.
I take my new lover to see my parents. It is unclear actually, whose house it is. The guy has a room here, so it seems like it must be his. The living room is a replica of my grandparents' house, before they died and the house got turned into a duplex.
The couch is celery and gold colored, the piano is still out of tune and the drapes and carpets all share this dusty green-yellow hue.
Thing seem to go well. This is the oldest part of the dream, and I can't remember much about it. I do know that after a bit, the boyfriend goes out to smoke and bumps into a recent ex-boyfriend. They chat like they smoke together like this all the time. It becomes clear that the ex inhabits the second story of this...duplex and that the ex never mentions me when they happen to be smoking at the same time. He doesn't acknowledge me when I stumble upon them in the kitchen either, or look up at my gasp of surprise. ex's hair is shorn off and he is thin. He moves and speaks like a broken man. I run outside, claiming to need air. I stop running when I arrive at a large building, which could be a mill or a warehouse of sorts. I walk inside.
..
I'm in this building alone, it's some kind of college, there are college age kids all around, and I think I am slightly younger. Sixteen. My hair is long. I walk up to a back staircase in the building and there is a cabinet with a slot in the top. There was a sign indicating that the cabinet contained Nerf darts, water balloons, and other throwing weapons of irritation. I start up the stair and two guys behind me are bickering about the prices and how much money they have left. When I reach the first landing, I am looking out over a sea of college students, languid on this roof, some talking on cellphones, reading. The more petulant looking ones are leaning intently over the railing at the edges and laughing as a group when they let something fly, balloon, loogie, paper airplane, and it meets its target.
When I look up, I see that there is still a roof over us. This is the "roof floor," but it feels like the second to top level of a parking garage. I asked someone why no one was on the real roof and he gets a scared look on his face and says,
"Well, we're not allowed to go up there."
It's not hard to find the forbidden staircase, which seems to be blocked off by way of placing a chair on the bottom step. When I get to the top, I see a lot of rubble. Old posters, bicycles, lawnmowers. The kind of junk you'd find in a pack rat's garage. "I'll fix it this summer" and "It'll come in handy someday" kind of stuff. I climb over it until I come to water. There's an air mattress floating conveniently in it, and I lay myself across it and paddle with my arms. This is when the men see me.
...
Good looking men, I think to myself, after we emerge from the water. The leader is tall and solidly constructed. The small one regards me with a leer, then turns to the leader, who nods.
"Who are you people?"
The small one starts walking to me. I notice his yellow teeth when his smirk becomes a grin of anticipation. He is pale, with very red lips.
"I will make you want me."
He is short, thin. Flexible. He grabs my shoulders and pushes me to the ground. He was wearing lipstick but now it is in my hair and my nostrils. Under my fingernails, which will undoubtedly be torn off and tossed from the building once they have killed me, as part of the cleanup.
This man whose teeth were unbearably crooked, whose face was the same, crunched up like he'd spent years with his cheeks pressed against glass. His skin is pallid and pockmarked, his eyes are colorless. His hair stands up from his head at angles. We turn over a few more times, him trying to do god knows what, me trying to keep his lips from touching me.
I grab onto his face and hold his head against the concrete floor. He shakes me just a bit loose, and I catch my grip again with my thumb against his eyelid. Not hard enough to injure him, but firm enough that he won't forget it's there.
"Yellow, please, yellow."
I let him up.
My alarm sounds.