In the Virtual Bank Line

I am an 8-year-old boy. I'm being sent away to camp, and I don't want to go, because camp is scary. I don't know the rules, everyone is really clubby and I feel very excluded. I am not all that fond of home, but at least home is familiar and I have my hiding places.

I get to camp and the counsellors are all the PE teachers from my school. They're vigorous, stocky women in their twenties who are frighteningly overenthusiastic. They talk to us about all the things we're going to do at camp, but as they're talking, I completely zone out. I'm not interested, and I just want to leave and hide somewhere in the woods that are all around us.

I perk up when I hear that there will be horses at the camp. I want to see the horses, to ride them. I raise my hand and ask if I can ride the horses, and one of the counsellors knows that I haven't been paying attention. She tells me that I can ride the horses if I can tell her how many there are. I guess six, and everyone laughs at me. She tells me that there are eight white horses used to pull the camp's wagon. I'm embarrassed and run into a big central building that looks like a house.

I run through the building and see that the horses are out back. All eight of them are standing on a hill looking down at the house. They are beautiful and snow-white with black noses, and I want to find some hay and give it to them. They are up on a hill that's more like a tiny cliff, about ten feet high, and I can't see any path or stairs that leads up to where they are. I look around and there is a shed next to the house, and a barn next to that. Next to the barn is another house, and this other house's roof dropped down onto the top of this little cliff.

I go to the shed, grab two fistfuls of alfalfa and climb onto the shed's roof, and from there onto the roof of the house. I didn't realize what a steeply-pitched roof the house has, and I am clinging to the top of the roof. I am not at camp anymore, but the horses are still there. I am now in my own neighborhood, clinging to the roof of my next-door neighbor. I can't see anymore how to get to the horses, and besides, now the camp counsellors are there, standing next to the horses and I know that they will not let me feed them.

I realize that the part of the roof that I'm holding onto is breaking. It is as if the roof is put together with staples, and even my small weight is too much for it. Someone is yelling at me to get off the roof because it's breaking. I wriggle around and just as the piece I'm holding breaks off, I heave myself into a window.

It's the window of the teenage boy that lives next door. His bed is a loft bed. The foot end of the loft is a wardrobe where his clothes are hanging, and at the foot of his bed is one of those giant black-and-white TVs made out of that old white plastic that seemed to yellow instantly. The minute my feet hit the floor, one wall of the wardrobe gives way. I realize that the rod of the wardrobe is still suspended in midair, clothes still on hangers on it. I stare at it for a second, and then clothes, TV, bed, wardrobe all come crashing down.

I took off running, and I'm suddenly outside near a University. There are lots of big buildings and tons of people all over. There is a kid following me, yelling at me. It wasn't his room or his bed, and I don't know why this kid is yelling at me. It makes me angry that this kid I've never seen before should be following me in the street and shouting at me, so I turn and punch him in the face. He is surprised that I hit him, so I hit him again. And again. I punch him in the body and the face. I kick him in the groin.

The kid isn't making a sound, and although he's making like he's going to fight me, but he never seems to throw an actual punch. I continue to pound him until he falls, and then I kick him until he stops moving. Then I get scared and I run. I look back, and the kid is up again, bloody and ragged, running after me. I turn my head again and start dashing among the buildings, hoping to lose this kid. I go around the corner of one building, around another corner, and then I see inside one of the buildings a sort of glass cubicle that I can't see into from outside. I know that I will be able to see outside while no one can see in. I dash inside and stand against the window, watching for my pursuer.

For a while, I see nothing. No one seems to have noticed either my beating the kid or a bloody kid chasing me. I turn and look in another direction and I can just see two policemen kneeling next to a fallen person. I can't see the whole person, only the feet and lower legs. Curious, I go outside to see, and as I round the corner, I see that it's not the kid that I had beaten. Then I look around and see that there are hundreds of bodybags and stretchers with people who have been beaten. The stretchers are lining the sidewalks and walkways of the university, and as I leave the campus, they are lining the streets as well. Some of the people on the stretchers have been there for so long that they are covered with sores running with green pus. Although I imagine that they stink of rot, I can't smell them.

I'm walking down the street now, going back home. I'm happy to be going home. I walk down my street and to my own house. My older brother is there. He's 12 or so, and he tells me that we have to go with Dad to take the garbage out. There have been a lot of beatings, he says, and we have to stick together. We can't be too careful. My father appears with the trash bag, and we continue walking around the block. Our back yard doesn't have access to the alley, so we have to walk around the block to take out the trash. It's dusk, and my brother and I walk behind some sheds that are out in the alley. My brother is yelling the whole time that we're taking out the trash. He's made a kind of song out of it, and he's singing it at the top of his lungs.
We get to the dumpster which has a huge tree growing next to it. My brother and I climb the tree, followed by a kid who lives in the next block who heard my brother screaming and wants to play with us. We climb the tree and watch my dad go down the alley, taking the long way home. My brother and the kid go after him. I stay in the tree by myself, watching them leave. Soon, my mother comes into the alley and tells me that I have to go inside. I get down, and we walk the long way around the block home.

We're at the other end of the block from our house, and we're walking, but we don't seem to be getting any closer to our house. Then we see an ambulance in our driveway, and we run, but we're still not getting any closer. Then, one second the ambulance is in our driveway and the next, it has passed us going the other way on the road. My mother takes off running after it and I am left alone going home. I know that my father is in the ambulance, and while I don't know what happened to him, I'm not even curious.

So far, terrible things have happened to me in this dream, but I'm emotionless. I feel no curiosity, no sense of danger, no regret or disgust at what's happening.

After my mother leaves me, I decide that I"m going to go through all the houses on my way home. I go in the nearest front door. The houses are really small and close together, almost like townhouses. In the first house is a little girl in a frilly dress sitting at the dining room table coloring while her mother (Laurie Anderson) is playing the piano in another room and singing to her. I go to the side of the house, open the big picture window, and step through it. The next house has a similar picture window, and I open it from the outside and step into the house which has a large Asian family in it.

The little children smile at me, as though it is perfectly natural that I'm there. I go through three for four more houses before I realize that none of these houses even vaguely resemble mine, and I am no longer in my own street.

And then I'm awake..