Last night I dreamed deep and weird. I came home slightly drunk from trivia night, and ate a huge cheeseburger and fries before bed, so it probably makes sense that I would have some rather weird shit tumbling around in my brain during the night.

I don’t remember everything – just pieces. At some point in the night I was dreaming about my old house, which no longer exists. It flooded several times over the course of several years, and eventually FEMA paid my family to demolish the property rather than attempt to move back in. The house was three stories, with the third being an attic with double height ceilings. It had two chimneys, was made entirely of cedar, and my parents built it together when I was a baby. I’ve often been told that as a child I couldn’t sleep without the sound of power saws and pounding hammers, after having spent so many days sleeping at the worksite. The house had a front porch on both the first and second stories, and a deck around back on the first level.  In my dream, I was crossing over the front porch, back and forth and back and forth. There was something I needed at one side, but I kept turning around just before being able to grab whatever that thing was. Finally, the porch boards began to give way and crack as I passed over them.

Someone (my mother?) was yelling at me to watch out. I couldn’t see her, but as my ankle was going into the hole in the boards, I gave one last try and lept clear of the porch. Suddenly, the hole opened up neatly, and instead of being a jagged hole into the porch, it was a neatly shaped ovoid space. Seven copperhead snakes were curled up inside, with heads all pointed in the same direction. The family’s pet cats ran by, and I was afraid for their safety, but the snakes didn’t strike. Then the family dog ran over to investigate, and was bitten three times. As the dream ended, I was scared for the dog but thought he’d be OK in the end.

The next dream I had involved being on vacation. I was with a group of friends, and we were supposed to stay at a hotel, but the air conditioners were out and it was horribly hot. I went and stayed somewhere else, but came back to the hotel to meet up with friends for meals and drinks. Every time I walked in, it felt like the hot room in a Bikram class, with more intensity. After fighting through the heat, I’d get to the hotel cafe and it would be blasting with cool air. My friends were all in bad moods, and bitchy throughout the dream. They also all wore shapeless chiffon-ish dresses and pillbox hats, like old British grannies would have worn in the 1970s. I was happy to not be in their hotel.

On the last night, I decided to go to my intended room in the hotel just to see where I would have been staying if I’d have stayed. My room was a suite, and the first room was the bedroom, while the rest was more like a small dancehall. It was Hawaiian themed, and had fake palm trees, backlit rock decorations, and a mini waterfall. On the far side of the room was a really nice record player from the 60’s, and it was entirely made of wood. When I looked, the records were all made of wood veneer. I was excited, because the top record was one of my mom’s favorite songs, the Sukiyaki song. Then I realized that the record was warped, a combination of the heat of the hotel and the moisture from the waterfall. I was bummed that it wouldn’t play, then thought I’d try it on the player, anyway. After putting the record on the player, I put the needle on and dropped the protective case over the turntable. Then I realized that the case was full of termites. They were everywhere, and they were multiplying. Except that in my dream, they weren’t the  brown Formosan termites we’re used to in Louisiana, but rather these hideous, squishy white bugs that looked like maggots, but with wings and longer bodies. The record player was overrun with them.

I woke myself up.