i_dreamt_that_i_dreamt_01
crOwl lilly was dreaming.

she was in the back seat of her mother's 2006 subaru forester, sitting comfortably beside a carseat which her mother used for marina, one of the kazakstan orphan children that she cared for as a nanny. a boy, named jake, about her age, which was nineteen, sipping from a woodchuck hard cider that he stored between his jeans, was driving. he also smoked, filling the car with the smell of burning peaches. in the passenger seat was another boy, named colin. he was quiet and contemplative, as if he was trying to reason that what he was involved in was criminal, and that if he were caught, he would be arrested for theft. jake drove on, making lilly laugh when he spoke about getting stuck in the mud with his quad. he said he was totally covered with muck.

there were other things in the dream that she remembered as she sat up in bed awake, her shoulder-length brown hair cascading on her rosy shoulders. she was wearing a tank top and a pair of pajama bottoms. she could tell they were no longer on a road, more like out in the wilderness, almost like another planet of rock. the only sign of vegetation were the skeletons of former black-eyed susans. they were going fast sideways, laughing, screaming, shouting.

she rubbed her eyes and stretched, her arms raising to the ceiling. she groaned. this was the worst moment of her day. she wished she could fall back asleep. she loved to dream. sometimes it felt like she even left her body.

downstairs in her old farmhouse, with its plank ceilings and floors, its worn persian rugs and yawning cats, her mother was making crepes for breakfast. her father was at the dining room table, cutting and pasting, constructing his current magazine, a perpetual project he worked on and gave as gifts to his three daughters.
"therapy," his wife said.

it was saturday morning and snow had fallen during the night, only on the grass, coating it with a half inch of powder like sugar on chocolate cake. lilly, who had pulled herself out of bed, ran her fingers through her hair and put a mismatched plaid robe on, looked in the mirror and saw a small patch of blood on her forehead near her right temple. she touched it and found it had already clotted. it was a little sore but not much. she tried to remember how it happened but couldn't.

she creaked down the wooden steps and said good morning to her dad. she moved in to the kitchen, did the same with her mom, and poured herself a half cup of coffee and sipped it black. luca, the mother cat of two other siamese they allowed to stay inside, rubbed her head against her leg and meowed. she bent down and affectionately petted her.

her mom finished the crepes. lilly made hers with heavy whipped cream and blackberries and sat down at the table, eating casually with her parents, leafing through the ny times arts section. her mom was watching a youtube video about a french clown. her dad was feeding the chihuahua little pieces of crepe. there was music playing as usual. this time it was neon bible.

they asked lilly what her plans were for the day. she said she was going to work on a song and maybe ride django, her haflinger. she asked her dad what he was going to do and he told her he had to sink posts for the new outdoor goat pen. her mom was planning on catching up the laundry.

the phone rang, bringing a sense of invasion to their gentle family gathering. her mom answered and lilly watched her face, which began friendly, slowly transform to increasing degrees of alarm. "the state police?" she said, at first, sounding like they were calling to ask for funds for a charity event. however, as she listened and said yes to questions about her identity and her husband's, her eyes widened and she yelled incredulously.

"what! my subaru was stolen?!"

her father, who had stopped eating and had been gazing stone-faced at her mother, dropped his fork and stood up. he rushed to the door and looked out. the car was gone. he felt reality crushing his skull as if the devil had thrown a rock at him. it had come as such a shock that he lost all sense of life as he knew it. they had been shopping earlier that night and came home and unloaded the groceries. his plan was to move it back to the driveway, remove the keys, and go to bed. but, he fell asleep on the couch and forgot, leaving the keys inside. someone must have scoped them out from the substation driveway that bordered their farm property. he was sure they saw lilly's yellow lancer and wanted that, but finding the keys gone, they saw the forester and struck gold.

"where is it?" her mom said, her voice trembling with fear and disbelief. "oh my god!" the state police told her they found it at a rock quarry about twenty minutes away. the car was severely damaged, but an untouched wallet was left inside. her dad remembered leaving it on the dashboard because he had to pay the turnpike fare for the ride home.

"ok. he's waiting there. alright." she began writing down directions to the rock quarry, stumbling to understand. her dad nervously helped. "yes, ok, alright. thank you." her mom said. the police told her to meet a state trooper who was on the scene. he would fill out a report so they could give it to their insurance company.

she burst into tears then.

"our subaru is wrecked! somebody stole our car!" 		070421
...
unhinged lilly was sick.


it was something she tried hard to hide from her parents. she didn't want them to worry and dote and cry. they would if they knew; it would be a constant litany of 'are you ok?'s. she didn't need them to take care of her anymore. she graduated high school. she was a legal adult. what did she need her parents for? except for maybe food and shelter and clothes and almost everything an adult can provide for themselves.

lilly was in her room trying on clothes. combinations of colors and sizes that would be sure to piss her mother off. lilly didn't see it that way, that was just what she liked. the thought never crossed her mind that that was what she liked because it put a scowl on her mother's face.

'lilly....phooooone' her mother shouted up the stairs.

'hey lil. it's jake.' lilly waited for the click that signaled her mother had hung up the phone.

'hey. what's going on?' her heart fluttered a little bit.

'wanna go out tonight after your parents go to sleep? i have some hard cider and some peach papers. we could maybe....'

'dude don't say stuff like that on the phone. we could. maybe...' lilly trailed off into giggles.

'call me when your parents fall asleep.'

'k.'


as a nice big blackberry burst in lilly's mouth, she realized her dream really hadn't been a dream. the drugs she did with jake and colin the night before had made it seem like a dream. jake was always talking her into bad shit when they were fucked up. it came back to her with a sickening thud in her gut. she touched the wound on her forehead. the quarry. jake driving her parents' car drunk. the accident.

'lilly...what is all this mud in the laundry room?' came her mother's voice from the back of the house.

lilly couldn't swallow the food in her mouth. busted. she couldn't lie for shit and everyone knew it. dad would come home and notice the mud on her clothes matched the mud on the wrecked car.

'lilly....' her mother's voice grew impatient. two of the cats echoed her impatience at lilly's feet waiting for a bite of her breakfast.

'lilly...' and now there was a hint of hysteria. her mother's face popped into the doorway of the kitchen.

'and why is there blood on this shirt too?' 		070421
...
crOwl lilly's mom, stressed further by the dried blood she discovered on her daughter's white shirt, drove the bright yellow lancer while her dad rode along. the ostentacious color almost offended him. it was such a contrast to the dark blue of his true heart. he couldn't drive because the state policeman had his license. the quarry was far, nearly twenty miles, and as they drove through the early spring, up bucolic hills and around tight bends, they marveled at the distance, trying to imagine their subaru in the act of being stolen. and to think their daughter may have been inside, guilty as sin.

lilly was trembling alone in her bed, sitting up against the massive wooden headboard, her hair piled up like a pillow. she had pulled the covers up around her chin. her cheeks were flushed with anxiety. if it's not a dream, she feared, then i must have been sleepwalking. there's no fucking way i would let jake and colin steal my parents' car. she was afraid of what they might find at the quarry, for the blood on her shirt was not hers.

finally, the woods stopped and the land opened up where the quarry started, just like another planet made of rock. the subaru sat in the top parking lot as if it was a symbol for rebellious victory. the poor win over the rich and this was the spent loot. the ravaged wench, sore and abused.

the state trooper was parked behind and emerged from his running car as the lancer pulled in. lilly's mother burst from the driver's seat weeping at her loss as if illy herself was found dead, for the car, even upon sight, with its tires shredded to the rims and the front corners smashed, was considered totaled. and what could't be seen, the suspension, all wheel drive and automatic transmission, they were all significantly damaged and would be most costly to replace. cheaper to pay off the balance.

lilly's father stepped up to the damage, shivering and breathing short gasps of steam, noticing first how the back windshield had been smashed inwards with a rock and that a pound of olives he had mistakenly forgot when he was taking the groceries in had been crushed and sicilian spices were everywhere. the carseats for marina and alex were basically unscathed, as if whoever stole it had a twisted sense of respect. although the rearview mirror had been yanked off, the radio button broken, and of al the cds, only neon bible was gone. he listened to the sound of his wife's sobbing and he knew the sound for he had heard it before and felt its sharp knives enter the tender places of his body. when she hurt, so he did, for they were growing to become one person.

lilly's phone rang. she dug it off of her nightstand. it was buried under a copy of jim carroll's "basketball diaries."

"hello?" she croaked, her greeting coming out as a question as if someone had seen what she did. 		070423
...
unhinged 'oh. lil. last night was awesome. colin is okay. he just needed a few stitches. he'll probably have a bad ass scar.'

lilly exhaled a breath she didn't know she was holding in. she could feel bile and vomit creep up her throat; she jumped out of bed to the bathroom.

'lil? are you puking?'

'jake, what the fuck did we do yesterday? the staties called my parents and they are at the quarry where we left the subaru. jake, i'm so busted.' lilly was slumped against the toilet.

'don't worry lil. they won't be able to pin it on us. everything will be okay.'

'no, no it won't. my mom found all my muddy clothes. colin had to get stitches so there are hospital records. i don't remember it really. we could have died or something.' lilly could hear pounding on the door.

'let me in.'

'what?!'

'i'm knocking on your door. let me in.'

lilly hurried downstairs as fast as she could without upsetting the rest of the contents of her stomach. the thought of her parents catching jake at their house threatened to overturn her stomach again. 'you know you shouldn't be here. they are going to be pissed enough about the car.'

jake grabbed lilly and affectionately rubbed her stomach. 'but you are so nervous it's making you sick.'

'yeah, and you being here right now is only making me sicker.' jake pushed her away and turned towards the door. 'jake...wait.' he hesitated.

she walked up behind him and grabbed him close. 'you need to tell your parents lilly. at least about some of it. they are your parents. they should know what the doctors told you. and i'm sick of sneaking around like a little kid to be with you. i'm not that much older than you. i don't see what the deal is.' jake was six years older than lilly; of course her parents thought their relationship was a bad idea.

'i don't want them on my shit all the time jake. they are hard enough to live with anyways, always asking me questions. 'what are these dirty clothes?' 'why do you sleep so much?' 'how is school going?' 'why did you get a b in music theory class this semester?' 'are you partying too much?' i don't...i don't need them asking me if i'm going crazy all the time too. you need to go. i can't. not today. i already threw up once.'

lilly's car pulled in the driveway. her mother had silent tears streaming down her face. her father was furious. 		070423
...
crOwl lilly's father held the crime guide that the cop gave him. he would need the info it provided for his insurance claim. he was disillusioned by the cop's lack of authority. he acted more like an understanding neighbor. lilly's dad showed him a cigarette butt he found on the littered floor on the driver's side. they didn't smoke so it had to be the criminal's. "you can use this to get prints," he urged. the cop just shrugged, as if pursuing vandal punks was useless. "no," he said, as coldly as the air. "the snow erased all the prints." no, lilly's dad thought, why find who did it when insurance will cover the theft and we'll learn how to lock the vehicle.

her mother searched the back seat of the ravaged subaru and found a college-lined notebook, its edges frayed. thinking it was lilly's, she grabbed it and opened to the first page.

"weep not for me," she read aloud. her father heard and peeked in behind his wife and listened. "i am not here for much longer and so while i live, i'll live, when i die i will not regret." ~oscar wilde

"this is lilly's," she said, slamming the book shut. she ignored the text to the fact that this was evidence to convict her of wrongdoing. he grabbed it from her and tore it open. a bluejay feather fell out of it and noiselessly drpped to the carseat. he saw a drawing of a half bird-half human creation that stunned him for its ability. he respectfully shut the book. lilly's mother began sobbing again. "why did she do this? what did we ever do to make her hate us?"

"i don't think she intentionally did this," her father said. "someone else coerced her."
"even so," her mother choked. "she was here and look, look," she screamed, pointing at the small bloodstain on the front seat. "that's blood, dennis!"

"come on," he said, turning away, taking the book with him. "we need to find out more." he was feeling a bit quesy and was already shivering from being underdressed.

when they approached the farm and pulled slowly into the dirt driveway, dennis immediately saw a strange vehicle. it was a ford ranger pick-up with about half the back full of fresh cut pine branches.
the lancer pulled up behind it and dennis jumped out. he suddenly remembered who the truck belonged to and was angry, for the pain of lilly's initial experience with the no-good boy that owned it so traumatized her that she still suffered with nightmares about it. 		070425
...
unhinged from years of doing things she shouldn't when her parents left the house, lilly could hear her car pull into the driveway. she started to panic. 'oh no....no. not today.'

jake couldn't hear anything from his years of construction and landscaping work. 'lil?'

'look out the window asshole. i'm not going crazy; my parents are home.'



'dennis? whose car is that? what's wrong with you?' lilly's dad catapulted out of the car with her mom yelling after him.

'it's that jake's truck.' her dad spit his name out like a curse word.

'well, there has been a boy calling the house a lot lately for lilly. he said his name was colin.'

'oh honey.' the tone of dennis's voice also said 'i can't believe you fell for that old trick.'

'don't you 'oh honey' me dennis. i want to believe our daughter. i've never had to not believe any of our daughters. and now all of a sudden the youngest one is going off the deep end.'

'it's because of that jake.' he flung open the front door. 'lilly?' he called hysterically to all corners of the house. one of the cats ran up to him alert and crying as if to say 'intruder intruder intruder.'

jake entered the hall from the back of the house. 'she's in the bathroom...'

dennis grabbed him by the collar and shoved him up against the wall. 'what are you doing in my house son? didn't i tell you to stay away from my daughter?'

jake didn't struggle too much hoping that dennis would loosen his grip. 'let go of me' came out in gasps.

'dennis...stop. just stop it.'

lilly walked into the front of the house. 'DAD....let go of him.' she started to claw at dennis.

'you were the one that stole my car weren't you? how long have you still been coming around here? why would you let him anywhere near you lil?' with each question he smacked jake's head into the wall. he would not let go even though lilly was starting to leave marks and his wife was hysterically punctuating each question with her pleas for him to stop.

'i didn't steal your car. i just borrowed it.'

dennis let go and punched jake so hard in the face he crumpled into a pile on the floor. 		070425
...
crOwl lilly screamed. bright red blood flowed from jake's nose and into his mouth. she dropped to her knees and pressed her face against his. dennis cringed with disgust. she looked up at her father as if it was the last time she ever would and pushed past him, pulled strongly by the flight mechanism. obviously to fight back would be futile she realised.

"where are you going? get back here!" dennis yelled, out of breath from his aggression with jake. but lilly, whimpering uncontrollably, ignored him and burst through the front door. her mother, her heart racing, followed her but could not catch her. "lilly!" she yelled. she watched her effortlessly leap off the porch and run headlong through the thin snow on the grass towards the woods, her long hair trailing her like a cape.

"let her go," dennis said, watching jake sit up. he weakly raised his hand to wipe the blood and leaned against the wall. he slowly stood up using the wall for support and began walking carefully towards the door.

"where do you think you're going fuckface?" dennis said, grabbing him and pushing him back against the wall. he held tightly to his right arm and dug into the front pocket of his jeans. he produced his cell phone and dialed 911. he waited for it to answer. fresh blood ran from jake's nose and dripped to the varnished wooden floor.

"what's your emergency? the operator asked, calmly.
"we need a policeman," dennis said, seriously. "i have the joker here that stole my car." 		070427
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