it was a large brown mansion. really really huge. we walked in through the giant oak doors.

once we got in we knew something was wrong. there were people walking around like zombies. they were wearing old school academic robes, and they had a greyish hue about them. one of the girls i was with noted that she could see others, barely visible, almost floating through the halls.

i knew that if i didn't give myself a task, i would fall asleep like they had. so i decided i needed to find ron hynes, because i knew he had disappeared inside this house. most people thought he was dead.

i started going through the house. i went into each room methodically. it was hard to concentrate. in one of the rooms an old man sat at a large desk and stared off into space. he said "this house is larger than you think, my dear".

i went out of his door, and sure enough, there were more and more rooms branching off of hallways. i saw staircases leading up and down, many of them near each other and leading in alternate directions. it didn't matter, i knew i could do it methodically.

i got to one closet-like room, and almost fell through a hole in the floor. but wait, no i didn't because the hole closed over. every time i lifted my foot it would open, and every time i went to put my foot down it would close. i reached down and pried it open. there were lights like on a stage underneath a sliding door. it had a girl's name on it. then i realized that some of the translucent people weren't people at all but holograms. i wondered if they were once people trapped in here, and made into holograms once they were dead.

i knew what i had to do. i went to the main room with my friends (i was fighting back the grey mist that swam before my eyes, denser and denser every minute). they were sitting around a table looking at a bottle. there were labels all over this bottle. i peeled one off. a man in front of us vanished. i peeled off another, same thing happened.

i knew that this bottle was at least going to help me distinguish between people who were living and trapped in the house and people who were holograms. i hoped that r. hynes, standing next to me, would not vanish.

i watched a dark cloud roll toward us. i could see snow falling, in a sheet from the edge. it swept over us.

i walked through the security gate into the enclosure. there they were. story book monsters, hairy ugly beasts. but somehow they were beautiful to me. if anyone could understand them, it would be me. some were birds like giant ostriches, some were blood red wolves. at first they were frightened of me, and wouldn't let me pet them. but gradually they started going about their business, and allowing me to lightly drag my hand against their sides or backs as they walked past. they eventually all started going to sleep.

i felt so bad for them, they looked so sad. i went to pet the one that looked the saddest, he was a blue beast, i couldn't tell what kind of animal he resembled. he got up angrily and started walking away, muttering about how they are always patronized, how he didn't want to be petted, just left alone. he wanted to be treated as an equal.

i followed him. he got out of the compound somehow and suddenly he was a great hairy giant. he had a big silver ball which started bouncing down a gorge. he started chasing after it. i wasn't the only one following him though. i wanted to see where he was going, but the man who followed him wanted that ball.

i followed him until he went up. i came face to face with a crazy sheer rock wall that i knew i'd never be able to climb.

we drove the boat past the whirlpool and onto the island.

i was stealing money from the missing boy's wallet as his parents walked up behind me.

just a little sleep, please.

i dreamed that she mailed me a stack of letters you had written me about your love for me. along with snotty notes written in jealousy.
i dreamed another lady was on your mind and in your eyes.
i dreamed of a car crash beneath an overpass.

my mom was having a hard time figuring out which streetcar to get on. we were in a yard full of streetcars. they were all shutting down for the night. mom ended up getting on one that looked like a milk truck, and i thought it was the wrong one, but she seemed confident.

i started walking back by myself and this creepy little old man started coming up to me and saying creepy things and trying to grab at me. he was really short, with a bald head and a beard and a bulbous nose, like a dwarf from snow white, only homeless and smelly and lecherous. i had to hit him in the head with a rock repeatedly. he kept following me.

i was massaging the back of a handsome korean man.

we were walking through alleyways. the girl i was with kept trying to get me to eat these curled up apple peelings with sugar on them. they were soaked in LSD. i kept trying to explain to her that i didn't do acid. she was even trying to trick me into eating them, but i was just exasperated.

then there was a giant baboon coming up behind us, with the weird colorful face and everything. i was terrified. the guy i was with was into animals so he thought it was cool, but i knew that baboons were very vicious. i threw it the banana that was in the bag with the apple peelings. it bounded up over a fence and was gone.

i wanted to get out of the alleyway. i couldn't stop thinking about the monkey.

we were going to a concert, and we had to walk through this weird lodge building to get to the stage. but we went very slowly, because we had been summoned by a shady character, and there was a chance we would be sucked up into an upper storey room to talk to the lead alien (also lead singer of the band) and we couldn't quite tell if the top part of the building was actually a spacecraft.

we eventually went in, and bought a few cookies, and continued on through to the other side, where there was a field and a stage. we climbed up onto a ledge and rested our arms on the stage. i was still a little wary of the lead alien, but my friend brought us all some melon flavored shooters so i quickly forgot about it and enjoyed the band.

kim oulette died from a fatal illness. it was insanely tragic.

i was playing with a toy that belonged to my niece. it was a fisher price loom. but it didn't weave anything, it was just some string attached to pieces of plastic that moved up and down in a plastic case thing. i thought it was weird that fisher price made a toy loom.

my sister and i were driving up to a toll booth. she had seen my brother in law go right through a toll booth once, without paying, so she decided to try it out. she drove wide around the end of the toll booth. she thought we had gotten away. i kept telling her it was a terrible idea.

at some toll booths they have spiky strips on the ground that come up and bust your tires if you drive right through. this one had lines on the ground with holes in them, and they shot flames up at your car. we were going too fast for them to melt our tires though.

i was telling her "nicole, they saw you drive through the toll booth, they're going to send cars after us. we'd better stop" but she wouldn't. she didn't even seem nervous, she wasn't driving any faster than usual. cop cars kept pulling up next to us, and i'd think she was about to stop, but she'd drive onto an exit ramp and go onto another road. there were more and more cars showing up every minute, and i was wondering if i was going to get into this ever increasing trouble, even if i was just the passenger.

we were walking along a road next to a building. the road was actually a race track. but it was ok, it was night time and winter and there were no races. but oops, there is a race happening. someone notices us, and makes us get off the track, just before the cars come zipping past. whatever, we think, we will just go across. so we cut across the middle of the track, and cross at the other side. the cars were way on the other side of the track, and we crossed without a problem. but they are pretty fast. i didn't realize they's get so close so quick.

we walk along the side of the track. we have to get to halifax. the side of the track is all slushy, deep as our ankles. we get to the end of the oval track, and start crawling through a hole in the wall. most of the holes have grates, but we can fit through this one. there is snow on the inside. we jump out, and once i do, i am waist deep in slushy water. it is freezing. but it's ok since we are now at the halifax race track.

i see vic eating little lumps of sausage from a vendor. the vendor doesn't want anyone to find out she sold vic sausages, because she'd get in trouble.

waiting for vic to finish, i sit down by the wall, shivering, and watch the race cars zipping past high above me. they are on an elevated track, and i can't really see them because of the wall, but i can barely see their tops. and i can see the effect they make on the sky. they're going so fast they are making the sky turn purple and pink and different blues. it is one of the prettiest things i have ever seen.

i was at a cafe in sackville. the whole town was preparing for a big event.

jimmy from shotgun and jaybd worked at the cafe. when i walked in he was super excited to see me. both him and fred gave me hugs, but jimmy's was much more enthusiastic. i thought to myself "am i on hugging terms with these guys now?".

jimmy showed me a pamphlet for the dance later that night, and then he asked me to promise to dance with him. he was so nice and sincere, that i said i would even though i was worried about not being able to dance.

---------------------------------

later the cops pulled over all of us, the college kids, who were in vehicles driving through fields. there was something big going on, a plot of some sort. someone told the cops i had seen everything, which i hadn't really. but i knew what was going on. if i only knew the names of those 4 ringleaders, i would have turned them in, because as much as i like illegal activity, these guys were dicks. but i didn't so the cop went away. then the ringleaders came over and were trying to intimidate me, in that super annoying way, "uh.. you didn't tell that cop anything, now did you alicia. we know you'd never do something like that" *glare*. i told them i didn't give a shit about their plot, and i didn't know their names anyway, because they were losers. i wasn't afraid of them. they went away too.

my dad was crying, and my mom wouldn't tell me why.

i was in ian's mom's basement. ian's mom lived way down at the end of the pier. her house was beautiful, all plush white carpets, comfy sofas, glass and chrome. we were practicing for our two shows that night.

i had to use the washroom, and i couldn't use the one the boys were using. so i had to go upstairs into ian's mom's giant restaurant. it was a really fancy restaurant. people had to put down a 300 dollar deposit just to eat there. she made me have some soup. she had a weird accent. the soup was really good. a girl came in, she looked just like this girl i met in newfoundland, but she was from kiev or some crazy place, and she had a strong accent. i told her about our show later, but after she left, i realized i forgot to tell her it was at bunkers.

so off we went to our first show of the night. it was in this huge crazy bar. i don't know if it was bunkers or not. there weren't enough inputs or something, so i sat at a table and watched. scott boudreau played acoustic guitar and he was playing my parts. i was delighted by this. everyone in the band was sitting on stools.

i was at a table with that girl i met in ian's mom's restaurant. we were doing a crossword puzzle, the clue was "rats and mice" i really wanted to put "savagogement" but she was like "no, silly, it's 'rodents'". i felt dumb, but still secretly thought the right answer was savagogement.

tf was still playing, but it sounded terrible. no one knew what they were doing. i went up to sing harmony with ian, but he would hold the microphone really far away from him, so all you could hear was me singing. then he walked off the stage and all i could sing were the harmony parts, so the song sounded really weird.

i was at some sort of all women's event. melanie and ashley were there, as well as every girl i know. everyone started singing the old bluegrass standard "i'll fly away". i was stoked because i've been listening to it alot on the o brother where art thou soundtrack. it was all girls singing, so everyone was trying to sing really high, and i had to sing really really low.

when it was all done, and everyone finished clapping, melanie announced that it was the single from some girl's newly released album. i said under my breath "yeah, hers and everyone else's" and the girl was standing right behind me. she was wearing a purple pantsuit. she just kind of laughed as i tried to apologize for being rude. i said "i just make jokes." and "it's just because i have been listening to the o brother where are thou soundtrack alot lately".

i was with an old man, it could have been my father, but he was too old.

we walked and walked down this dirt road in the woods. finally we came to it, the salvation army junkyard. it was a creepy place. the old caretaker (even older than my father), came up to meet us. his clothes were the color of rust, just like the old scraps of metal lying in the yard. he told us we could have anything we found but to be careful.

he started telling us about a young man who went inside the building and found an old college book, and started reading it. but he just continued to read it, on and on, and never showed the slightest signs of putting it down, day after day, night after night. i didn't want to go inside the building to see if he was still there.

then a young boy came, dressed in the same rusty clothes as the old man. he started telling us a story about the junkyard dog. it had the same creepy feeling to it. the junkyard dog just went round and round in circles and never stopped, not even if there was something in its way.

my parents and i were going on a trip. the way we travelled was to sit in laundry dryer cylinders. it got very hot in there. my parents accepted the tradition of closing themselves into their dryers and turning them on. it was very hot in there, and very uncomforable travelling, because the dryers were twirling. i decided to leave the dryer door open, and that way the cylinder wouldn't turn.

we were in new york city. we were at a small, very prestigious school. i found out about a mystery involving the school. then someone put a bomb in the school and blew it up. i drove away from the school thinking that it was my fault that the school blew up. the CN tower stood in the distance against the cloud of smoke from the burned out school.

i was in a laboratory. there was a rare and poisonous species of frog. i was worried it would get loose.

could have been worse

after a night of complete havoc, i grabbed joe o'toole and dragged him into an oversized tv cabinet. i closed the doors and we made out, a lot.