THE POSTSCRIPT, Carrie Classon
“I had a very strange dream,” my sister said, “and you were in it. You want to hear?”
“Sure.”
“I was fired! I came to school, and my fob wouldn’t work.”
My sister is a teacher. It is very unlikely that she would be fired and unlikelier yet that she would be fired without notice.
“But the funny thing was, I wasn’t upset. You were upset. You kept saying, ‘They can’t do that to you! You need to talk to the principal!’”
“Well, I would be upset,” I said, getting a little upset just thinking about it. “I had a weird dream, too. You want to hear?”
“Sure,” my sister said.
“I had this body in my garage. I don’t know how it got there. I don’t think I killed anyone, but it was still a problem. I needed to get rid of it. So I asked a couple of friendly women if they would help me. It was much too large to carry. They agreed, and we all went out to my garage.”
“That is weird,” my sister said.
“That wasn’t the weird part. When we got there, the body was gone — or almost all gone. It looked as if little animals had eaten it up. I guessed it was mice or rats or raccoons. Anyway, it was almost all gone, just a few bone fragments here and there. One of my new friends picked up a whisk broom, and we swept up what was left, and it all fit into a one-quart measuring cup. ‘That was easy!’ my new friend said. Then we trouped outside to bury it.”
“That is very weird,” my sister said.
“It was a happy dream — that was what was weird,” I said.
“My dream about getting fired wasn’t unhappy,” my sister said. “You were just unhappy.”
“Very strange.”
I am sure that if a person wanted to, they could have a great time figuring out what ails my sister and me, but I don’t put too much stock in dreams, other than to note the emotions that come along with them. I have woken in terror over something that seems — upon waking — completely harmless. And then I have a dream where I am cheerfully disposing of a corpse.
My husband, Peter, has repeated nightmares where he is back at the summer camp where he was a director in his 20s. I wish I could tell you that he was canoeing or building bonfires. But every dream is the same. The plumbing in the communal camp restroom has backed up, and there is sewage water everywhere. With the recent leaks in our apartment, Peter has had far too many occasions to relive this nightmare, and it makes perfect sense.
But my sister is adored by her school, and I have never had occasion to dispose of a body, so our dreams are puzzling.
Possibly it is our subconscious daring us to deal with the scariest thing we can come up with, just to see how we do. Our dreams are little tests to see how we would do in terrible situations. My sister learned she would be fine, but her family would feel terrible for her. I imagined I would round up new friends to deal with whatever situation arose. Peter knows that now, just like then, he’d have a big mess to clean up.
“What do you think it means?” I asked Peter the morning I woke up after having swept up the remainder of the bones.
“It means you have strange dreams,” Peter said.
I figure he’s right.
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