broken homes

i tell my cousin jeff that i'll give him a tour of my old high school, and he comes by to get me at around 11pm. it's really late and the school is locked up, so we decide to go to our aunt's house, where a party is being held. when we get there, all we find is a run-down tarp on some marshland near lake washington. they're throwing a party here alright - we've got a huge bonfire, plenty of vodka bottles and maybe fifteen people. still, it's soaking wet out and nobody looks particularly amused. this guy in a robe then emerges from the lake to everyone's excitement and informs the group that we need to move the party to a traditional coast salish longhouse accessible via the burke-gilman trail. we all join hands and make our way toward the house. it's pitch black and i can't see anything. i ask the person ahead of me if they knew where we were supposed to be headed, but all i get are angry grunts.

when we reach the longhouse (it's actually more like an outdoor restroom, but who's counting), a handful of members run inside and barricade themselves in, locking the rest of us out. some of the people outdoors become enraged, picking up logs and boulders and slamming the small house. the damage gets to be enough that the house begins breaking into pieces. inside i find two of the conspirators to be my cousins brendan and brian. they catch a glimpse of me and begin to bombard me with chunks of rotting wood. i get knocked backwards, tumbling down a ravine. i hear a huge crash and see logs rolling past me. the house collapsed completely and i'm sitting there stuck in thick rainforest, maybe three or four centuries prior to the time i got there.

some of the remnants of the party grab me and bring me into a formation around a bonfire, where that same robed guy is giving an oration. according to him, the only way we were going to make it out of the forest alive was by "fighting the dark." he assumed control by dividing everyone into regiments and putting us in army uniforms. "we're being sabotaged by terrorists," he said.

i calmly walk away and find a huge, glowing supermarket, some houses, and a small bi-plane. day was starting to break, and i can make out what look like dinosaur tracks in the mud ahead of me. something is rustling in the bushes to the side of me, but i don't dare look over. i can distinctly make out the image of an enormous flamingo in my peripheral vision. i decide i need to get out of there immediately, opting for the plane to make my escape. taking flight, i look down into the thick forest, unable to spot any of the company i was with before. as i get sucked up into the sky, i let out a shout into the woods below:

"that's for my childhood!"

back to school

I.

i'm peering over a hill watching high school kids being loaded onto schoolbuses (apparently i am skipping some class at shorewood). i follow the buses to this children's theatre which is like 200 meters away. the organizers are trying to take the most talented students from a bunch of different schools and have them perform music, act, dance, whatever. it doesn't seem like anyone wants to be there. the setting is a steeply inclined stage that could've well been a planetarium. a bunch of acts are going up and there's this table of asshole kids making fun of everyone on a balcony. kind of like those old guys from the muppet show, but human and even more obnoxious.

i'm getting really annoyed at those dicks, and i snap at them after nathan goes up and performs an elton john song and they start booing him in the middle of his performance. i yell "SHUT UP" in the loudest voice i can, and the room goes silent. they come over to my table, and the ringleader - this stout kid in a huge t-shirt and cargo shorts with a buzzed head - tells me that he will meet me in front of "the restaurant by (my) house" tomorrow so he can "punch (me) in the stomach." if i dont show up, he's going to kill me. i try to get away from him the entire time we're at the theater, but he keeps following me around. i walk up to several authority figures in attempt to tell on him, but each time he's watching me from a close distance to make sure i wont. i really didn't want to get punched in the stomach, or worse yet, killed.

i meet stuart young so he and i can eat with chris goiney at this restaraunt (the same one that this guy threatened to punch me in front of). everything on the menu is awful; one of the items is clam shells. i refuse to order anything and keep walking in and out of the building to see if this kid is gonna show up. i spent the whole night there and he didn't show up!

II.

i'm at the uw. i'm just getting out of an outdoor lecture on the hebrew bible, only my professor is the history prof. i had last quarter. i leave right in the middle of it because i'd already memorized the whole lecture. i'm crawling up a ladder to get to the bus stop, but the the wind and rain are nearly blowing me off. i see jeremy from far away standing on a building top and ask him if he drove, which he did. i told him i'd meet him on the second floor. i get to the second floor and find kato and ohman wandering around an old fashioned library. kato gives me an old wooden clock and i pretend to read it while sitting in a leather chair under one of those green lamps. everyone in the room starts laughing at me. jeremy comes up and tells me that i really confused him by climbing up to the second floor. we then meet alaina and tell her that we're giving her a ride home. we take her over the aurora bridge, which turns into a drawbridge made of wood and vines. it breaks apart and tumbles into the puget sound (not lake union), which has drained completely. i get excited because i think that it's low tide, and i start lifting up rocks and looking for plainfin midshipmen and gunnels. it's pitch black out and i can see a red dot following me. i turn around and find a woman with a bow and arrow shooting at me. jeremy tells me to run into a nearby cabin, which we do. this turns out to be an entrance back into the uw campus, which kind of bums me out.

i'm back at the uw, going into my hebrew bible section. i take nathan and lauren with me because i'm still afraid that the kid who wants to punch me will come to class. thankfully, he doesn't. everyone started coming in late. my friend muhammad and i start making fun of this guy sitting next to us whose hat is slowly engulfing his entire head. we compare him to the seahawks stadium and its retractable roof. i leave class after 2 minutes or so and look around for the guy who wants to punch me. i can't find him and whisper to myself that he's a coward. just as i say this, i see stuart young again, who's now black. i keep calling his name but he doesn't seem to pay attention to me. i finally get his attention and tell him to call chris goiney because i just found something neat:

*flashback to me looking around the drained puget sound for items*

in this flashback i find what looks like a tent belonging to a young girl. inside the tent are piles upon piles of electronics items that don't excite me all that much. there's a bunch of broken radios, a children's keyboard, two x-boxes, a playstation 2, and a special "girl's x-box," which is just the same thing as a normal x-box, but pink. i just kind stare at them for a while, decide i have no use for any of it, and walk off.

highlights

-me trying to escape fires in a forest in the ozark mountains. something is starting the fires and i'm trying to get away from them.
-climb up a hill overlooking the ocean (where?)--a lot like the cliffs around whidbey island. a blonde girl and an elephant are hiding up there. i tell them to look around for geckos, and we find a rock with a pond under it. it's pitch black but you can see a neon blue gecko hiding in the water. the girl grabs it but i tell her to put it down because the skin's toxic. lukas then appears and starts kissing these really colorful frogs. i tell him to stop doing that, too.
-jeremy is playing a left-handed guitar for a performance at his church. he's in a band with his dad who was playing drums, a reincarnation of paul cho's "stillborn fetus" outfit. in the middle of it, they stop and his dad gives this long speech to jeremy on how it doesn't matter how well they play, just as long as they try and have fun. he reiterates the same points several times and jeremy seems to have enough of it. i am laughing at them.
-walk around this house reminiscent of my brother's friend kevin's old house, which is three stories high (i haven't seen it since the late 80s). i am playing a guitar on his back porch and there are a bunch of people "from my college" gathered around a television, but i don't know any of them. i try to impress them by playing guitar covers of manitoba songs, but they don't really pay attention. i offer to play the bridge to "brandon," but they pull the guitar away from me angrily, telling me i'm awful at it. they hand me a crabpot and tell me to cut it apart, saying that would sound better.

it started with a clown

i'm at the foot of my staircase arguing with a clown. i can't see him, because he's trying to push me out the door down this enormous stairway that looks kind of like the ones that lead up to ancient greek mausoleums and such. i'm trying to turn around to argue, but he just kept pushing me out telling me to leave. he tells me that since i got a 17/100 on my last test, that i'm effectively kicked out of school, could never return to studying, and needed to "rethink my life." a run away for a really long time and make my way down this steep hill into a neighborhood resemlbling a slum village in some latin american country. i need somewhere to cool off, so i sneak into some random house' and go into the basement to sleep. i notice that the tv is left on, and is stuck on the first level from mario 3 for the nes. i get up and look around the house for photos of the people who liv there, finding a bunch of boxes. in the boxes are pictures from my childhood, and all of the popular kids from high school doing fun things with their friends. the pictures start talking and i can hear the people saying how i was really ugly and they weren't surprised that i never had any friends. i put them away and try to crawl out a window, which seems to take a really long time.

i run outside and try to catch a bus home, which is actually just an elementary school bus completely packed full of kids. i'm freezing out there, so i hop aboard. as i walk my way down the aisle, i see how packed this bus is, and no kid looks particularly interested in sharing a seat with me. i try arguing with the driver that he isn't actually driving a metro, but he argues back and keeps telling me to get off. he finally lets me off after i tell him i'd be better off walking anyway. he drops me off at what's supposed to be the northgate area, but is really just the same hill/village i snuck into earlier. i run back down the hill and am being chased closley by two kids on bikes. i can't really make out what they look like, i can only see them speed in front of me and slalom back and forth, giving each other high-fives. i need to find a more efficient way to get home, so i walk over to the northgate bus terminal that's been turned into a monorail station. i sit waiting for the car at the stop, where an elderly black man is taking care of a physically disabled person in a wheelchair.

i finally get on the monorail and sit next to this australian guy who won't stop talking. this guy is really full of himself. he wants to keep a lengthy discussion on theoretical physics going but i'm not paying attention at all. i'm hoping my transparent rudeness will shut him up, but it doesn't work. he goes on relentlessly, bragging about how he has three jobs and only buys white clothing. he is wearing a blue shirt.

the monorail car starts to freak out and gets to a point where there's no longer a track. the thing crashes to the ground and lands on a fountain, breaking all the windows and doors open. people don't really seem to care and slowly line up to walk out as if they were getting off at a normal stop. from here i walk a little ways toward my house. i walk through the front door, which opens up to another front door 2 feet ahead, to another, etc. after a few minutes of door-opening, i get the right one and walk upstairs, where i can hear people scrambling around. seems to be coming from inside my parents' room. i walk into my room to find my body wrapped in covers lying in bed. my face is covered with a pillow and there are red stains and splatterings all over the sheets and the walls. i can see that i've shot myself in the head. a voice tells me that "he didn't want to make any noise while he did it, so he tried to muffle the shot with a pillow." there's a note lying next to my corpse:

"he did it for a game show"

staying out of the water

I.

my dad and i are exploring this sort of arctic field. i'm really frightened to begin with, because we're basically stranded on this narrow precipice with chunks of ice rolling into the ocean, and i'm breaking out into hives. we continue walking around the ice cliff, which turns into flat shore, but the chunks are still crumbling. not too far from the shore i can see a humpback whale having a fit, flailing around and jumping out of the water. it's really intriguing to me, just seeing this massive animal freaking out. a couple of orcas then swim up to it, looking prepared to kill it. instead they just flip around playfully, seeming to mimic the humpback. my dad then reminds me of the time i was 3 years old at the beach park in edmonds when we both saw three orcas jump out of the water. i then walk up to the edge of the shore, the ice/slush stops crumbling, and one of the orca swims up to me at a really high speed, quickly turning around and jumping over the other whales.

II.

my family and i end up at a music awards show as special guests. during the middle of the ceremony the host points to our table on the microphone and says that we'll be performing one of our "new songs," even though we aren't scheduled to perform on the bill (nor were we in any position to perform). i reluctantly take the microphone, and begin to sing an instrumental rendition of "peg" by steely dan. people in the crowd are smiling and seem to be enjoying themselves, but my family is just standing in a semi-circle around me and staring blankly. i get to the point where the guitar solo is supposed to be, and improvise by singing some lyrics that didn't exist in the song. this is enough for me to pass off the song as my own. after that, people start coming up to me and congratulating me on my performance. i'm offered a record deal by a suspicious short man wearing a pillow-case.

III.

the after show party consists of me sitting at a bar and watching jeff goldblum and biggie smalls argue with a bartender about salmon. goldblum is getting really into it, and the bartender just keeps replying "yes" in an annoyed manner while biggie stands behind nodding and grunting. i'm really hungry and notice that goldblum and biggie are hoarding a lot of donuts, so i try for a while to maneuver around them and take one while they aren't looking. during one of my attempts, one of the busboys comes up to me and directs me to another table with some more food.

he shows me to a plate of giant coconut slices in the shape of rings. i eat them, but they're pretty disgusting. i keep taking food from end to end of the table, and everything tastes awful. i start to puke, and walk up to a polluted aquarium that glenn danzig is sitting on the edge of, giving a lecture to a class on the dangers of swimming. i ask him why he is so comfortable near the aquarium if he's afraid of water, and he says that i shouldn't ask questions like that, because i'd just end up making everyone else feel a lot worse about themselves. i tell him that i find his response hilarious. he continues teaching but begins to slowly collapse into the water, where there are chunks of food and a robotic shark jaw floating around. he then dismisses us all and i walk up a staircase that burns my feet really badly.

heist

I.

my brother and I are climbing over a chain link fence. on one side is shrubby desert (eastern wa.-ish) and on the other is a house, obstructed by apple orchards and some bushes. when we make it over we find that the house is the blue house that we lived in from roughly 1994-1996 (it's on greenwood avenue right near highland terrace, the current owners painted it yellow some years ago). we head straight for the garage because we remember that long ago we'd left a stash of toys and other relics there. the idea was that one day we would return here to retrieve them. as we begin to rummage around, we find mostly chunks of wood and empty video cases, one of which we notice had belonged to my sister. i lift a shoebox, finding a small wooden frame of a torso inside. the whole time i'm nagging my brother that we're trespassing, and that if the current owners came back, we'd look really suspicious. right then i see a woman walking behind the fence (she looks to be around 40 years old, white, short brown hair). i open one of the doors of her car parked in the driveway and use it to hide myself. unsurprisingly, this tactic doesn't work and she just walks around it.

i immediately try to explain that if we apologize and leave right away, there would be no need to call the cops. but it's too late; the cops are already on their way. we have enough time to bolt out of the garage and through the adjacent wall into the house (incredible hulk/kool-aid man style), where we find her two children in a crib. they're twins, maybe a year old and both blonde. we kidnap them and run away until we get to an abandoned supermarket with the feel of a costco or other sort of giant store.

we are apparently holed up there, keeping the kids under a ransom of some sort, though it's not clear what our demands are. we drop the kids off in the toy aisle to play and we start to consider how we might get out of this looking innocent. i make my way to the front of the store to see if anyone can hear us (although we're "holed up" here, there are still shoppers walking the aisles). i get really nervous when one guy standing near us begins to shove his glasses inside his ear. my brother assuages me, saying that this is what people do to celebrate their son's bar mitzvah when they can't make it to the ceremony.

people then start to stop and applaud as a disheveled mickey mouse works his way to the checkout counter, with half of his head having been blown off by a shotgun. at this point, my brohter and i turn into puppets, which in turn gives us the ability to turn the children we kidnapped into aluminum soda cans. after doing this, my brother wisely points out that it would still be difficult to get rid of the kids if they were made out of aluminum (during his explanation, a strange bassline similar to the one from "lost in the supermarket" by the clash starts playing, apparently as theme music to what my brother was about to say?). he explains that the only place the federal authorities wouldn't find the children was in our colons. we then proceed to cut the children up into little pieces (remember, they are alumnium cans) and swallow the parts, completely finishing the job in a matter of seconds. we then give up and the police congratulate us, as the boys' mother stands by smiling and shaking her head. i come up to her shouting expletives. i tell her that she's the real criminal for leaving her children at home.

II.

returning home, and still in puppet form, we are tumbling down richmond beach road. it seems really early in the morning, and there are very few people out. we skid to a halt and catch a glimpse of the scenery. my brother notes that it's the first day of autumn because there is a tyrannosaurus rex crossing the road, pooping out huge piles of leaves. i come up to the leaves and start to cry, but he reminds me that we're almost home, which comforts me. we then get on segways and scoot towards our house. we walk into the living room, except it's not really our house. it looks more like a set. i find a broken chandelier lying on top of the living room table. everyone from my family is gathered around the table in prayer, and i ask what the occasion is. my mom reminds me that it's thanksgiving, but we couldn't afford a turkey this year so we had to settle for a chandelier. i start praying too, thankful that i could eat anything. my mom asks what we should do about the car we just bought, because it had already rusted and the entire shell of it had fallen apart and was lying in the driveway. i tell her not to go near it, because it might be radioactive. my brother tells me to shut up, and i then float above the table, closing my eyes.

baking problems, waist cannon

I.

nathan and i are making a cake. he's already baked the cake itself, so i'm charged with the task of making the frosting. i pull the ingredients out (seems to consist of whipped cream and caramel), and set them on the counter. he tells me that i need to mix it quickly because lukas is expecting to have the cake served to him soon. he also tells me that i have to mix the frosting in his (nathan's) hair, because it tastes better that way. i dont' question him and proceed to mix accordingly. it's actually incredibly painful doing so, extremely slow, and making my hands feel sore. i can tell that i'm doing a very unsatisfactory job, and he tells me to go a lot faster. i don't like being barked at so i continue to mix a little more violently. the more i accelerate, the more painful the process becomes. it gets to the point where i push so hard that all the bones in my hands began to splinter, and then i can hear them start to shatter apart. along with this, my teeth, which are clenched tightly, begin to shatter. nathan gets really pissed at me and tells me that i've really screwed up. lukas was going to be disappointed by the 3/4ths of a cake we were failing to prepare successfully for him. i get really upset by this and start to yell about the injustice of it all.

II.

i'm walking up queen anne hill between the recently moved graceland and dv8. i'm forced to relay back and forth after hearing that hitler's daughter wants to kill me and is dwelling in the queen anne area. i walk up to a local apartment complex, where she's to have been born, when it is brought to my attention that she grew up and was trying to escape her bad history and make a good name for herself. i continue walking along some blocks with a bunch of annoying cafes and condos, and then into an unsavory looking strip mall.

i come up to the store where she'd lived for most of her childhood, which is now rented by a korean family operating a teriyaki restaraunt. i see a group of people crowded around the front window making some commotion, so i ask on of the guys what the problem is. he points to a picture in the front window of the store depicting a young asian woman holding an AK-47, reading something to the effect of "i live to kill." i didn't understand what it meant until i pieced together that it may have been a hold over from the years when hitler's daughter had stayed there and was into racist propaganda. i walk away feeling pretty unsettled. it feels like something's about to go down.

i hadn't been relaying between the two venues for some time, so i run back to the graceland (which is nestled in a pocket of deep woods some ways away). i continue going back and forth, noticing that it's starting to get dark on what was supposed to be my last attempt. right as i'm crossing this bridge made of logs over a really high overpass, i can feel something grab me and pull me down pretty forcefully. i look at it, but it doesn't appear to be anything recognizable, just some sort of black blob. it then directs me into a comfortable living room, where it tells me that if i successfully complete an obstacle course of its choosing, it would let me go and wouldn't eat me.

i comply and take up the challenge, which includes jumping off a latter onto a giant bird cage, and swinging on to another ladder. i try doing it twice, and can only jump on to the bird cage, never able to swing over to the other ladder. the black thing tells me that it would let me go on one condition: if i can outrun it to the outside gates of the woods. before it can finish saying this, however, i already begin to make a run for it. still, it seems like no matter how hard i run, the black thing is moving much faster than me. in the end i find my way to the gate. it's nearly pitch black out. i look back to see if the thing is there anymore, but visibility is extremely low.

III.

it was then that i made my way back to queen anne. along the way i can hear things like sirens and screaming, and find the source of the chaos to be an muscular romanian man (this was how i identified him, at least) with an air cannon attached to his waist. he is planting volleyballs and basketballs inside his chest and shooting them out at high speeds to hit people, killing some of them and badly injuring others. as he trudges his way up the street he is screaming obnoxiously. having been frustrated from almost losing my life already and full of adrenaline, i sneak up behind him and pick up a garbage can from the sidewalk. as he continues killing more people, i creep up and nail him in the back of the head with a blow from the garbage can. he immediately hits the pavement, and i continue to pummel him with the can. people then gather around me and cheer as i smash him repeatedly. continuing this for a number of minutes, a number of people become impatient and leave, and before long they're discouraging me, as he lie there soaked in blood and convulsing. people are screaming and crying and telling me to stop, but i keep hitting him. everyone then starts scattering away as a large buzzing sound begins to echo from horns placed atop the buildings around me.

i stop hitting the man, then walk back up the hill and sit on an ice cube inside of a cave. i return to my wife, who is drawing circles on a wall with her finger. i start copying her by making air circles, and then grab her finger. she smiles at me.