night calls

Last night I woke up shaking and completely freaked by a bad dream*. For some reason I started thinking about a boyfriend I'd had way back in the day. His ex frequently called him in the middle of the night, whenever she had night terrors. Ever since that time I have wondered who I could call in the middle of the night if I really needed to. It's not a good measure of friendship, because people I would call upon in a real emergency I would not call in the middle of the night because I was terrified by a dream. Still, it's one of those things I think about in the wee hours.

*The dream itself was one of my famous psychological thrillers. I was with a man, some kind of boyfriend type, and we were visiting this older woman. She left the house and during that time I was busy scouting out the house for evidence of evil. I found it in a bathroom--she'd laid out a bunch of towels and tools. I was rushed upstairs to tell the guy and we were trying to get out of there when she returned. I made up a fine tale of having forgotten dinner plans (a very detailed description of how the restaurant stopped seating at 10 and we'd gotten the very last reservation, at 9:45). Then I told her that the friends were coming to pick us up and in fact I'd just seen them go around the corner. I ran outside and started running down the street toward my car, but it was very snowy and slippery outside. I was making painfully slow progress, AND I'd left the boy behind, figuring he'd catch up to me. Just as I got close to my car, I heard a car behind me and a honk.