Note: on Friday the Thirteenth I always tried to post a dream sequence to Goth House, usually a nightmare. I had this idea that I would finally start doing regular Goth House comics again, and I really tried to make it work, but the idea I had wasn’t a dream and that started to bug me. So I thought about this dream that I had back in August that has been haunting me ever since.
I was at the house and Dad arrived with Mom. I was a little bit confused. “Dad, why are you here now, I thought you were coming back with me after I go to Los Angeles.”
He didn’t really have an explanation, we just started chatting. Then it hit me all of a sudden: this had to be a dream. Not only was Mom better, she was ALL better.
And she was young again. She had a short haircut she hasn’t had for decades.
But everyone else was acting like it was normal, so I decided to just roll with it.
My brothers were there.
It was Christmas.
There was a tree in the corner, and a couch next to the tree. The couch was green, a little Victorian in its style, and I thought, “I know this is a dream, no way would mom ever own a couch like that.”
But I kept on rolling with it.
We were watching a Simpsons episode.
It was a holiday episode. The celebrity guest voice — Alyssa Milano, I think — was playing a ghost in some kind of mash-up of A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Christmas Carol.
My Mom made a comment about the guest star.
I was surprised she knew who it was. (was it Alyssa Milano?)
By now I was even more sure it had to be a dream, because —
Whenever I looked at the Christmas tree —
It had changed.
I told myself, “Stop worrying, you’d enjoy this if it was a David Lynch movie.”
In the dream, I started to cry. But I also started to try to make it last, too. To stay in the dream, as it was fading.
I had the thought, “Wait, none of our pets are here.”
I woke up, still crying, and realized no spouses or children had been there either. And it wasn’t our house, not any of our houses where we ever lived.
It was a place I’d never been.