A new year, a new dream! I wish it were a happy or funny sort of dream, but it’s actually the opposite.
I’m in my back yard with my sister and some dream friends, eating carrot
sticks. We’ve been talking for a while when I hear a big ruslting in the grass on the other side of the fence. I look up and I see a giraffe, looking down at me. He sees my carrot and his neck swoops down to take it from me. I never even had the guts to feed the giraffes at the zoo, much less in my back yard where one shouldn’t have been anyway. My sister and dream friends start laughing, telling me not to be a chicken and just feed him my carrot. I hold the carrot by the tips of my fingers as if it were some disgusting rag, pushing my hand out and cringing in hopes that he won’t take my fingers with it. He happily eats it and looks at us as if begging for more. My corageous dream friends reach into the carrot bag and pull some out and the giraffe eats those as well.
Suddenly, we hear another rustling on the other side of the fence, only much louder and more threatening, followed by the sound of chopper blades. We look up, and there is a helicopter hovering not 50 feet above my house.
“Attention ladies!” the chopper’s loudspeaker booms. “You need to get indoors to a secure area immediately. There is a rhinocerous on the other side of that fence. He is very dangerous – whatever you do, DO NOT FEED HIM. Anyone who does not follow these orders may recieve a full-body charge by the rhino, which will kill you.”
My dream friends and sister scatter – we all run in different directions, to terrified to have the common sense to stay together. I run inside, through the sliding-glass door near the back of the house. I head straight for my room, slamming the door and barricading it with a chair. I wait in silence. I hear water running and the glass door slide open – someone else is home!
I throw the chair out of the way and move into the dark hallway.
“Mom? Dad?” I get no answer, so I shout louder.
I move down to my parent’s room and see my dad sitting in his chair at the computer desk, apparently unaware of the peril outside.
“Dad! Where’s Michelle? Where’s Holly? (my dog)”
“Michelle took Holly outside to play,” my dad answered.
“What!? No!” I pulled up the blinds, practically ripping the pull-cord in half. I gasped with terror.
It was a grisly scene. My dog was lying on the ground, in the same way that she sleeps. My sister was face first in the dirt behind her. There was a green liquid on the ground next to her. I assumed that it was bile and that the animal had peirced her in the stomach.
Then, my dog weakly lifted her head and started to whimper. She was alive. I called her over, but she couldn’t move her back legs – she had apparently been paralyzed by the blow from the rhino. I coaxed her to crawl to me, and she eventually made it to the window. I pushed the screen out and pulled her in as fast as I could while keeping an eye out for the rhino.
As I got her back legs in, I slammed the window shut and my dad helped me get her on his bed. She was still crying. I hugged her around her neck and shushed her.
