Jennifer helps me move a bed, and I trespass at an old couple's halloween themed mortuary residence

 

The thresher is coming, and I'm running around, grabbing all the stalks of corn that I can before the giant mechanical predator devours my dream landscape. If I stand still, if I don't grab what I can, it will all be gone within minutes of my awakening. I have to preserve the environment, so I am letting Jimi's soundtrack play on. It's from a film called Music, Money and Madness, a documentary about the making of Rainbow Bridge, and it is just one of the many all-night movies that I keep queued up to keep my mind active while I sleep.

 

I dreamed that Jennifer S_____, aka Jennifer C___, was with me at my little Paradise house. She had been summoned by me in a moment of need, and as per her usual angel protocols, she appeared. Certain people just radiate warmth and energy, and she is one of them. 

Jennifer recently sent me a Christmas card, and now I owe her an email, which I am having difficulty composing. It has been four years since the last time I saw her, and I am having a hard time trying to summarize what has transpired in that long interval. Bullet points are not my strong suit, and my summaries need appendices, since they wind up being full-length books.

"I'm so happy to see you again, Jennifer!" I exclaimed, exuding the pure, genuine emotion which I only ever experience in dreams. 

"It's good to see you too, Andrew," she beamed back at me. "How can I help you?" 

Although Sharon had passed some months earlier, my house was still a mess. I needed to move the giant bed, the monstrous relic from her illness which was taking up the entire living room. I pointed to the double Cal King Electropedic adjustable bed.

"We need to move that outside," I said, in a dubious voice. 

She didn't even blink. She just began taking the bed apart and toting the pieces out to the front yard. I guess I helped, but she seemed to be doing the heavy lifting. I got the impression that there was some otherworldly power at work, since the job was done in minutes, and she didn't even break a sweat.

I thanked her for showing up and for all her help. Now for the part I was looking forward to: the goodbye hug. I embraced her as if we were doing a tango, wrapping my arms around her lower back and dipping her almost to the floor. She laughed, and we danced around the yard, comfortable in each other's arms. She was still married in the dream, and I had a brief thought that perhaps we shouldn't be doing this, but it quickly passed. 

As much as I wanted to remain in that moment, soon the movie scene changed, and I found myself wandering in a suburban neighborhood, where I saw an interesting looking house that appeared as if it could have doubled as a mortuary. It looked abandoned, so after a hesitant knock on the door, I turned the knob and let myself in.

The house place looked empty, but there was this feeling of a presence, as if the old tenants had taken great care to pack their memories away into every little nook and cranny, just out of view. I tested this theory by opening a drawer in one of the built-in cabinets along the wall, and it was just as I'd thought. The drawer was overflowing with little trinkets and mementos from some old couple's travels and life together. 

I shut the drawer and excitedly began exploring the rest of the house. I opened a closet door in the hallway and was pleasantly shocked to find a full-sized coffin, lining the interior of the storage space. It was as if you were looking into a pillowy satin chamber. I thought it must be some kind of Halloween decoration, since no one could possibly have use for a upright coffin built into the inside a closet. Or else, perhaps--just maybe--these people were a little freaky.

I poked around a bit more, but soon the excitement of exploration turned into a feeling of guilty apprehension, like I was trespassing, and the people who owned the place might be nearby. I bolted out the front door just in time to see a 1970s lime green station wagon pulling into the driveway. An older couple got out and began unloading groceries as I sprinted across the yard, unnoticed.

That's all I could bring back with me from dreamland. The thresher was moving too fast, and now my dreamscape is as bare as a freshly harvested field. The feeling of the radiant warmth of Jennifer's hug and the uneasiness of guilt from snooping around on the older couple's mortuary-themed home still linger in my chest and stomach.

 

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Editor's note: Transitive vs. intransitive verbs. A transitive verb requires a direct object, an intransitive verb must stand alone. Some can be both, as in I walked the dog  or simply, I walked. Others can only have one function: to define an action, as in I multi-tasked or I gesticulated.  

Trespass is an intransitive verb. I had to look it up when I was writing the title, since I was going to say, "I trespassed an older couple's residence," and it just didn't sound right. This is the level of fiddly, fussbudgety grammar Nazism that I've become obsessed with of late. Just never you mind the rest of my punctuation and usage errors, that's just creative license or amblyopic laziness. 

And don't even get me started on commas or semi-colons again...