a bad dream.

it began with a push and a burn.

how and why i don't remember, but for some reason the main cook pushed me and my arm fell into that vat of boiling grease.

i don't remember the pain. i remember looking forward to the future and talking about it in the past tense. pointing to the bubbled skin that marks my arm.

now we're back to the present, a few hours later. it's winter and it's dark.

i'm walking home and about to approach the apartment building behind the restaurant. i see a tenant, in this dream, he is an old high school friend who lives on the east coast. in real life, his name is brian and his wife is expecting their first child. but in dream life, he lives on the third floor and he's sipping a beer in the dark, watching the street. and for some reason, i sit down in an artificial snowbank, man-made from a plow, and watch him.

i remember that i don't live here anymore (in real life, when did i ever?) and i'm content sitting in the snow bank. i somehow doze, watching my tenant who is watching the street, while i nod off sitting in that artificial snow bank.

and then snow. i'm being hit with snow. i wake with a jolt, not sure where i am, scared and disoriented. i look behind me, and too close behind me is a man throwing snow at me. i stumble away from his closeness, panicked, and disturbed by his smile.

i back into somehow else. his look is less disturbing, but his proximity solidifies my panic. i feel surrounded, i feel unsafe, and the scream that i want to scream is bubbling in my throat like a feeble baking soda volcano.

i walk quickly to the back door to the restaurant and scurry in. except he's followed me, the one who disturbed my fanciful sleep, and now i'm backing up slowly in the hall, scared for dear life as he creeps up to me, in time with my backward shuffle, that smile on his face.

i scream:

AJASHI!

i call for my cooks whom i've known for so long that i call them uncle in korean.

AJASHI!

my panic rises quickly as no one comes to my rescue.

AJASHI!!!

the omnipotent self who is witnessing this dream sees that the restaurant is near closing and the cooks are in the back, jackets on, shooting the shit, the ashes of their cigarettes falling into the dishwater. but no one cares, as it is unlikely that no one hears, about me and my panic.

i give up on my rescue. i am still dancing the slow backward shuffle, and he is still matching my pace. my screams and my panic do not faze him. i focus on him and scream over and over, "BACK OFF."

BACK OFF.

BACK OFF.

BACK OFF.

BACK OFF.

BACK OFF.

BACK OFF.

i am red in the face. i am crying scared tears. my heart is lead thumping in my chest. my real self imagines what my dream self wants to happen: an ajashi on each side, grabbing the maniac at the elbow, marching him down the hall, his toes dragging on the floor, and throwing him out. even in this daydream within the dream, the maniac still has that smile plastered on his face.

somehow, it must have worked. my real self returns to my dream self's present situation and it's all over. but no one cares about how scared i am, or who these men were, or what they were going to do to me. my mom laughs at me for overreacting. she makes fun of my red face, my disheveled appearance. the only person who cares is dan, who takes my mom aside and whispers,

don't you think that something was about to happen to her?

i'm consumed with tears, convulsing with anger, and sink into a pile on the floor.

it's the next day and they are there in the restaurant. but it's the smiling maniac that causes me to freeze. i whisper to dan, "dad..."

my real self pauses mid-dream. why did i call him dad? what kind of daughter am i to call another man something so intimate when my own father is decomposing quietly, cold in the ground, gone for just eight months? except my real self realizes that dan has been a rock in her life since dad passed away, and if anyone was to mistakenly be called dad in a dream, on a boat, as we are docking in petersburg (my eyes flutter open long enough to mistake the lights of port for a very bright moon), it would be dan.

"...dan, that's him, second on the left. in the white shirt and black leather jacket"

dan ambles away from me in the direction of the smiling maniac. he lifts him out of his seat, but in a way that is quiet, stern, and gentle, and tells him to pay and go.

somehow, i am at the cashier counter, looking for that damn receipt book when i smell his leather and lift my eyes above the countertop to see that freakish smile. my real self relives the dream, and i am turning in my bunk full of panic and distress.

i'm floating to the top of consciousness, emerging from the dream. i'm in between worlds now, as i hear the ferry's purser making her port announcement and watching myself look the maniac in the eye and telling him to leave.

but even after i broken through the dream surface, i lay in bed soaking in the aftershock of such deep fear, thinking to myself, a few times over

oh, that was such a bad dream. a bad, bad dream.

we're leaving petersburg. and i'm going back to sleep.