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In a dream, the ex begins taunting me with my own words, after she discovers the existence of this site.  I find myself listening closely to what she’s saying, trying my best to figure out what month she is reading from.

What a misguided dream.  Everyone knows that if someone discovers your blog, the first thing they do is look for what is written about themselves.  In the end, it all boils down to self-discovery, no matter how you go about it.

It will be a long night.  Not even midnight, and already I have woken up enough times that it feels like a week has passed.  The wind is blowing loud, the trees shaking and leaning hard all around the house.  The boy has climbed into bed with me, and I wonder, what does he dream about all night?  Martial arts?  I climb out of bed and count the bruises on my shins.

And my own dreams aren’t helping.  She is there, taunting me, asking for money and telling me that she will have everything before it is through.  I know, I say, and walk away.  I walk across town, searching for a friend, and find him, having dinner with some people I don’t know.  The gravy looks good, but they don’t invite me to sit down, so I excuse myself, trying to be polite.  I have been excluded and I am on the run from something that I don’t know how to fight.

Where do these things come from?  She has delivered cupcakes along with the boy.  Could these be laced with stress and worry?  But the frosting is so good.  I can’t resist.  I walk the hallway in the dark, making my way to the kitchen, and peel the paper from around another cupcake.  How many have I eaten tonight?  It doesn’t matter.  It melts in my mouth while the wind roars just outside the window.  I notice that the empty cardboard boxes I’ve piled on the back porch are gone, apparently blown off into the dark.  Even they are having a rough night, trying to dream while the wind kicks them around the yard.  At least it is dry in here, I think.  Yes, dry right up until the giant redwood crashes through the roof.  I think about which direction the big tree will fall while I finish my cupcake, then head back to bed.  I will fight back like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, I think.  I will move so fast I will appear as only a blur.  I will counter everything.  I will block every punch and every kick.  And those reaching for my wallet will come up empty, my pocket having moved a thousand times over during the course of their awkward grab.

As for the dreams, well, we’ll just see who’s in charge of those.  It’s my head, and I want it back.

When I looked up, my friend Randy was in someone’s yard and had broken off two big branches from an evergreen shrub, and was holding them up to the sides of his face, pretending to have a giant pair of mutton chops.  I smiled, then looked away, searching for my own joke. 

When I looked back, he had not only somehow managed to topple over the an entire brick wall, but had whittled a five foot section of it to resemble a giant, peeled apple.  We both start laughing at the foolishness, but just then a woman drove up and starting chasing us off.  It was her wall that Randy had wrecked, and she chased us down the street, all the way back to the car, yelling nonstop in Spanish.  Neither one of us could understand a single word she was saying.

What a break, we thought.  We can’t be in trouble if we can’t understand anything that she’s saying.

But wouldn’t you know it, we’d managed to park the car directly in front of a translation store.  What were the chances of that?  I reluctantly followed the two of them through the front door, Randy’s ear firmly gripped between the strong fingers of the woman.

“Take a number,” two men at the counter said, simultaneously.  Both were Mexican, and from the sound of it, spoke perfect English.  The woman, with Randy’s ear still in her grasp, rattled off something, making both of the men behind the counter smile.

I knew we were in trouble, but couldn’t resist looking around for something that resembled a giant peach.  Somehow I knew that if I could find something that looked like a giant peach, Randy and I would start pretending that our heads had grown really, really big, just like James’ head in James and the Giant Peach.  And that would be really funny.

My brother had committed some crime by flying remote control airplanes and missiles into empty buildings and hillsides next to some obscure city, then retreated to a mountainside cabin.  I’d found him, sitting on the kitchen floor, staring into an empty refrigerator, saying over and over that things had just kind of gotten out of hand.

“Stay away from the door,” he told me.  “There’s snipers everywhere.  Look at this.” He shows me a fresh bullet hole in the refrigerator door, just inches from his hand and head.  “I hate this,” he says.

I try to hold him to comfort him, but we are no good at it, so we walk around the cabin, trying to appreciate everything that is so good about the place.  We try not to think about it, but he will be dead the second he walks out the door.  We both know it.  We look out the windows at the clouds passing across the points of distant mountains.  Birds chirp and sing.  Two deer run by, right next to the cabin, and the dog, laying just outside the door, only looks up at them as they jump over her curled body.

“Maybe I can get you out of here,” I tell him, and try to come up with some plan to sneak him off the mountain.  I have a remote control plane in the back of my car, and somehow think that maybe we both can squeeze onto it and fly down to the city below, avoiding the snipers and military jets we see circling the mountain.  It is an impossible plan.

We continue to stare out the windows, the breeze blowing in through the open front door.  The trees sway back and forth, and except for what is waiting for him outside, my brother and I both agree that it is a perfect day.