Dream for night of Wed. October11

I am in jail, although jail looks very similiar to the Grandma's house but with Idzerda's living room inside. I have met the love of my life here: a Chinese woman named Liu Qi. She speaks little or no English but I have mastered Chinese so this is not a problem. We are so in love. We make love as Liz and I did, in one of the small, cell like rooms. But we are so content to be together.

This place is hell to us, for soon they don't let us be together and neither of us will ever be set free. Liu Qi talks me into committing suicide with her. Poison. She takes it first, and we say an emotional goodbye. It takes a while for the effects to kick in.

I am alone in my cell, and I take the poison. Many many pills. I am then on the subway, and second guessing my decision to die. The people who pass me by seem to be moving in slow motion, and I know this is the effect of the pills. I have arrived where I was going (another part of the prison?) and walk from person to person saying "excuse me, I need to ask you an important question." Nobody responds to me, and I get several dirty looks before I realize and say aloud, "oh, but that phrase usually ends with 'have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior! No wonder nobody is listening to me." A random stranger affirms that this is the case. I see a warden pass me by, and I beg her for her help. She tell me to meet her outside the bars. I decide to, but then don't. I want to be with Liu Qi. I head back the other way on the subway and Kevin is there, and Shaun with him. I make a final decision, just in time. I turn to Shaun and in a panic ask him to help me gag. He takes a second to realize what I've said and then gamely sticks his finger down my throat (what a friend!) and helps me throw up all the pills I had just ate. Shaun, embarrassed by the mess I made, covers the vomit with his trench coat. I sit on the floor and weep - my Liu Qi is going on without me, I was too weak to leave.

I return to the prison, where I will live out the rest of my days. In a cafeteria style setting, all the prisioners are working on some kind of dance routine, or computer program. Perhaps we are being trained in some way. Everyone has already broken up into groups, and I am alone without my Liu Qi. Class begins, and without a partner I will get in trouble with the warden. There are balance beams attatched to the front of all the desks, and as there would not have been room for me to simply shove my way through until I found someone as a partner, I nimbly pulled myself up on one of the beams with a single arm. I think of a monkey pulling itself onto a branch with one arm. One of the prisoners gives me a dirty and jellous look, and I smile serenely back, then scamper away to find a partner. I run to the back of the room, and there is a long desk with five or six younger children. Around 6th and 7th grade, as I would have associated with occasionally in VSAA. They are working on the computer program, but cannot see it on the monitor. They ask me to fix it. They didn't have the monitor ON. The program shows up: bacon, cheese, sausage...all these are presented like an executable command module, with bottons. Simple HTML must be what we are learning. I took a computer science class (although I did subsequently have to drop it...) and so I know a little programming. I should be useful.

But I am still so lonely.

(fin)