Letter to a Friend

H-----,

Sorry i didn't respond to your first message, but i have to respond to the second one. I've been working on weeding people out of my life who i feel i don't need...not that you're unneeded, but we did meet thanks to certain unsavory parts of our pasts and sometimes that's something i would rather not think about. But the reason i can't do that with you and felt i should respond to your second message is that the night before you sent it i dreamt of you.

For some reason we were both back at SAFP, and i have in my mind the persistent thought that our stay was only to be a week long, but i can't say for sure if that was true in the dream. We were doing well and looking forward to being released soon, when all of a sudden we were both facing the electric chair - i have no idea why. It seemed to me we were in some sort of cafeteria, being observed by a large group of people, and i was the first to arrive at the chair - i was electrocuted, and died and came back to life! Then it was your turn, and it was complicated and without such a propitious outcome as mine.

I observed the ordeal. Your limbs were strapped to the chair for sentence, but you were given an opportunity to elude its execution in the following way: when one of the executioners struck a match to light some unknown object, or perhaps just the match itself, you could somehow escape before its combustion. By disappearing, or unstrapping your limbs and walking off, or simply opening your eyes? I don't know how, but you had the opportunity to escape the punishment, something i did not have but still managed to do. You were sitting, strapped to the chair while at a distance the match was struck and set aflame, and i tried yelling that it was about to happen so you could save yourself but you wouldn't acknowledge me or open your eyes and the process began. The chair swiveled round and reclined as if to form a table you were now lying on, and i could see your right leg twitching. And you were dead, and in the morning i had a message from you.

I have no idea what to make of it, or any of my other dreams, but they've been extremely vivid for the past couple weeks. It coincides that shortly before my dreams became so i knocked my head pretty hard on the floor, but whether or not the head trauma has anything to do with my dreams coming alive again i don't know. Sometimes what i dream is overwhelming, at other times outright frightening. There was also another night or afternoon within the past week when i was in bed dozing off, and it felt as though i were leaving my body when i was suddenly slung back into it and snapped back to consciousness, and i think it happened again last night. I know there are times when one is between a conscious and unconscious state and comes to with a start,but these occurrences were nothing like that. Sometimes i'm lucid in my dreams, too. I'm not controlling them, but am consciously analyzing them as they unfold. I have no idea what to make of any  of what i've written so far.

Other than all this, i'm well. Of course, the "free world" isn't quite so free, but i'm healthy, have a job that allows me to fulfill my basic obligations, and i look forward to the brighter days ahead. I recently went to my first probation appointment and am still waiting to have my after-care scheduled, which i'm really not looking forward to, but it's only temporary. I'm hoping my probation officer was able to obtain a travel permit for me to visit my great-grandfather in Mexico this weekend for his 100th birthday...really hope it pans out. Oh, and i just got a new laptop and am working on having my first Android application finished and in the Play Store by the end of the year. It's going to be awesome, and I'm going to make obscene amounts of money.

What about you? How's life in...Te-------? I look forward to reading that all is well, as you're "free" and it seems to be. Take care and write soon.

  Your friend,
     n--