Attack

Sunday morning

I was in my early 20s again, and was still living at my parents' house in Arlington, although, for some reason, it didn't look the same as it should. Mom and Dad weren't around, and neither was my brother, Andrew. At some point in the evening, my older brother, Jimmie, and his wife, Dawn, showed up. They used some hocus-pocus to turn the family cat into a warlock, or some other kind of monster, and then the three of them proceeded to gang up on me, Dracula-style, and drink blood from my neck.

At about 5:30 in the morning it was about to be light outside, so the three attackers vanished. Somehow, I was able to summon enough strength to get into the family car and drive away. I didn't want to return to the family home anymore after what had happened, and I began wondering how I could come up with a downpayment and first month's rent for an apartment, and where I'd find one that was close to my job. (The job wasn't specified in the dream.)

Later that day I brought the car back, but I was still afraid to enter the house. I had a very dramatic and upsetting conversation with Mom, in the middle of the street, and told her that I'd decided to move away. Her eyes were filled with tears, as were mine, and she said, "I knew this would happen eventually."

*****

Our cat, Lightfoot, woke me up at 6 this morning. I was groggy, but I got out of bed, gave her some breakfast, let her out onto the screen porch, and went back to sleep, which resulted in this dream. Gee, thanks, Foo. My family back in Arlington never had a cat, or a dog, for that matter, other than the odd stray that we fed for a day or two.

Lately I've been keeping a copy of the book "More of the Straight Dope" in the loo. It's a collection of amusing answers to some very strange questions, as written by the ascerbic columnist Cecil Adams. Not long ago I read his reply to a query about one "Vlad the Impaler," a very nasty dude, who inspired, at least in part, Bram Stoker's magnum opus. (I'm also a big fan of the classic 1930s Universal Studios monster movies, including "Dracula," "Frankenstein," "Bride of Frankenstein," "Wolf Man," "Invisible Man" and "The Mummy.")

My big brother Jimmie never knew his wife, Dawn, when we were all still living in Arlington; he met her years later, after he'd moved to Georgia, and after my mom had passed away. Jimmie and Dawn are both very nice people, and, to the best of my knowledge, are not involved in vampirism or similar activities, although I do recall that Jimmie owned a Blue Oyster Cult album once upon a time.

I didn't move away from my parents' home until I was in my mid-20s, but, as I like to needle my brothers, I'm also the only one who never moved back in. I moved into a group house with one of my co-workers and some other guys, around 1988. There was no emotional scene between Mom and me at the time, but we were close. That first week, I was pretty busy setting up my new flat, and when I finally got around to calling Mom to say "Hi," I recall that she said, "Boy, when you leave, you LEAVE." She wasn't upset or anything -- that was her way of saying that she missed our conversations. I guess I still feel guilty that I didn't call her earlier in the week, just to see how she was doing. Incidentally, at the end of the dream, when she said, "I knew this would happen..." she meant that she knew that the day would come when I'd move away, not that she knew that eventually my older brother, sister-in-law and cat would suck most of the blood out of my body.

One last observation -- in real life, my mom's eyes were blue. In this dream, they were green. Wonder what that means?