it started with me walking down a dark street, lit with a lonely halogen streetlamp, the light yellow and sallow and shallow, not penetrating corners or shadows or shrubs. i felt i was being watched, and hastened my steps. i got to my house (which was not my house at all) and walked up the few stairs to the front door, key in hand. i lived on a cul-de-sac, and the blunt end of it was to my left, and there were no houses there, just overgrown bushes and weeds and a small hollow through them into darkness, a path that i knew led to a vacant lot beyond. i could hear someone in that dark, brushy hollow. they were coming towards me. it wasn't the sound of twigs snapping due to footsteps or talking or even breathing. it was the sound of a little radio controlled car bzzzing along in the dark. my hands were shaking and i felt that if i didn't get in my house, and then lock the door behind me, whoever was maneuvering that r.c. car through the dark growth would get me. and get me good. so of course i was trembling so much i couldn't get the key in the lock, and my breath was coming so hard and fast and my heart was beating so hard my vision was shakey, and the r.c. car was sounding nearer and nearer and i got more and more panicked, when finally the tumblers in the lock tumbled, the door swung open, i glanced to my left at the dark hollowed underbrush and the r.c. car had just appeared at the apex of the muddy path and was about to whine down the slight, dirty slope onto the pavement and towards me, and i slammed the door shut, and turned the deadbolt. there. safe. i pressed my back against the door and looked around to get a feel for "my" house. i was alone - no family. it was dimly lit, only one lamp on in the whole place.

the layout was completely different from the townhouse i live in. i went into the kitchen and it was the kitchen in my grandparent's old house, before they condo'ed themselves. i looked in the fridge and it was my grandparent's food - processed cheese, white bread, old school hot dogs, soda, popsicles. i left the kitchen and walked into the living room. there was my mac. i sat down and decided to check my email. there was the email from my stepdad that i have yet to reply to because i'm still angry. then i went to my yahoo account and found a message from a mama - who, as far as i know, doesn't actually exist - named nicky. and in her email she tells me all about how her long, beautiful hair is what has made her crazy, made her hurt her little toddler son, samuel. and how she figured out that if she shaved her head, all the bad things she did and does would go away, and her son would be safe. and there were pictures there, of her. before she shaved her head and after. and she was pretty and had interesting eyebrows and the pictures were all webcam quality. probably over a dozen of them. the final pictures, she obviously made a kind of top knot out of all her beautiful long hair and then just shaved off most of the sides and the back. on the shaved part she had sloppily shaved her name in big block letters, from ear to ear, across the back. then she took the topknot out and let the remaining long hair fall over the shorn parts. it looked terrible and i cried. in the last picture she was blowing me a kiss and i could see the top of samuel's head. i cried and cried, but didn't know what else to do. i couldn't think of anything to write to her. i didn't know where she was. all i had was this email, these pictures.

i found my way to an upstairs room, like a den, and there was leon, sitting in the dark, on a pulled out sofa bed, watching television. i could hear that laurel was somewhere else in the house, crying. i said to him, "why is laurel crying? why are you ignoring her?" and he said that she had been doing this all night, refusing to sleep, saying she was scared, and that he was sick of her playing games surrounding bedtime. but i could hear that her crying was different than the crocodile tears she occassionally sheds when she's feeling she's not getting enough attention at bedtime. it was desperate sounding, scared. i said, "where is she? i don't know our house tonight. everything is weird?" and he looked at me strangely and said, "where we always put her to sleep...the basement." and i got this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach and walked out of the room and down the stairs to the main floor, and then found the closed door the basement, where i stood and could hear laurel's very terrified-sounding cries. i opened the door and called to her, "laurel, laurel, come up here, mama's here, come on up," but she either couldn't hear me over her own tears or else ignored me. i did not want to go down into the pit of blackness, but forced myself to take a few steps, feet dissolving into murk. she cried and cried. "laurel, come up now, mama's here, please come up for hugs and cuddles," i said, voice wavering. crying, crying...then suddenly, no crying, and as my heart stopped, her small face appeared out of the darkness at my feet. her eyes were dark, liquid pools of terror, water simmering in the bottom lids. "laurel, it's okay." she said nothing, and instead started to climb my legs, as if i were tree and she were monkey. it felt revolting and scary, almost like she wasn't really my daughter, but was instead a kind of wild animal with perhaps-not-innnocent intentions. she scrabbled up my body and held tight around my neck with her legs wrapped around my waist, and wouldn't let go, not talking, and no longer crying, just clinging. and when i touched the back of her head, to stroke her hair and try to comfort her, even though she didn't really feel like my daughter, it was wet...thick, wet, stickiness. before i could look at my fingers, i woke up.