Crashy Smashy (Amplifier)

I feel kinda betrayed. I usually don't have disaster dreams about that particular theme park.

I don't know how to type this without it coming out wrong, so I'll just type it out and let it be wrong.

Today was supposed to be a day of one-on-one togetherness with my mom. Which would be cool, and all, if she hadn't been on this interrogation warpath about all my life decisions since, like, March. And on like Friday night? She actively admitted she was messing with me. She was teasing, but there you go.

Just. Too much shit behind the scenes, running after too much, doing too much, and I'm tired all the time, but that's not new; the difference is it's starting to show permanently on my face.

I found my first white hair a few weeks ago. It begins.

But yeah, so I'm having a dream about a carnival ride, give or take, and it's one of those combinations of speed and altitude with a harness, and Stepdad and I are standing underneath it waiting in line, talking about how shoddy other elements of the park are.

And there's a great, steel groaning from overhead. Slow and low, but getting louder and bending pitch as it picks up speed.

"We have to go," I say, quiet, clipped, with absolute certainty: total focus before the adrenaline kicks in and wipes the strategy clean. We've got seconds before the masses figure out what's on and there's a stampede. Life or death.

The girders are starting to scream.

"We need to go now, and we need to take the rear exit."

Because the way down will be the last place they run, last place they'll look, and if we hurry--

But it means going across the pavement, in the open, under the metal, and I keep looking up thinking, god, please, not yet.

"No," he says, gripping my hand. "It's--they--somebody fell."

Turn and look behind you, genius. Emergency workers gold and grey, all asbestos, rubber and reflective tape.

Spreading blood black on the concrete.

"They won't let us out, they'll stop everyone for questioning if we don't go now."

Miss, Miss, were you there?

Thank you, officer; I will show myself out.

I woke myself up, and it didn't shake my feeling of something wrong. Something really wrong, feet cut out from under, the whiplash of metal in the dark.

Slowly realized that one of the things waking me up was the quiet. I didn't have my earplugs in, and normally, when that happens, the slightest noise will have me out of bed and on my feet.

That's pretty much how an exaggerated startle reaction works. Four years of constant panic on and it's much better, but not when I'm waking, not with tiny noises that filter down to my subconscious.

So. To have a morning where that doesn't happen is very unusual. To say the least. I'm laying there, talking to myself, thinking of my collection of pet horror stories--everyone here gathers them, did you hear about the guy who lost his head at the Magic Kingdom--and not understanding why I couldn't sort it right. Why that didn't feel right.

Gradually, it breaks my awareness that my parents are talking in hushed voices. The kind that don't want to be overheard. Something about tell her and in the mood I'm already in, I'm just thinking, Wow, this can't be good.

One of mom's coworkers at a branch facility had a heart attack this morning, and mom's the emergency replacement.

So there's our drama for this morning.