cimorene

i go--somewhere. (i think it's college at the time but it's not). i'm in another city, somewhere, living and working inside what seems to be mostly a post office, only i'm like a... slave? or something. there's this woman in charge of everything who's very scary because she's locked in this back room on drugs all the time, and then my more immediate supervisor is a tired thin man who reminds me of remus lupin. i'm hiding, and drinking glasses of water crouched on the floor at night and trying to read by candlelight (candles melted onto the bottoms of overturned wooden crates). the lupin-boss is going back and forth between the two places. i am naturally beginning to fall in love with him. then purely by coincidence

guinevere33 enters the post office. she sees me and is astonished. she rescues me. i leave. the lupin-boss drives us away on her authority (...i don't really know why she was able to rescue me) and when i'm getting out of the car, i tell him that i don't think i am going to work at the post office any more when i return to school, because christmas is a bad time to be in a post office, right.

so i'm once more home--in tuscaloosa, though not home--in my house, and am with mom and dad and my sister and mayumi (japanese exchange student from several years ago). we go to the house. there are people there. we know something is wrong and get ready to solve it. what we don't know is that there's a crazy person holding hostages. my parents unknowingly send first me, then mayumi to the other end of the hall. luckily, they keep lillian. mayumi gets drawn into the living room. she is going to be safe, presumably, if she sits there. my parents are watching this (peering down the hall?) trying to figure out what's going on. i see the people and that mayumi can't move, sneak into the library instead and watch across the hall. no one in the living room has yet seen me. i crouch behind a miniature toy chair which is not big enough to actually hide me. i try to drape and afghan over my head. eventually i have to sneak back down the hall but when i leave, one of the hostages is sitting on a chair outside the living room rocking back and forth. stares at me but does nothing, so i slink back down the hall. at the end next to the door of what used to be my bedroom, is the little old man who i immediately understand is the crazy guy holding the hostages. he's staring straight ahead and moving woodenly. he has these elastic-plastic loop thingies in many bright colors and various sizes, sort of like those little loops you weave potholders out of only plasticky, and he's got them draped all over the corners of the picture frames. i'm crouched nearly to the floor there, trying to open the door to where my parents are without making noise. he lifts one of the things in the air over my head and mutters something and i know he intends to strangle me with it. my hands fumble with the doorknob. finally i dart around him into what used to be my bedroom and lock the door and yell for my parents. they somehow capture him. he goes to jail. we go to get mayumi and find that they have given her drugs. 'are you alright?' i say.

she lies back on the couch and closes her eyes and smiles. 'that woman, she gave me something called--corn sweetener.' (yes, that's really what she said.) my parents and i exchange fearful looks. 'as soon as i had it i knew i--never wanted to eat or drink anything else ever again. oh, it was so good!' and she sighs, and my parents and i are stricken, immediately knowing it's some kind of drug. some mysterious and sinister kind we've never heard of, of course. but at least with the hostages gone, she'll never be given another dose.

and then... i wake up.