fishing

I was fishing with Gary, of all people, and someone else who I knew at the time but now cannot recall. It was in a small deep pond, an infinitely deep puddle really, and we weren't using fishing line; we were using long strips of reeds that grew along the shore. We were catching catfish. I had one but then my reed ripped; it took the worm with it. 'I'll never be able to get one without a worm,' I thought, but I slowly slipped my reed through the water and I felt it jerk in my hand. I tugged it and then pulled it tightly, and to my surprise out came a fish! Gary caught it and put it in the plastic bucket which sat between us. It looked big at first but when I looked at it again it seemed small. I repeated the process and caught another fish. It flopped around a bit but we managed to get it in the bucket. I did it a third time, struggled a little, then pulled out a big fish (fat, about as long as my forearm) and tried to land it. We tried to put it in the bucket but it flared out its gills and got caught on the lip of the bucket. "That's more like it," said Gary. "That's the size we need. Look how small your first one was." He pulled it out of the bucket and showed it to me. The meat was pink; it had already been descaled, the skin pulled back, and somehow miraculously had been filleted. It was pink and clean like fish in the seafood section of the grocery store, except the head was still intact, unblinking. "Too late to throw it back now though," he said.

OM

It had went from a place relatively near downtown to a place set out in the woods. I left the restaurant, which was owned by some friends of mine, include the person I was seeing who wasn't Dan but was a few years younger and had a beard. It was late afternoon, and the sun shone with a kind of bleak, washed-out daylight when I left the entrance to the restaurant, but by the time I walked from the entrance down the gravel driveway to my car, it had melted into near-twilight. I approached my car with a strange sense of dread. Then, as I turned towards it, I saw that the front driver's door was open. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit," I thought to myself. But, not wanting to make a big deal out of nothing, I decided to be brave and get in the car anyway.

Out of nowhere, I was grabbed. I can't remember the details of the "attack," but I was grabbed by an old bald man with terrifying electric blue eyes and a face covered in wrinkles and dark liver spots. He was smiling a sick sort of smile at me. We wrestled and fell backwards into a deep pool at the side of the restaurant. I remember looking up at his body from very deep; the sun shone through the water and he hung like from wires. He grabbed at me again and I came up and smashed his head against the concrete side of the pool three times, until blood starting flowing from his nose and temples. His eyes half-closed and he still had the same smile on his face.

I got out of the pool and ran into the restaurant. I was not wet. "Did you see him?" I demanded. I shouted at them all. "Did you see him?"

"What are you talking about?" "The old man! My car was open and he came after me!"

One friend. "Well, I thought maybe I saw something, but I don't know..."

**cue waking up feeling like I'm having a heart attack and covered in sweat**

..

Dan doesn't really remember any of his dreams. How come I remember everything?

d

I was at a beach. I had taken the bus and as soon as I got off I knew I wasn't sure where to get it to go back where I came from, but I shrugged it off and thought I would figure it out later. It was about to be dark and about to rain and there was a man in white overalls sweeping in front of the bus stop. There was a little bit of a boardwalk. I walked down the boardwalk, which was just old, thin planks of wood with no railing, and looked down at the beach. I was on a dune or cliff that fell away sharply to the beach several feet below. The sand was dark and gray, as if it had recently rained, and the sky was still full of thick dark clouds, and the tide was in so the ocean lapped right up to the edge of the shore, leaving only a meter or two of actual beach to stand on. Someone was getting married on the beach. I didn't see a bride, but I knew it was a wedding. The bridal party was scattered about and a few men (young men, one with blonde chin-length hair) in gray suits with cerulean ties were trying to gather everyone together. I called Will on my cell phone. I don't know why I called, but I told him I was at the beach and felt kind of proud of that; for some reason it was important to me that he knew I was at the beach when it was dusk and about to storm.

I walked further and the boardwalk stopped but came up a small tank that had a baby seal in it. A small crowd of people was gathered around the tank watching the seal. I stood in the back and looked at the tank. All of a sudden the seal rushed up to a sliding window that was in the side of the tank and stuck his head out of it. He had an excited, smiling face and made a barking/squeaky noise at me, and the other people laughed and looked at me in amazement. I was embarrassed so I covered my face with my hands and left. I was angry and confused that the seal had made me stand out.

After taking a few feet back down the old boardwalk there was an open doorway and an old and impossibly tall asian/oceanic woman with a long face and her grey hair in a bun leaning over to pick something up. She invited me in and wanted me to drink tea with her. I stepped through the doorway and went to the right where the sink and the kitchen area was. She was fiddling around with something on the floor as I made the tea. Her daughter (her daughter but still older than me) came up to me and I tried to ask how many cups I should pour. I put out three small beige tea cups with a red sort of paisley or floral pattern on them but I leaned in and looked closer and they seemed too small, then when I tried to poor the tea in them I realized they weren't tea cups at all but little plastic things (almost like buttons or those tiny patio tables that used to come in the middle of pizza hut pizzas) and I couldn't use them at all.