Search This Blog

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Newtown Nightmare

      I had a Newtown Nightmare the night before last. I'm not sure if it is the first dream on the subject as I don't usually remember my dreams (a result of sleep disturbance I have had for the last several years). This one woke me up. I couldn't get back to sleep then despite it being only 4 AM. The dream stuck with me since, and I decided to write about it. Maybe then it will leave me alone. A school shooting occurs in the novel I am currently trying to sell, so it affects my writing in several ways. Still I concede, as with most dreams, this is just weird.

     The dream opened in the reception area of a college. I felt as if I was one of the many students present in the room. A young Ryan Secrest kind of guy was working behind the counter and we were all looking to him to provide us with information. The mood in the room was happy and unafraid. Ryan-guy acquired a newspaper out of nowhere and began to cry much like Tammi Faye Baker used to. Little girl geysers and a mouth moving wordlessly. Still in a happy mood, and apparently feeling quite comfortable there even with the tears, I jumped up on the counter (sliding and sitting not standing) and spun the paper around so I could read the headline, which said something like, "The Shooter is in the Building". Once I read it to myself everyone knew what it said and meant, and all began to scramble. I tried to leave the building but armed guards wouldn't let me go.
     I began to occupy a series of hiding places, mostly little Harry Potter closet kind of spaces, and usually I was alone, though at one point the setting began to look a lot like the RiRa, (a local old bank turned Irish pub) and I was insisting that "we should get in the vault". In one of my hiding places I spent considerable time texting my last wishes to my father (who does not text).
     Eventually, I was watching out the window at a rather generic cobble-stoned quad, when the shooter took out three soldiers who all were pointing impotent guns at him. I watched them fall like three bowling pins. The shooter, in blazing white sneakers, stepped forward his gun still pointed at others, and I think by only the element of surprise, a little girl, about eight years of age, stepped out of a small crowd, fired a hand gun, and took the shooter down.

     What do you make of them apples?