#1: While on vacation (in real life), I dream of quitting my job. I resign on a Friday. Lisa, the managing editor is pleasant about the whole thing. She encourages me to go ahead and leave right away—no hard feelings. So I quit and I'm really happy about my newfound freedom. But over the weekend, I think about it and realize I should have paid off my credit cards, saved a thousand dollars, and gone on unemployment. So on Monday, I go back to work, begging them to hire me back, then fire me after a month (you can only get unemployment if you're fired or laid off). They angrily refuse, saying "this is what you get for trying to fuck us over."

#2: Back from vacation, I dream I'm in an Italian airport. My girlfriend Verena asks me to get her a pack of gum from the little store just outside the metal detectors. I buy the gum, but when I try to get back to the gate, the guards won't let me through.

#3: I dream that I am transported, in my current adult form, to the house I lived in when I was around 10 years old. Sleeping, I am startled awake by the sound of my parents fighting downstairs.

#4: In real life, I get a phone message that two of my close friends are on vacation in Vermont. That night, I dream they've actually left to live in Nicaragua.

#5: I dream that two friends convince me to drive them around a suburban town while they commit acts of vandalism. They find one of those machines that shoots tennis balls, load it with arrows, and shoot the arrows into someone's house. After a brief chase, we're arrested by the highway patrol. They bring us to a halfway-house-style prison in the countryside. It's a mansion once owned by a rich family, now occupied by criminals and the mentally ill. Though I know why I've been imprisoned, I'm never formally charged. I assume I'm being held until my trial date, but the trial date never seems to come, and I'm stuck in the prison, overcome with despair, for what seems like months. I'm finally told that my trial is in six weeks. This is great news, and what's even better, I'm allowed to visit my girlfriend to tell her where I've been. When I do, she stares at me blankly.

#6: I dream that my girlfriend and I are in a public park. The park has a lake for swimming, filled with clear, chlorinated water. The floor of the lake is dark, rough, and slimy. It drops sharply downward into blackness, like a cold, bottomless pit. Nobody's swimming. We decide to go in, but first, I need to change into my bathing suit. I step into the nearby public bathroom and pull my shorts down to my ankles. Before taking them off, I realize I have to pee. Without moving my feet, I lean awkwardly over a nearby toilet and begin to urinate. As I'm doing this, a swarm of tsetse flies appears and stings me all over my body.