an excavation inspired by twitter

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Jeff dreamt he could not stop screaming at the students. Then he dreamt he could not stop screaming. Then he dreamt he could not stop. Then he dreamt he could not. Then he dreamt he could. Then he dreamt he. Dreamt he was. Dreaming.

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Lori dreamt she had to catch a flight in an hour but she couldn’t find her passport, nor had she packed for shit. There was someone flying an airplane she needed to board, and someone else cleaning their car so it would look nice when they picked her up from the airport later. Lori looked under the mattress for the passport as she had see someone do successfully once in a movie, but there was no passport or suitcase under the mattress, only a bread knife.

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Dolfi dreamt that they had stolen a toy from a boy who stood near the metal gate, waiting for the toy to return. But the theft made the toy unrecognizable to the boy. That one is not mine, the boy said, small and strong. He refused it.

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J. D. dreamt of many connecting rooms, an effort to exit, the word exit, itself, an effort; the many so hyper-connected. The more the merrier it was not.

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Jennifer dreamt she was in a familiar place, but the door would not open. When she sought a more familiar place, she realized the corridor was going the wrong way. She opened a door and there was a terrible thing in a chair, waiting.

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Michael dreamt of an escalator without a handrail in a mall where the shadow-people hovered near windows, casting their horrid silhouettes against the interior walls, at the treelike in is grandparents’ garage, where all the old trees lived at night, where they plotted the end of humanity in a grey, cold dusk: the color of missing rubber handrails.

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Lisa Marie dreamt she was trapped in an elevator with the realization that she would be trapped in an elevator soon. At some point, the doors would not open. There was no way to predict when that point would begin, thus transforming a point into a line, a mutant moment which acquired its own momentum and demand for resolution. She wanted it to end in the dream. Sometimes bugs arrived. Sometimes bugs ran beside her as tried to catch the flight she kept running late for. The point kept extending itself into a line.

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Math dreamt the curtain was rising on opening night, a dimming, the absence of script in his mind meeting the audience’s expectation. While it is common for actors to dream that they won’t know who they are playing when the performance begins, it is very rare for puppeteers, or the voices which emerge from inside a hand.

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In Ed’s dream, he climbs a tower and encounters three severed heads in the belfry. He knew the belfry was for bats because they lived there in a horrifying story. He wonders what went through his head, or what made him want to climb higher, to this belfry filled with abject horror, in his head.

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Veronika dreamt herself inside a tower, hiding with others from the apocalypse— realizing the tower, itself, was crumbling, falling apart. To know the end is a nested story inside a story about the failure of nests.

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Jayaprakash dreamt he was the oldest one at school, but others only knew he was old, and not the oldest, so there was a pressure to keep this extremism secret. He is ashamed to be back, to be among the young and their newness. He hides in a backyard at the school. Weeds hide their feet from the naked concrete under gravel. The sky holds a sunlamp for the newest to shine, to look newer. But he is alone, antique, ancienne-regime as a ruin the students sit on when googling the sun.

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When Michael S. appeared at the school, it was to dream that he’d taken a class he never attended. And yet he was required to take the exam. He was too old to google the sun and too young to unknown that he was too old to google it, and to know he had skipped things in the past which may have happened when he did things which weren’t studying. He felt guilty for the things he had not done, the things he had done, the things he dreamt he should be doing, the knowing he could have, and nothing.

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Emma dreamt raging bears had entered the building, their fury occupying hallways. She tried to hide in small spaces and dark corners to escape but the bears followed, all corridors carrying the echos of growls.

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Lynne dreamt she was on a freeway to nowhere and missed the last exit ramp. Also: the vague scent of Los Angeles or Seattle, train cars and canals, separate.

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Hope dreamt of snakes in terrible situations where the snakes seemed dangerous, thus estranging Hope from the self who loves snakes in real life. She couldn’t decided which part to fear: the snakes or that self.

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In Ilinca’s dream, the mossy, slimy stairs can kill her. The weblike attic floorboards won’t support me. Everyone and their mother lies. She knows this because ambulatory buildings follow her around the city. She meets someone who tells her she is herself.

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Joseph dreams there is a number he must call, urgently. There is also a phone. There is a reason he cannot complete the number, and this reason is related to the phone, the number itself, the pattern of digits, and toilets which are not what you think.

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Great Aunt Xenomorph dreams of cement blocks with emotional needs. They are so heavy. They are so heavy and the elevator door will not open. There is no magic word, no expiation.

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Claudia dreams she is crouched inside the clean stall of her elementary church/school barthoom, trying to get away from someone she fears. The pipes above her head are dripping pipes. There are multiple crucifixes painted red by the light from an "exit sign". She is in the woods behind her childhood home, trying to escape again. Something adult keeps interrupting.

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Nina dreams someone drives up. This person parks outside her house. She knows the person must not enter the house under any condition, so she locks all the doors quickly. Then she locks them again, slowly, dreadfully, as one must when there is no other option. Although she cannot see anyone, she hears someone walking around the house, their shoes crunching the grass, trying to open windows. The hamster who loves the red wheel keeps running in circles around it.

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Brian dreams he is in second-floor bedroom window looking out over the suburban neighborhood, where he can see soldiers climbing over fences using special equipment, scurrying under hedges like sophisticated mammals. He knows they are coming to kill everyone he loves. He knows because he’s seen it on television, happening to others around the world, and now the world has come to meet him.

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Ilze dreams a tornado is headed towards her just before the giant wave at the beach swallows her — the reward for having imagined is having it happen. She is in her mother’s house as it begins crumbling to pieces, the floor moving, shifting, splitting open. She has never written about an earthquake. She will not even dare utter that world aloud. Her teeth are falling out.