February 11th, ‘99 – OK, I had a not so nice dream last night, and it dragged on and on. It was a vampire nightmare. I was still living with family members, who bore little relation to my own in appearance and numbers, but it was parents, sister and brothers, I do not know how many. No apparent genetics. Anyway, other than vampirism sweeping the locality and what happened with that, the part I remember is that we knew a family member had been infected. Someone had been bitten. So the family had a meeting, in my absence, where they tried to ascertain which one it was. The family, in necessity and impartial justice, was planning to execute the infected member. What was really happening was that the infection had spread a lot further. I overhear the family arriving at the unanimous conclusion that I am the infected member. That’s impossible, I think. I know I was never bitten. But they have concluded that I was. I go into my room and curl up in a despairing terror. I feel like I am dying right there, because I know my execution will be hideously unpleasant. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. I already know what it’s going to be like. I’m lying there, and fighting the judgment, but I’m not the one infected. I know that. So and so is the one infected and he has gotten them to kill me. Then I realize that there is no way he could have convinced them unless others were infected as well. What is really going on is that the majority of the house has been infected, and that they are out to eliminate the uninfected member. I have been lined up for a sadistic killing. I am overwhelmed by my fate, frozen in bed, and I can hear the vampire séance outside my room, down where they are meeting. One of them comes to my door. I envision him coming in and stabbing me through with a stake.
Then suddenly I leave my abjection and think, well, I can prove to some members that I am not infected. All I have to do is spend time outside in the sun. If I was infected I would not tolerate the sunlight. I can avoid the infected ones in the sun. So I climb out of my bedroom window, and up on to the roof of our giant colonial adobe house. I strip all my clothes and lay down to sunbathe on a stack of mats. I intend to burn myself pink and rosy, I don’t care. As I am resting, the mats levitate and I fly away from home on a magic carpet ride. I pass over the fields, a fringe of forest, heading by a neighboring mansion on the shore of the ocean. I pass over their waterfront bay, and it is evening. I have sunned the day away. When I am passing over the ocean bay, I see the oldest son standing on the beachfront. Damn he was good looking, but I don’t want to wax descriptive, other than to say he was tall, built, an Aryan ideal. Then as it gets dark my mats lose their levity and suddenly I am tipped and fall straight into the ocean. How opportune. It is too far for me to swim in cold conditions. So I am conveniently rescued by another nudist, the son who was standing on the beach, just as I go under. My skin is rosy pink from the sun.
He is in the midst of seducing me on the beach, but he was too scared to enter. I was trying to convince him because I wanted the fate sealed, quickly. All of a sudden my family shows up in a small fishing boat with white floodlights. They are looking for me, and they send the youngest daughter, a mere girl, to shore because she looks harmless enough. We were cowering on the shore, having been caught completely nude, and knowing the implications, me anyway. I was trying to hide us both. My amore is taken in by the little girl, who is being highly investigative. What are you doing? Do you know what the family will say?, etc. I turn on him and tell him not to talk to her, as she is performing a function. She tells me I should come back home.
In the morning three members show up at the mansion, a sister (she definitely represented Tal), mother, and the infected son. I think by this point they’re all infected. I’m highly paranoid. Instead of being civil, and treating this like a small runaway liaison, I’m responding as if they’re all vampires. No, I’m not coming home. You had better leave immediately. When they don’t leave fast enough, I begin yelling at them and threaten to beat them off with a chair. I guess they’re powerless in daytime. They left meekly enough. But I come off looking pretty loony toons, utterly savage for no apparent reason.
The dream then shifted, I don’t remember the interim, but here it was on another beach. I am from home again. On the beach the local townsfolk are setting up a small research boat for an environmental assessment of some kind. I find out that I am supposed to be the researcher going on the little boat, and that I will be gone for a long time. My destiny is being set for me, according to others’ demands for my future. I look at the boat and have no interest in its purposes whatsoever. I am so annoyed that I get out of the boat, and then secretly, despite everyone present observing, I send the little boat floating out by itself and watch it jettison. All that lost equipment. The townspeople do not notice until it’s too late. Then I climb up the beach to leave, before they realize I destroyed their precious boat, my designated future.
A little girl follows and asks me why I did it. I am stripping off research clothing and accoutrements.
Because they were trying to set my future, and it’s not the future I want. I want to go and live with my lover, and have a child with him. So I am leaving. I head for the mansion by the beach. I am fleeing by an odd route because I know the townspeople will follow with dogs, and hiding from passing vehicles along the way.