Something's Growing

The palm of my left hand feels uncomfortable, so I raise my hand and turn it over to look at it. There, coming out of the center, are two stalks of small, leafy, green plants. The tiny, fragile roots are embedded in my skin, and the main parts of the small plants are resting on my palm. I look closer and one of the plants has been injured and is broken at the base, so I pull it off and pull out the roots, leaving the other plant--which appears to be thriving--alone.

I don't know what they are or how they got there, but I know I must protect the one that remains.

Selena

J and I are visiting a city we've never been to before. We're walking down a city street and someone approaches us and says, "The Selena Gomez concert is about to start! Here are free tickets, if you're interested!" We look at each other and shrug, then take the tickets.

Although the building is large, where we're taken inside is a small, intimate venue. When we get there, I notice that Selena is sitting in one of our seats (since there are only empty ones left), just casually shooting the breeze with her fans. One young man two seats away is so excited he can barely breathe. Her assistant comes out to get her so the show can start, and she reluctantly leaves so she can go perform. We take the empty seats and settle in.

We enjoy the first couple of songs but then decide we want to continue our exploration of the city. We get up and leave the building and continue wandering down the street, eventually passing a large electronics store. We're trying to decide whether to go inside or not, when we overhear two young men talking to each other as they pass the entrance. Their remarks were disparaging, to say the least. This makes us curious, so we go inside and find it crowded with people. The owners are handling several transactions at once, so it's quite chaotic.

From watching the scene for a few moments, we gather that people can bring in their old electronics and trade them in toward new purchases. One teenager has handed in something quite old and well-loved, and bought something new instead. The husband puts the old item in a pile, and then he turns around to handle the next transaction.

The wife happens to be over near the pile and spies this new addition to the heap, picks it up, and yells, "Why the hell did you put these in our inventory? We shouldn't be selling this! This is crap!"

The husband turns to her with a warning look and calmly says, "That young lady traded that in for a new item."

"Oh, yes." She then gives everyone around the counter a huge, embarrassed grin and yells out, "Who's next?"

Magic

I sign up for a college course at the bar across the street from where I live in downtown somewhere. The classes are taught by a world-renowned magician. I'm going to learn magic, folks!

House-sitting

My aunt asked us to house-sit for her, so the three of us temporarily moved in. I had trouble sleeping that first night. I was restless. Instead of lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, I decided to wander around the house just to make sure everything was all right.

I noticed that the French doors to the patio were unlocked and slightly ajar, so I shut and locked them. Then I noticed a window was open, so I shut that too. But when I looked back at the French doors, they were now wide open and I heard noises.

I peeked outside and the street lamp illuminated a group of three young people leisurely loading things from the house onto a truck. There were two teenage boys and a slightly older girl who was referencing a piece of paper. They were in no hurry, and looked like they belonged there.

At first I thought maybe my aunt had requested they pick up some things for her either as donations or junk or who knows what, and had simply forgotten to tell me. But then I didn't understand why they were doing it in the middle of the night.

Then it hit me that these people had no idea we were there. They thought the house was currently empty. They were stealing her things.

I started to panic. I was afraid to alert them to our presence in the house, for fear of them hurting us. I decided instead to quietly call 911 and have the police come out to confront them.

While I was getting my phone, I heard them casually drive away. They weren't speeding, so I figured the police could still find them easily enough.

I dialed 9-1-1 and the woman who answered the phone told me that emergency services didn't handle our area, that it was privately serviced by another group. She was really nasty and mean about it, too.

I hung up and called again, hoping to get someone else. The line connected and I heard a man speaking, but he wasn't speaking to me. He was saying, "I'm not here, I'm playing solitaire, leave me alone..." in a sing-song voice. He had connected the line but never even put it to his ear.

So, I hung up again and attempted to call back, but the call wouldn't go through. I couldn't get a signal. I dialed again and again and again, eventually giving up when I heard the thieves back in the driveway again. They had come back for round two.

Since I had been standing at the open doors, they saw me. The biggest of the three ran up the driveway to the house and barged in. I ran upstairs, into where our young son was sleeping. I stood behind the door, ready to bang it as hard as I could into the man's face once he got close enough.

Then I woke up.

Throw it away

I take the old, half-empty, freezer-burned, large plastic container out of the small freezer and hold it up on display in front of everyone.

"If no one likes this pineapple sherbet, please throw it away."

It promptly goes straight in the trash.

Martha Stewart

I'm friends with a friend of Martha Stewart. Somehow I manage to get invited to her workshop, which is basically like Santa's workshop. It's a renovated warehouse, with dozens of separate cooking and baking areas, each with fully stocked "shopping" sections that have every supply and food item you might ever need. To top it all off, the entire place has been decorated for Christmas, with string-lights all over everything, Christmas trees with various themes placed in each room, Christmas music playing softly on speakers throughout the building, and the smell of cinnamon on the air.

Each of her guests can have their own kitchen, each in their own separate room. They can experiment, making whatever comes to mind, or there are libraries of cookbooks so you can make anything you'd like. Martha walks around throughout the visit, helping people along while they concoct tasty treats.

There is a small diner in the middle of the warehouse, with retro booths, where you can share what you've made with your friends. One of Martha Stewart's personal assistants is the waiter.

When all of us had each cooked and baked and eaten to our heart's delight, we were given large goody bags as we left, filled with crafts, cookies, baking utensils, recipes, etc.

I'm ready to go back.

Perilous journey

I'm about six months pregnant. I can see the baby's legs when she moves in my belly. I'm very nervous about being able to protect her when she's so fragile.

I'm driving and the car goes off the road and onto a thick, long patch of grass. The car lurches and the seat belt slams against me, jostling my body. My stomach contorts, and I worry about the baby's safety.

I continue down the road and then I notice there's an orange glow up ahead. The trees are on fire and burning branches are falling. It never enters my head to turn back. I can't get to where I'm going unless I drive through. If I drive through, though, there's a chance the falling branches will land on me and my car. If I turn back, there's no chance at all of making it anywhere. I step on the gas and plow through, hopeful that I'll make it -- and I do, but the car is destroyed. I have to get out and make the rest of the journey on foot.

I'm in a dark stretch of woods. The only things I can see are scary shadows and lots of smoke. At one point I make out a huge snake in a low-hanging branch. It sees me and it's slowing moving toward me. I have nothing to protect myself with except a basket that I had filled with emergency food. My only option is to throw the basket at the snake, in the hopes it will knock it down far enough away that I can get away from it.

I throw the basket in a sideswipe as hard as I can, successfully hitting the huge snake and throwing it from the tree. I hear it hit the ground with a satisfying thud some far distance off.

The burning woods are behind me, but I lost my car. The huge snake is no longer a threat, but I lost my basket.

I have nothing left with which to defend myself from whatever might come next. I take a deep breath and take my next step anyway, my head held high, continuing on, never stopping.

I have no choice.

Intruder

It's him again. He's been here before, deep in the night, always trying to find a weak spot -- an open window, an unlocked door. He tries each one methodically, and I follow him on the inside as he prowls on the outside. First, as always, the front door. He quietly tries to turn the knob, and I stare at him through the peephole. Can he see me, staring at him? I think so, or he imagines so, because he's looking right at me as his fingers are grasping the door handle.

He gives up on the front door and moves around the side to the front patio, and I can see the build of his body silhouetted against the sliding glass doors of my patio window by the street lamps out front, some distance away. I'm glad the curtains are drawn, but I curse myself once again for choosing a first-floor apartment. It's not safe. It invites problems.

He's moved now to the first bedroom window, tugging it gently, soundlessly, but it's closed and locked tight. I do a check of every door and window every night before I go to bed. Momentarily I'm worried that tonight I forgot, but no, I did it by rote, now a habit that I don't even remember doing.

Now, the second bedroom window -- his last option before his plan is thwarted for the evening. He tries it too, finding it closed and locked. Instead of moving away in defeat, he stands boldly just outside the window, unable to see in because of the drapes, just staring -- knowing that I'm behind the window and looking back at him, filled with anxiety.

I imagine there's a smile on his face.

He hasn't been thwarted at all. He's managed to hurt me without touching me, making me feel vulnerable and afraid just by his presence.

I stand there and cry softly, knowing I'll never feel safe.

Falling bricks

My family and I are inside of a large brick building. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people inside. At equal intervals, sliding metal gates scroll down from the ceiling, cutting sections off from other sections.

The gates malfunction and come down hard, and I scramble to locate all my family members and to keep them together in the same section. I want to get out of the building, but everyone thinks it's fine -- it's just the gates and everything will be fixed soon. No, we have to get out of the building now.

I finally convince them to leave. We go outside and are right in front of the building, and I don't feel safe there. If something were to happen, we'd be crushed by the bricks. So I tell them we have to move back. Back. Back farther. Still farther. All the way to the very back, as far away as possible.

There's an earthquake and the building shakes but stays together. Then, half the bricks come tumbling down, crushing hundreds of people both still inside and just outside. Then it collapses completely and hundreds more die.

We are safe. Every last one of us is safe, way in the back, out of the way of the bricks.

How did I know it was going to collapse? they all want to know.

I was just afraid it might, and it did, and I went to each of them and hugged them and thanked them for listening to me.

Windows

Someone rings the doorbell and is standing just out of sight when we approach the already-open door. I slam the door shut and run back to my office, noticing the window is open. I desperately try to close it and finally get it closed and the shade down, when I notice the entire window is coming out of the window frame, leaving a huge gap. Cold air is rushing in. I frantically turn out all the lights so that if the person from the front door has come around to the side, they won't be able to see in while I struggle with the window.

The window is always open. No matter what I do, it's always open.

Bears on a tree

I look up at the huge tree and notice dozens of pine cones hanging from it. Then I look closer and notice they are moving, just slightly. Then one drops to the ground, and I watch in amazement as a baby brown bear unrolls itself, shakes itself off, and takes its first step before lumbering off into the woods. I look back up at the tree and the rest of the baby bears begin to fall from the tree, all rolling around and frolicking, then skipping off into the forest.

So that's how baby bears come into this world, I think to myself. I wonder if that means Mama bears give birth to pine cones.

The bride

I'm at Disney World. We're walking around inside the park when I suddenly notice a voluptuous woman with long brown hair running toward us, by herself, in a wedding dress covered in red dots. The bodice has small red dots all over it, while the rest of the dress is covered in much larger red dots. I realize it's a Disney-themed wedding dress, and I smile and congratulate her as she runs past.

The realm

There are two realms of existence that are represented by a building, like a long shopping mall. One end is for those who have passed on, and one is for the living. Those who have passed on have a gatekeeper/watcher who helps those who are new, and almost acts as an events coordinator. I'm a small child -- boy -- who has passed, and I have no idea what's going on.

I notice that most around me are couples, either parent and child or husband and wife or siblings. There are pairs everywhere. I also notice that some of the pairs have scary scars running the length of their bodies and they're constantly arguing. Loudly. I begin to think that maybe they killed each other and are doomed to bicker for all eternity together. I start to get a little scared and uncomfortable so I start to wander toward the exit of the room, which is the entrance to the living side of the mall. The door has glass panels so you can see the other side easily. It looks like the hallway at one of the casinos in Vegas, full of people. I decide I want to go to that side, and I understand I am allowed to because no one will see me, but that those who are living cannot enter the back room.

I turn the handle of the door and push it open and am given some papers to bring with me -- similar to paper dolls, only much larger. Carrying them is a burden. I've only taken a few steps when a man approaches me and I'm shocked that he can see me. At first I assume he is alive, then I notice his eye is messed up and I think there is a hole where it should be. He looks at me and there is urgency written on his face but he doesn't speak  -- can't speak? He grabs the papers from me and throws them in a large trashcan in the middle of the hallway, then takes my hand and begins to run.

He's leading me through the throngs of people, then turns a corner into an adjacent room that has windows and a door. He stops and looks at me again for a moment, then starts running for the door with me still in tow.

I'm not afraid; it feels like somehow I'm running toward freedom and a better place.

Unprepared

I was at work and was leaving to be picked up and taken to an after-school event for my son. Since I had a ride, I decided to leave my purse at my desk at the office so I wouldn't have to carry it around.

I walked a ways to a local shopping center where I waited and waited over an hour for the ride from the friend to take me to my son but it never came. I even saw other people I knew but didn't ask to ride with them because I didn't want my ride to arrive and find me gone, which would have been rude. I eventually realized it wasn't coming and everyone else I knew had left long ago, so I went inside a local business and borrowed their phone to call a cab. The cab dispatcher kept me on the phone for an hour, telling me the rules and how the ride would work, and one of the rules was that he would need his payment immediately when I arrived. Then I remembered I didn't have my purse, and the office was now closed and locked and my key to the office was in my purse, so I canceled the cab.

We recently canceled our home telephone number to save money since we always use our cell phones anyway, but it took several minutes and several tries to remember my husband's cell phone number (usually I just selected his name from my cell phone contacts) so I could ask him to come get me. He was very put-out, since he would have to cancel some long-held plans, and it would take him an hour and a half to get to me, then to drive to where our son was, and then two hours to get home.

I wandered around the shopping center while I was waiting for him and then realized I didn't tell him where to pick me up at the mall, and I had no cell phone for him to call and ask once he got there, so likely he would never even find me.

I was cut off from my family, my son was abandoned (unless someone had taken pity on him), and, because I had left my purse at work, I was completely unprepared for the turn of events.

I felt hopeless, and wandered aimlessly around the shopping mall for days and days, hungry, cold, homeless.

The jogger

J and I are driving down the rainy road, when a huge branch of a tree appears in the middle of the street. I point it out and then notice a woman in a pink top is jogging right next to it, seemingly pulling it along with her. Then she falls, hard. We swerve around the branch, coming to a stop in front of her and I quickly get out of the car to make sure she's okay and to see if she needs help. A bright white light appears on the other side of the branch, and then she screams at me to get lost; she doesn't need my help.

I turned around and got back into the truck, thinking, You're welcome.