I lived in an old house with nine girls - the same nine girls that I spent three weeks in Europe with this past summer. The state of my dream is unknown, though I am aware that it is Massachusetts, where I reside for school. The house was in a field - the same field that resides in Stafford, Texas, at West Belfort and Murphy Road though, in the dream, we were not in Texas. Everything that is usually there was missing.
The house, big and white, had a door that opened into the kitchen. It sat on the right side of the field. Behind it, several hundred feet, lay a long, shallow gulley and, on the other side of the gulley, closer to the north side of the field, was an amusement part with only two or three roller coasters and nothing else. Across from the field, on the south side, sat the inside of a shopping mall's food court - Dunkin Donuts, Taco Bell, McDonald's, Chic-Fil-A.
In the dream, I was at the "amusement park" with my mother, sister (Amy), and several friends. We kept riding one ride over and over and over again. It was, if I am not mistaken, the only ride they had there at the time. (The park looked a lot bigger from a distance.) Four people sat in a row, on bicycle style seats, and there were anywhere from four to ten rows. The ride had several loops, several flips, and a dozen or so hills. I had the best fun.
My brother (Steven) ended up coming by and, in real life, Steven loves roller coasters. In the dream, however, he kept refusing to get on it. Finally, we convinced him, and as the ride climbed the first, very tall hill, we entertained ourselves by watching a plane overhead. We go to the very top of the hill and were about to go down when, suddenly, the airplane blew up. There was a load bang and parts began to fly around us. They couldn't get the ride stopped in time and ended up putting it in fast motion so that we could get it over with.
All around the field, pieces of the plane lay, some on fire. Bodies were laying around but, at that time, though I knew they were there, I did not see them. I had this overwhelming urge to run back to my house, to save my children. (In the dream, I had a set of newborn twins, a boy and a girl named Aidan and Kaylen.) However, I also had the urge to save as many of those airplane's passengers as I possibly could.
Suddenly, the very end of the plane began to come down. It was not the typical tail of a plane but, rather, four seats (identical to the four on the roller coaster and, though I did not realize it now but I do realize it then, it was the last row of the roller coaster's cart) flew through the air, floating almost, and landed on the other side of the field than me. I tore over to it, desperate to help the people that I knew must be on there, even though the seats were empty. Surely, somewhere, there was someone that I could save.
The minute I got over there, though, people jumped out of the bushes, out of the ground, out of the cars that had stopped on the road, and they began firing at each other. Mercifully, the bullets kept missing me, but they came very close - skimming past my head, between my legs, underneath my arms. I stood where I was, paralyzed for a second, and tried to find people that I could help - not only from the plane crash but, now, from the bullets. It registered to me that this was all very real. I was torn between helping the victims, stopping the shooters, taking care of my children (who were in the house) and making sure my family and friends were okay. (At the food-court thing across the way, though, no one seemed overly frightened by the crash or the firing. Some watched it, curious, as one watches a fight, but no one called 911. In the dream, I felt as if I was seeing an illusion and what was there was only in my head and that the people in the food court were real.)
Finally, I began to run for the house. As I did this, the bullets were turned on me - I knew, then, that the shooters didn't care if I stood amidst them but, if I went for help, they had to kill me. It was as if only I could see them but, in calling 911, then everyone could and they would really be at fault.
Once in the house, everything seemed to go back to normal. I walked in and half of my roommates were cooking and laughing. Because we had just moved in, our families were over, and mine were upstairs on the second floor, watching television there. My nine roommates were in the kitchen and Jen was going through a box of books that her mother had brought her.
"Look!" Gina had hurried over and knelt beside them, reaching through to grab a handful. "Sweet Valley High, Mis!" she'd cried. I, too, sat down and flipped through, glancing at the covers, at the titles, reading the first page, or the middle page, or the last, and just enjoying reminiscing. We were all talking and laughing.
Finally, I got my hands on one of the earlier books, one about Elizabeth's best friend Enid. In the book, Enid (or one of her friends) had broken up with an obsessive boyfriend and the boyfriend was out to kill her. At that point in time, Alyssa noticed the book and grabbed it from me.
"Wow," she said. "This is just like my friend's life." She pointed to the girl behind her and explained to me that she had recently broken up with her boyfriend because he wasn't very nice to her, never told her that he loved her, never paid her compliments, was always negative and self-absorbed, and how now he was stalking her and trying to shoot her. "That firing out there," she said, "it's him, trying to get to her. She's hiding out in here."
Despite my anger at this girl for getting us involved and possibly killed, my concern for her life overruled and Gina and I promised that we would find this guy and stop him. I left my children (whom I didn't see but the me in my dream had) under the care of the girls and Gina and I headed out to find this guy.
Outside, he fired more bullets at us, but they were like darts, not real bullets, or BBs - nothing that could kill us unless he had good aim. One real bullet almost hit us. At this point in time, we ended up being in Missouri City, around the corner from my childhood home. I grabbed Gina's hand and we tore down the road, towards Stop n Go, where we burst in and demanded that they let us their phone. The man behind the counter kept refusing and, finally, the other customers convinced him to let us. When he did, I tried calling 911 but, for some reason, kept getting some design form.
"What's the number to 911?" I'd asked, meaning 'how do you dial out?'
"Dial 9 first," one of the customers had told me, which I tried and, instead of the design firm, I got some mental hospital. At this point in time, Gina and I saw the men who had been shooting as us surround the building. I realized, then, that they were after me - not her - and tried to convince her stay. She wanted to, but then we realized that the cashier was involved in this whole scheme and I was forced to drag Gina along.
We ran down HWY 6, these men chasing us, and tried hiding in bushes, in tall grass, behind cars - we tried climbing into cars, getting into buildings, but nothing worked. Finally, one of the men appeared right in front of us and grabbed Gina. He held a gun to her head and, suddenly, we were transported BACK to the field and where we had been before, running from the house to the food court.
We headed for the food court, thinking that if we were there, then Alyssa's friend's ex-boyfriend wouldn't dare fire in the open area with other people around. We were right - kind of. Once we got over there, he began to use this long, slender wooden tube to spit-shoot toothpicks at us. One hit Gina and she fell to the floor (which is when we realized what they were) and one almost hit me in the heart but ended up breaking about two seconds before. I fell to the ground and pushed Gina into one of the restaurants (Chik-Fil-A, I think) and we hid there.
"He's shooting TOOTHPICKS at us," she'd said, laughing.
We giggled for a few minutes about his stupidity then laughed about creativity. We devised a plan that involved us being quiet and averting other people's attention. When the shooter walked past, I would trip him, he'd fall, I'd sit on him and hold his hands above his head and Gina would run for help. We know that the minute he was down, the other men would disappear and everything would stop. This plan worked.
The man (who was a young man, 20ish, and attended my school, like all the other people around us) fell on his back and I straddled his legs, stretching my arms to hold his hands above his head.
"What the hell are you thinking?" I asked him. "Why are you trying to kill me?"
He told me that he was trying to kill me because I was his link to his girlfriend - that I had been telling her to leave him, or something like that. The conversation progressed until we were talking civilly, like friends. He told me that he loved her so much that when she broke up with him, it killed him, and that he would rather see her dead than with someone else. (Which made me think of the song that I hate that goes something like, "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than see you with another man...") I tried to tell him that if he would just TELL her that he was in love with her, then she would stay with him, because she had broken up because she thought that he didn't love her.
He got some of his friends involved in the conversation (he was a popular boy.) and, with them, we managed to convince him to see where he was wrong. Then, because we had created such a racket, the manager of Chik-Fil-A said that we had to work for them until everything calmed down, which we did. As I rang up one of the customers, the guy looked and me and was like, "So... what's your name?"
We ended up flirting for a little bit. I felt weird and wary of him, knowing that he had tried to kill me and had shot Gina with a toothpick, but, for some reason, I started to feel safe. At the end of the dream, he had asked me out for a date and I had accepted. The last thing I remember is him following me (about a step behind me and just to the side) towards the house so that I could introduce him to my babies. He said he loved children.
