i_dreamt_that_i_dreamt_02 unhinged she didn't have shoes or a coat on. she ran through the yard to the edge of the woods and found the path, even covered with snow, that took her to her little hiding spot. she had found it in junior high school; it was her refuge, her real home. she kicked through the powdery snow down to the dead leaves and grass. birds cawed and flew away in her noisy wake. in the emptiness of early spring, the forest didn't offer much to hide behind. lilly could still see her parents' house from the little clearing. i'm sure they can see my bright blue pants still, she thought. lilly sat on a stump with her back to the house, hoping her brown hair camoflauged her like a tree trunk from her mother who was now hysterically calling her name from the porch. mom, she's always hysterical about something. that's probably where i get it from. she wouldn't be able to handle it at all if she knew i was sick. dad, he doesn't think what i have is a sickness. jake, well, i should at least not see him for awhile now. maybe i should just move away, pack a suitcase and disappear in the middle of the night. 'LILLY!' no, couldn't do that. not to mom. i disappear into the woods two hundred feet away from her and she's already psychotic. maybe i should just take the medicine the doctors want to give me. the pamphlets didn't make that stuff sound too good though. one of the barn cats drifted up to lilly meowing for a scratch. 'hey glaucky what are you up to?' she absently reached down to scratch behind the big tom's ears as he started to pur like the broke down tractor in the shed. at least the animals around here get me. maybe i should just spend more time in the barn helping dad. anger boiled up in lilly at the thought of jake bleeding on the front hall floor when she noticed the police car pull in the driveway. 'oh shit glaucky. dad punches out my boyfriend and then calls the cops on him. and he only lets the pretty cats in the house. i gotta go rescue another stray that's about to get put down.' she picked glaucky up amid all his protest, kissed him on the nose, and gently set him on the ground even as his back paws scratched the hell out of her. glaucky ran toward the barn and lilly ran toward the house. 070428 ... crOwl she was approximately fifty feet from the house, slipping on the snow littered grass when she heard the initial shot. at first she thought it was a local hunter engaged in routine target practice for it was a sound she grew up hearing, as familiar as the hysterical, haunting call of the wild turkey or the fragile honk of a passing canadian goose. but then, it was so loud and close, followed by three more in such rapid succession that she realized with sickening finality it was in fact coming from inside her own home. she heard desperate, primal screaming and knew even as she had known it all her life, that it was her mother's voice. immediately her face went numb and her chest was heavy and completely empty of breath. she froze out of sheer terror and felt like her legs were leaking a substance she did not know she possessed inside her body and all of it was running out like glue, fastening her quick to the soggy earth. two more blasts rang forth and out of instinct she gazed to the source and could see eerie flashes of light in the frosted bathroom window like the a fire being extinguished. still, her mother's wailing, gradually diminishing to the pitiful moans of a cat in heat, seemed to announce that life as she knew it was ending and something tragically horrible and unbelievable was replacing it. another shot and she stopped. lilly dropped to her knees and grabbed at her hair, pulling with such obliviously, terrified strength that it came out in two tangled masses that wrapped around her fingers like tenacious poison ivy vines. she heard the distant squawk of the state trooper's radio faintly emitting from his car in the driveway and before it could register in her brain, the main wooden door whooshed back and then the screendoor violently pushed open. lilly looked up. the screen door slammed shut and lilly flinched, thinking it was another shot. it was jake. his white t-shirt was spray-painted with blood that was not his own. for a bizarrely twisted second she thought it looked cool, as if he could make them and sale them on the street corner of a hip neighborhood for at least thirty dollars a piece. but it was his face that she stared at for there was a look on it that seemed absent of everything, empty as an unbroken bottle thrown to the side of the road. she saw the revolver in his hand. he lifted it to his head and lilly thought he was going to shoot himself. instead, he scratched himself with it. "stand up, lilly," he said. he brought the gun down and held it straight out pointing it at her. he took three steps across the porch, one step down, and approached her. lilly could smell the powder of his previous shots and something even more metallic. she didn't know that it was the blood. she could not stand up. he came closer until he was right beside her and put the barrel of the gun to her pale forehead. she closed her eyes. she saw herself on a merry-go-round sitting on a painted horse. her dad was behind her holding her on. click. empty. 070505 ... unhinged lilly sat straight up in bed. her heart leapt up into her throat and her chest heaved with breath that seemed stuck. it had been years since the last time she had that dream. 'what's wrong babe?' she brought her knees to her chest and a tear fell down her face. gavin looked up at her. 'lil? did you have another dream?' she nodded and sucked in a ragged breath. 'but it wasn't just a dream. it was something that actually happened. when i was younger; when i first started college.' she was trembling now. gavin sat up next to her and tried to wipe the now steady stream of tears from her face. he didn't know much about lilly's past. she had moved to the west coast a couple months ago. he met her in a bar slamming whiskey the same week she moved to town. almost everytime he tried to coax any information about lilly's past out of her, she got angry. on their second date, she stormed out of his apartment and wouldn't return her phone calls for days when he asked about her family. in the three months that they had been together, she often woke up fitfully in the night. usually, she got out of bed and got a glass of water. gavin was starting to get upset at her quiet recalitrance. 'babe, come on,' he pulled her close to him. he could feel her shaking as if she had some kind of internal motor. the words spilled out in a monotone voice. 'i dreamed of the day when i was 19 that my boyfriend killed my parents. he wanted to kill me too but he ran out of bullets. my parents hated him, especially my dad. he's in jail now. i think when my dad punched him that day, he knocked something loose in jake's brain.' her shoulders shrugged in gavin's arms. gavin softly petted her. neither one of them could fall back asleep. 070523 ... unhinged i_dreamt_that_i_dreamt_03 070611 what's it to you? who go blather from