weird weird weird dream

Dad’s still shaken by last night’s hallucination. He says: “Last night I had a very weird weird weird dream that went on and on and on. I had houses that went on and on all around and when I wanted to be myself I couldn’t find my home, but there I was right in the middle of where I’ve always been. Everything was foreign, it was all different, all I was standing on was what I was standing on and all around was foreign things. I don’t know why I’m confessing all this.”

“A lot of people talk about their dreams,” I tell him. “I think a lot of people are scared of their dreams. It’s the wildest, weirdest dream I ever had. All the houses were brick without a single brick missing.” “You woke up eventually,” I remind him, trying to get him to realize that it’s over. “I woke up? I finally came to but I wasn’t awake. I went from one room to the other, back and forth, I could feel it, but I couldn’t see it. Weird. Weird. Weird. In fact, I’m kind of scared of it. It was all all all bricks and stone and everything was screwed up nothing was regular but everyplace was completely done, there was not a brick out of place ever. Finally I said ‘gee whiz where am I?’ and I was scared to death. I could see right through everything that I was feeling, that was the weird part of it. I’m almost scared to go to bed tonight. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

After a pause, he says, “What I think is I’m going back into things I never dared go into before. After you left, I was lost,” “I know you were seeing the houses before I left,” I say. “That’s the trouble, I was seeing them too much.”

“At one point he was asking me questions and questions and questions,” Dad says. “Charlie was?” I’m not sure what we’re talking about. “Charlie Burgess was, and he was smiling.” “You thought Charlie was here in the house asking questions?” “No, he didn’t appear in this thing at all. He was somewhere else. This thing was very strange, very hilly, no streets but walls, walls, walls, everywhere was a wall.” We’re back to this again.

“Those remind me of the stone walls in Gloucester that mark off the edges of the property,” I say. Dad replies “I think I’ve wiped Gloucester off the map. We were going to go and check up on what I owned and what I didn’t own but we never got to it at all. I don’t remember the following trip at all.” “We went there for your birthday in August,” I remind him. “You and I and?” he asks. “Kate,” I say, filling in the blank. “I don’t remember a damn thing about it at all. I tell you, when you get to be my age you run into all kinds of crazy things. But they never seem to be dangerous. And you never saw anyone else. Just walls, walls, walls, crazy looking but they were always peaceful and you never saw a person, no one, just houses, houses, houses. The moment you left I was scared, really scared, but then I calmed down and began to see the apartment and walked from one room to another but still you could see these houses all around.”

“But no snakes?” I ask, thinking of the other day. “No any other animal at all, nothing. Just houses and houses and walls and walls and crooked walls. You could look anywhere and see houses but they never got above the first floor. I’m kind of anxious to see what comes next.”

“I smell the oil from the oil truck outside,” I say, trying for a distraction. “I think my smelling apparatus is dead.” he says. “It seemed to me you had four or five books and a strap around them, that’s all, and we were talking and talking and talking and then you went and then all these strange buildings and I just sat there for a while and finally the real house that I lived in began to come out.”