“Only at epochs of most intense tranquillity, when the bodily and mental health are in perfection. And at those weird points of time, where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams. And so I captured this fancy, where all that we see, or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” -Edgar Allen Poe

This morning Abby and I slept in, and as we slept I had the following complex, seemingly profound dream:

I am in an elite paramilitary group here in Ada. We’ve been assigned to clear out a suspected house. As we make entry, I am relieved to discover it is the house where I lived in the early 1970s, the one with the olive-colored shag carpet. At the back of the house, I find that my sister Nicole’s room is three time bigger than any room in the house, in conflict with her accounts that it was the smallest.

As my unit and I drive away, I explain to Abby the names of all the weapons we are carrying (I actually did this last night as we watched the movie “Swordfish“). We make our way out west of town to a barn that I recognize. I explain to my unit, which is now just a bald guy I don’t know and my dad (who died in 2005), that I had photographed this barn years earlier before all the wood fell off, leaving just the frame.

On close inspection of the property, we find the body of an old woman, who looks and smells like she hasn’t been dead long. We see lightning strike near the base of the barn and realize it has killed another old woman. When we inspect her, she is wearing water wings made from rusty bird cages.

We enter a house near the barn and find a third dead old woman in the kitchen. I see her cat, and decide to feed it. I open the fridge and take out the milk and pour it, but the bald man tells me that it’s Tarn-X, not milk.

We go back outside, where my dad falls to the ground. He takes my hand and sings a hymn in a woman’s voice and weeps, something like, “And Lord, if I go to the church, will my soul be safe?” As we mount our vehicles and drive away, Abby bursts into laughter as we see that the barn is swaying in the wind just like the grass around it. I make a note that the wind is from the north.