CHLORINE, SWAMP, HOMICIDAL HUSBAND, ENDLESS DOORS TO LOCK

I'm a swim instructor.
Or I'm swimming laps. There are two other girls with black cut-off shirts effortlessly swimming laps as well. We may have exchanged stroking techniques but I may be making this up.

Then I'm home, and I'm married, and I have two children. A teenage boy and a girl who is younger than the boy. It is the end of the day; they are sprawled on our bed in our green room watching end of the day television programs. Have you seen Great Expectations, you know, that film with Gwyneth Paltrow in it, in which the old lady's home is very Victorian Floridian and the color scheme is this deep dusty emerald green a little bloody (metaphorically speaking) but also lush-y on the green spectrum? Well, this is the sort of desolated/isolated swampy setting to which my dream is taking place, with my two-storied home circled by creaky verandas set within a scarlet orange sunset as though the sky were milk stained by very ripened melons.

There was some sort of disagreement with my husband. I know he is demented, so when he flashed an ominous grin, I knew it was best to calmly walk away, panic concealed. I climb a flight of stairs through the back and begin locking our doors. Each door has a small delicate latchkey made of ivory and curved like an abstract question mark or human ear. I can hear his rabietic pants as he tries to beat me to each door. I become more scared as the rattlings become more urgent but the children seem nonchalant their mother is escaping their father like some pathetic prey and continue watching television unaffected.