Trust me. You want to read this.

I just had the strangest dream and I thought I'd share it with you guys. Tell me if this isn't Malcomb quality.

In the dream, I was a teenage asian girl with short black hair and round glasses. I had been hanging out with some friends, some of whom are real people I actually know; others were just made up. Anyway, in the dream I was tired and went upstairs to my bed (which was next to this really big window with flowing curtains. Even through the curtains, the streetlight outside was so bright I had to turn away and face the wall.)

Once I was asleep, I found myself dreaming (inside the dream). I found myself in an old apartment building with really dark green, almost military green walls. Peeling wallpaper. Maroon carpet. Dark wood doors with tarnished brass knobs. In the dream (within the dream), I had this double-barreled marble gun that would really sling marbles if you laid on the trigger. I walked down the hallway for a while until I found a door standing open.

I stepped inside the open apartment. It was small, decorated in the same claustrophobically dark colors. Outside the windows it was dark, and somehow I knew (from the quiet probably) that everyone was sleeping. There were little gadgets everywhere, on the table, the couch. The floor was covered with bits of old lettuce and carrots and, strangely enough, rabbit droppings. In the living room there was a big screen TV, but the screen was reflective like a mirror. The girl I thought I was in the dream (a girl with more than a little spunk) knew she was dreaming, so she pulled the trigger and shattered the front of the TV in half a dozen places. It broke just like glass, but held together like a windshield.

About that time, a little girl (also asian) walked into the living room from one of the back rooms. She was dressed in incredibly strange clothes. Almost like an eighties exercise outfit complete with a side ponytail, layers of loose neon clothing, leggings, and those rolly-polly socks.

Now this is where it gets weird: The dream (within the dream) seemed to solidify, somehow. The asian girl (me) was beginning to doubt that she was dreaming. Now she became embarrassed and a little afraid standing in front of the busted up TV with a double-barreled marble gun. The little girl (the one in the eighties garb) walked up to "me" and said something cross like, "What did you do to the TV?" It was cute in that grumpy little girl kind of way.

I was trying to explain what I was doing, praying that the dream would just dissolve and I would wake up in my bed (next to the big window with the bright streetlight), when her older sister (also fairly young) walked up beside the little girl. Fantastic, I thought. So I kept trying to explain when their father walked in from the basement. (They had a basement suddenly.)

At this point, I was COMPLETELY certain I was not dreaming. I was just a confused teenage girl who had just trespassed and shot up somebody's mirror/TV. There was not a single part of me that remembered my bed (next to the big window). And there was certainly not as scrap of thought that remembered Steve Stewart lying in bed next to his wife, with a fan blowing in his face.

Anyway, the father (also asian...japanese, I had decided by this point) was staring at me sternly. He looked like an inventor. He had the obligatory "funky goggles" up across his forehead and the standard greasy overalls. We spoke for a little while; I won't pretend to remembered each thing we said, but the jist of it was this:

He was angry about the TV, but understood that I had thought I was dreaming, and that I was not from his "dimension" so he said he would put me to work until I "woke up." I went downstairs and fell asleep in the dream (within a dream.)

When I woke up (in the dream within a dream) I went upstairs to find they were cooking breakfast. The asian inventor and his two girls were eating eggs and bacon at the table, but all around the house were rabbits eating veggies. There were normal rabbits, giant normal rabbits, humans with rabbit heads wearing over-alls and goggles, vaguely humanoid rabbits (like were-rabbits) that were human in size but still very rabbit-like. I have a very clear image of one of these last kind lounging in a chair and watching a small TV set up against the opposite wall (presumably because I broke the big TV).

But seriously, if you can imagine a gradient ranging from normal rabbit to human, every last step on the way was chilling out in this apartment, eating breakfast. I was realizing, with some amazement, that they all worked for the inventor guy. I found myself wondering what the big project was.

AND THEN I FREAKIN' WOKE UP.

I leaned over and I had just gotten a text from my brother Paul, telling me that I had 40 new members to the db facebook group. That was good, at least. I tried to wake up Lynna to tell her my dream, but she was, as they say, OUT. I want to make it clear that I have not fabricated or "photoshopped" this dream in anyway. It is as complete and untampered-with as I can make it.

So there you go. If there is one thing I want you to take from this, it is this:

No. Not that I'm crazy. It is this:

Don't eat McDonald's cookies before bed. (Peace. More db to come.)

*edit*

I got up to get some food after writing this and I saw a roll of toilet paper sitting on my printer, and I remembered the thing that had been really freaky about the whole thing. When I woke up, I already had that feeling like I was out of place in the world, like the dream had been more real than I felt comfortable with. So what happened next made me feel that much more strange, even scared.

You know how in movies when somebody does something extraordinary, the movie-makers always try to show the viewers what a strain it was on that person by giving them a headache/making them pass out/giving them a bloody nose/etc?

So I wake up from the dream, try explaining it to Lynna, walk into the bathroom to pee and I realize I'm all congested. I pull some toilet paper off the roll and blow BLOOD all over the toilet paper. That has a way of putting a little mortar between the bricks of the dream, you know what I mean?

In reality, I realize I'm just in love with stories and, as a result, I see them everywhere. But it was fun, for that moment, to sort of BELIEVE that I was wrapped up in something extraordinary. Reminds me of a poem I read when I was a kid:

Sandra's seen a leprechaun,
Eddie touched a troll,
Laurie danced with witches once,
Charlie found some goblins' gold.
Donald heard a mermaid sing,
Susy spied an elf,
But all the magic I have known,
I've had to make myself.

Sad, but true. Have a fine day, friends.