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Chad Nieboer
Dream Journal (excerpt)


My roommates and I were planning on moving to Chicago late one night. We were sitting around this strange coffee table that sunk into the ground talking. Outside two members of the football team came by and were heckling us out our window. One of my roommates went outside to fight them and we followed, being the spectators that we are. There was a giant fight and things slowed down in the confusion. William Burroughs then appeared with two girls on his arms and showed us this magic eye card trick of Bela Lugosi turning into Dracula. He told us a little bit of scary will get us the ladies numbers. We thought that was strange, and going back inside we discovered our stairs were gone.

I was in this little village holding my last coin and these two guys wanted it and started chasing me. I ran and ran through their town, over their houses, and I couldn’t get away, but I couldn’t get caught either. I finally made it to the edge of town and into this giant cornfield. I made my way deeper and deeper until I found this tiny little house in the middle of all this corn. It looked very abandoned. I went inside and found two sets of stairs, the right one going down to the basement and the left one going up to the attic. I went up the stairs and saw out the window part of the lower level roof covered in moss and dirt and a beautiful garden growing there. I saw the old gardener working very slowly and felt sorry for him. Farther down the hall I went into a room and saw a sad girl there drinking tea. I sat down across from her but she didn’t say anything, and neither did I. I knew if I sat there long enough, I could be the gardener when the time came.

I was stranded in this out of town thrift store. I was feeling very hopeless when I discovered the complete wardrobe of Beetlejuice. The tacky red tuxedo, the large black and white striped suit. I didn’t have any money, so I planned on stealing them but the clerk kept a close watch on me. So I grabbed them all and rolled around on the floor with them until I fell asleep under this giant car in the middle of the store.




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