A place strange

Dream log

[aplacestrange]

An offering

The process requires an offering of hand-picked apples and hand-made candy.

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Six black cats

Six black cats spill through the open window into my living room.

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Bad news

A disturbed man flips my car. The 911 operator refuses to take my report seriously, so I call my mother for help instead. After I explain the situation, there is a pause. I notice strange, eerie music playing on her end. 'I'm afraid I have some bad news,' she says, and the line goes dead.

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2:30 a.m.

My lover acts calm and gentle, but I still sense within him a cold, hard centre, an emptiness. He has plans for me: he leaves an envelope of documents on the bed that I must read before he will join me at 2:30 a.m.

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Line-drawn

He tells me why he is distraught. As I listen, his left eye grows huge, turns up toward the sky, and then becomes line-drawn: wiggly, animated.

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A thin strip

Completing the song requires a piece of flesh. I remove a thin strip from just under my knee.

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Snug

A deep, snug dream.

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Split

The black tarantula is in the room for medicinal purposes. It’s meant to tap the shoulder of the patient, just lightly. Then the tarantula splits, into four lighter-coloured spiders. When I irritate one of them, it pursues me around the room, biting at me.

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Feminine

The answer to the murder is in the cards. I’ll know the card when I see it. I can sense it—dark, feminine. As I sift through the deck, it’s like I’m peeling away her layers. Yet when I finally get to the centre where she should be, there is only an absence.

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Voids

My husband's pupils are so black they are more like voids.

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Same, but different

'I've been seeing B,' I tell B, who is also B—the same, but different. 'That's not going to change anytime soon, so.'

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All dreams join up at the edges, like squares in a patchwork quilt.

- Gyrðir Elíasson, Stone Tree

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Locking and unlocking

I live alone on a ranch, which involves locking and unlocking many doors. Other ranchers steal across my property at night—but are they people, or ghosts? I must keep my animals alive, as well as my love, and my car doors locked.

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Have to

We have to complete the process.

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Dinner at the table

We've been held captive for years and years. They treat us well. They serve us dinner at the table like everyone else. It's been twenty years.

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Bleachers

They turn me away from the fashion event because I’m not dressed properly. For the rest of the night I hang out under some bleachers, alone, pissed off.

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Intimacy

The room gets dark. We share in the small piece of fading light cast on the table as if it's a meal: proof of our intimacy.