“…I looked at the wallet of a soldier I had killed earlier in the day. I was an assassin! …”
(Female, 30’s) In the part of the dream I remember, I was staying in a friend’s apartment at the edge of a university campus. I was having trouble sleeping — in my dream, remember! — so I decided to empty the trash, even though it was more or less in the middle of the night. I took the huge bag of trash outside the apartment complex and walked across a field to a dumpster at the edge of the woods and lifted the lid and threw in the bag.
When I turned around to go back to the apartment, I saw that a half dozen big dogs had come out to play in the field– on their own, without leases or owners about. The dogs were suspicious of me, sniffing and growling as I tried to walk slowly and inconspicuously to the apartment building. Somehow I managed to make it inside safely.
I walked through a door and down a hallway. As I went through the second door– that would lock behind me– a man slipped in behind me. “I left my cellphone in a classroom,” he said, as if to justify being there. He was dressed in jeans and a blue sweatshirt that had several cement stains on it– as if he’d been mixing cement very recent. I felt threatened so I walked through the door into the university commons area that was conveniently located through another door. I called Campus Safety and got someone to accompany me back to the apartment I was staying in.
I tried to go back to sleep then — in my dream– but instead I got up and looked at the wallet of a soldier I had killed earlier in the day. I was an assassin! I told myself that I shouldn’t look at the contents, that it would only make me feel worse, but I did so anyway. I took out the money, not the change, and looked through his pictures. He was married. He was a law student. He had taken the bus earlier in the day.
I was no sleepier, so I started worrying about the two other bodies I left in my parents’ attic two days earlier. When was I going to get around to burying them, I asked myself. And where? I considered the garden, in my mind surveying my parents’ backyard. How big would the holes have to be, I wondered. And how long would it take me to dig them? I hoped the neighbors wouldn’t be suspicious. I wished I had paid more attention to how to dispose of bodies. I remembered something about lime, but I couldn’t remember what. I was so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t see how I was ever going to get back to sleep.