I haven't dreamt in a long while.
I tend to run myself to exhaustion to avoid them.
I have reoccurring dreams that are part memory, part nightmare.
In this one it involves moving to a safe place with friends.
We spent several days camping out of our car while looking for a safe place to go.
Eventually we find a very remote community out in the hills. There is a two story house with a basement, which I guess technically makes it a three story house.
My friends and I are looking the house over, thinking about additions we can make to it so that we'll each have our own little apartment space within it.
As we're settling in there is the sound of motorcycles roaring on the hillsides surrounding the little valley that we're in.
I look up and I realize that our safety and hippieness was just an illusion.
We scatter, hoping into cars.
Trees and dirt fly as I tear across a grassy field heading for the tree line.
A black S.U.V., lights flashing, pulls out of the trees and takes up position behind us.
I feel the sting of an angry bee in my back and the windshield of the convertible spiderwebs into the seat. My friend in the passenger seat falls silent. The S.U.V. has disappeared from the rearview and I hear the crunch of metal in the trees.
I run into a dead end.
Some sort of rodeo is happening and I slow and cautiously make my way through the crowd to confused looks.
I make it around the outdoor arenas perimeter and find another trail leading off into the trees.
That when the world starts to fade out...
And I snap awake as though I had just nodded off.
I've been awake for almost a half hour now and my heart is still pumping with the adrenaline still coursing through my veins.
Despite that near freezing temperatures in my room this morning I am sweating.
