In my dream I’m back in the apartment I’ve always coveted and the walls have been resurfaced. I search for an additional room that I might make into a studio. Like usual, rooms fork in all directions and the layout is bewildering.

In my dream the technician presses the defibrillator paddles into my father’s chest. Seconds after I hear the word “clear” I am pacing the length of the darkened room. The excess current has knocked me out for hours and now The Cramps are setting up to play a show in the tattered stage  that fills the back wall.

In my dream I pack my few things so that I can move out of the apartment I’ve been staying in. It’s because two of my exes are in love and are moving in together. They’ve cleaned the place well.

In my dream the scavenger hunt ends where a treet top brushes against the balustrade of a stone bridge: I reach into the branches and pull out  a couple of gifts, including a scroll that lets me speak to Vincent Price’s granddaughter,who gives me that caftan that her grandfather wore when he would take mushrooms in the Seventies.

In my dream the five of us lay face down in the snow, trying to look dead and listening for the sounds of the other survivors’ horses, so that we can ambush them when they come to investigate us. They are better equipped, so this is going to be hard.