[Kitsa]

at least it was a straightforward sort of tablecloth.

Last night I dreamed I was in a palace-style manor home. My parents had a toaster oven in their room and I'd left mozzarella sticks cooking in it. But when I went back to get them, something was up in there and I was afraid to go in.

Then my parents changed into this young British couple. The dad looked like Cary Elwes. Also, they were evil somehow. I was one of three small children who stumbled onto something evil they were doing, don't remember what, and the mother ended up dead in some sort of little hidden room. Then the father was forcing us to pack as much as we could for life on the run. I was simultaneously terrified of him and terrified of what would happen if we were apprehended.

So I was running around the mansion packing up ridiculous gourmet foods, like some sort of soft moldy cheese with red beans embedded in it, and brownie mix and anything else I could find. The father was explaining something to one of my siblings about when he'd said that the mother didn't negotiate. As I stacked boxes on the stairs and noted that there were rolls of trash bags strung on the rail all the way down, he said, "The women in our family don't negotiate until they're sure they'll get what they want."

I'd just turned back to my boxes, leaning forward to balance myself on the steep sweeping staircase, when suddenly the father started yelling at us. Some sort of enormous thump shook the staircase so hard that I bounced free and was falling backwards.

I woke up braced for landing, adrenaline-sick. I hate dreams like that.