look at the scepter, but everyone crowds behind me so I pass by quickly.

Number two is one of those poles you slide down on a big toy, with a curved top. When I approach I give Kory a skeptical look, and he sighs and says, "Envision a flagpole!" So it's a curved flagpole... I kind of get it.

Number three is a station wagon on a platform perched on top of a large pole. This one I just don't get. When we look questioningly at Kory he uses a remote control to tilt the station wagon; something spills out. We tell him to stop, the car is about to fall off. He tilts it again, and several small objects spill out and clatter to the ground like pop cans. The car slowly topples off, and we all run and take cover in great fear of the small objects inside the car (beetles?). I hide in the big toy for an unnecessarily long time. When I come out my mom is frosting cookies on the porch of the cabin. I help for a while, frosting some bundt cake from a paper sack filled with blue frosting.

I walk around the corner of the cabin to find myself on the playground at Shorewood. Kyra, some other familiar friends, and I take turns on the slide. As we slide, I ask Kyra questions about her upcoming surgery. She is optimistic.

I have some assignment that I'm late finishing for school, so I decide to go early to work on it. I walk down the Burke-Gilman trail and end up on Lake Union under I-5. Alex is there, and I stop to talk to him, and then I continue on, now wading through the water. When I pass under the University Bridge and arrive at my my desired destination, and start to climb up the bank to get out of the water. Too late, I notice the muddy structures around me moving- they are trolls! No one ever told me there were University trolls! They seem to jsut be waking up from a nap, so I hope that if I climb quickly they won't notice me. Then my shoe gets stuck in a hole in the wall, and when I turn I see another troll climbing out of the water after me, a dead fish in its mouth. I consider screaming, but decide against it.

On land I find my way to a designated study area, which is a small patch of grass next to the Burke-Gilman where about nine people already lay in a grid formation. When I get there I feel sleepy, so the natural thing to do is lay down. I wedge myself in an empty slot and arrange my stacks of books around me. Chris, a guy from Solstice who always orders "short americans" is there, telling a friend that he is in my French class as well as in another girl's senior seminar. This is not true, and it frustrates me, so I leave.

Back in my apartment, I am just waking up from a nap, when I become aware of a giant plasm television on the wall next to my bed. My eyes are closed, but I can see the colors from it on the insides of my eyelids. I can also hear that my mom and another family member or two are in the room. Listening to the program, it is a news interview. I hear "University of Washington Track", "New Zealand", and "Vinh". I realize they are about to interview my friend from my tea class, and I roll over and try to open my eyes to see the TV, saying groggily, "Hey, it's my track star! That's my friend!", which comes out as an incomprehensible mumble.
My eyes will not open. I focus all my energy on opening my eyes, but all that happens is I can see some very blurry outlines. Urgently I pry my eyelids open with my fingers, but I still cannot see. I let go and my eyes fall shut. Feeling as though I am on drugs, I sit up with difficulty in front of the mirror and try to open my eyes again. I suspect that the lids are actually opening, but my vision does not work.

Later, as I walk down the path to Shorewood Beach with a number of people I tell them about the incident over and over again.


Then Courtney and Kris had sex. This was not surprising to me, but Andrea was really concerned about it, especially that Beth would find out, so she devised a complex plan to drug all of our friends and somehow hypnotize them to forget about it. She invited all of the Academy 4.0s over to my house and prepared several dips that would cause everyone to fall asleep. There were also small, crescent-shaped pieces of sheet metal that she fed to the guests after they fell alseep for some reason.
The problem was that everyone arrived at different times, so we had to move the party out onto the patio, and then Megan Su wanted to make her own guacamole, and Andrea almost flipped out. I tried to pull her aside and tell her that maybe this wasn't worth it, and ask what the pieces of sheet metal were for, because they seemed really dangerous for someone to be consuming. Andrea didn't pay attention and told me to go feed more dip to the sleeping peole upstairs while she helped Megan make a new dip.

Seemingly Mundane

I park the car in front of a large trailer next to a strange building at night. I follow a stream of people into the building.

The band is taking part in a district-wide concert, in which all the high-school bands will play the same song. We are setting up our instruments in the practice room as the streetlights shine in through the tall and narrow windows. Mr. Fosberg, being his normal crotchety self, tells us we're all sitting in the wrong places. He moves the horn section to sit behind him, facing the rest of the band. We are joined by Bertha, a lower band member, and Philip Van Wyk. I try to tell him that he should be in the clarinet section, but he won't listen to me. Bertha pulls up a chair between Matt and Sarah, and I am insulted because with the addition of Philip it makes me look like fifth chair. I want to tell her to go sit on the other side of Cindy, but decide to let her enjoy her moments in our prestigious section, as it's likely to be the only chance she'll get.

Foz tells me and a few other people to go ask the organizer of the event when she wants us onstage. I exit through a side door, which opens onto the backstage area. I am dwarfed by the monstrous set pieces and heavy hanging curtains.

I approach a short, squat woman with a commanding voice. She tells me that before she can answer my question, I have to go tell the people in the booth that they missed Daylight Savings Time and they should turn their clock back an hour. We need the extra time to finish setting up.

I am led to the booth through a series of metal hallways by a black-clad tech. A small child trails after us. The tech motions me through a door into a cavern-like area behind the auditorium and underneath the booth. The child is afraid and latches onto my leg. As we proceed over paths of metal grating, I sense movement from the side. Pastor Ann (who is almost legally blind) stands and says "It's nice that Kathryn was able to bring her sister along." The child clearly is not my sister, but I decide to not say anything, because Ann lives in this cave and is therefore blind. We continue.

The tech leaves us at a playground to wait for the people in the booth to see us, where we are joined by several more small children (my cousins), Jenny, and a young man (who auditioned after me on Friday). It suddenly becomes imperative that we keep the infant entertained, because if she cries then the entire performance, happening on the other side of the wall, is ruined. To do this, we scale the wooden jungle gym and hand the baby from one person to another, higher one higher than the last. We reach the top, and the construction grows more to accommodate our efforts. The growth is, however, much too sparse, and we cannot climb any higher. We panic to find a way to keep the child quiet, but before we can solve the problem, the concert is over. We collapse to the ground in relief. Keeping an infant quiet is harder than it looks.


A separate dream, but not, we are two warring factions. I have amassed an army of real and imaginary animals to combat the Kingdom of Ice. We enter the practice room where Mr. Fosberg stood not long ago, and the opposing sides bristle at each other as I try frantically to make them listen to me. My side will be decimated, though, because it appears that our King and Queen have been drugged. The Ice King laughs as we rush to their sides. A mountain lion with a large sled tied to its back tries to haul them out of harms way, but a mountain lion is not designed to pull things, and our woozy and effervescent rulers giggle as they are towed awkwardly out the door. We are dismayed.

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.