A Haunted Dream

A couple of nights ago, I had an odd dream that was aborted by a strange occurence.

I'm sitting at a stop light. Traffic is jammed up from all the other people trying to get to the same writer's conference. A man who looks like Bruno Tonioli from Dancing with the Stars is directing traffic. He notices my impatience (did I honk my horn? curse out the window?) and comes over to the passenger side of the car. He sticks his head in, points to a flyer pasted on the outside of my windshield, and says (in a thick Italian accent), "Ms. DePaepe...what...is... that?" I look up and see that it's a bank advertisement. I confessed that I'd known it was there for weeks, but had been too busy to make a effort to remove it. Then, he tells me (with more than a little anger in his voice) that a mutual friend told him, "She would be great...if she would just...slow...down." I made note of the comment in my busy little brain, and the next thing I knew, he was gone, and I was walking into the hotel. At this point, it was late evening. The desk attendant said that my roommate had already checked in. When I opened the door to the room, I could see her suitcase in front of the dresser and her form lying in one of the double beds. I'd never met this person, and didn't want out first introduction to be a rude awakening, so I got ready for bed in the dark then slipped into the other bed as quietly as I could.

This is where the dream ends...because I was startled awake by someone squeezing my toe. There was no gray line between the dreamworld and reality here. Someone SQUEEZED MY TOE. With wide eyes in the dark, I looked over at DH. He was fast asleep, and his feet were on the far side of the bed, nowhere near mine. I was about a second away from making the effort to lift my head and see if anyone else was in the room when I heard FOOTSTEPS DARTING OUT INTO THE HALLWAY. As I lifted my head, eyes beginning to adjust to the darkness, I saw that it was 1:28 a.m., and there was no one in the room or lingering just outside the door. My intuition told me that there wasn't someone in the house (a toe-pinching burglar?). I knew that this was potentially a paranormal event. I wasn't scared. It seemed more like I had been awakened on purpose--to remember the dream and its message. SLOW...DOWN...

Life does seem crazy most days, trying to juggle so many responsibilities and find the time and brain cells leftover to write. How many other writers out there could use a ghostly kick in the pants to take it a little easier and hit DELETE on some of the items on the 'to do' list?