I think this place is to blame for this. I thought this dream had been exorcised, but there it was again last night.
*****
I'm trying to get to a place on a bicycle. There's lots of water, and the water has tiny bits of gravel in it. The wheels keep getting clogged up with the gravel. I get to a street and some car almost runs me over. The two guys in the car stop, roll down the window, and say, "You know that girl you dated last year? She's dating those creeps now." (I know exactly who they mean. The girl is the Metal Firecracker and she's been dead now many, many years.)
I finally get to this house, and there's some sort of party going on. And then she walks up behind me. I turn around, and she's just as lovely as ever. That sort of wild, young Marilyn Monroe, slightly unkempt type of lovely. I'm re-smitten, of course.
She's trying to tell me something about what's going on, but there's too much noise and too many people. I take her arm and we move to another spot. But there are these two really loud and foolish girls talking loudly and looking at us. They are listening to us, aren't they? And they were just over there where we came from, weren't they?
I see a door to a room nearby and she and I go into the room. I'm aching with love and longing, but I know it's no use to confess that to her. She's no longer mine. She is very close to my face as she says, "I really don't want to hurt you."
I say, "Well, it's not a hurt like you were marrying someone else. Or a hurt like you were having someone else's baby. Or a hurt like you were.... dead."
And that's when I stagger backwards and say, shakily, "But, you are dead." The horror of that epiphany racks my whole body with shudders, and I can hardly stand up. Her face becomes horrible with long yellowish teeth and she's trying to reach out and... grab me? Hurt me? Beg me to help her?
*****
Just talking about this dream will not help them stop. I only write this as a log to refer back to and try to understand why, after so long, it would happen again. I know it's this place, which begs me to remember every detail of my life. A price to pay, I suppose.