I was in someone's front yard, or on the grass verge outside someone's yard, and there was a hose left on to water the plants. I was balancing a laminated poster or art portfolio on one part of the wall and somehow it got wet. So I was wiping off the water and a skinny old man (grandfather type) and a young girl (about 8) came out and started bickering in the front garden. I was thinking the girl was Pav but she wasn't (and didn't even look like her), then I realised I was going to have to deal with Pav myself, but she was in fact a child.
I've forgotten the middle bit, but right before I woke up there was this part where I was standing in front of a wide mirror, brushing my hair or something like that, and realised that the only way I could avoid ever being bothered by Pav again was if she died, and the only way she was going to die was if she was in the car with my mother (my mother driving) and my mother got distracted and ran up the back of a truck.
I woke up all panicked. I sometimes talk in my sleep and sometimes wake myself up by doing that, and I wasn't sure if I'd said out loud what I remembered saying in the dream - "They both have to die."
...
[edited 11 April]
I did write a whole lotta stuff on this, including a longwinded explanation of who Pav is... but then I felt that explaining the situation made it more questionable than if I didn't explain it, and I had to sit on it for three days before deciding that if I have to start explaining things (and do a cast list) before I feel ready to this journal is gonna go the way of all my others - stalled into oblivion.
So, sorry, but no explanation.
[/edit]
...
This dream, then. I woke up all panicked because I'd actually vocalised those dark thoughts... and in the dream I wasn't sure if anyone overheard me, and as I woke up I wasn't sure if I'd spoken aloud... and I was all fuddied and couldn't, for a moment, remember that I was alone in the house.
I don't hate Pav. I don't want to, like, personally, kill her. I suppose some of my feelings can be attributed to jealousy - because my mother spends a lot more time catering to Pav's needs than my own, and purely because of Pav I don't have much of a connective relationship with my mother any more. Oh, hell. It's really really hard to say anything about this situation without actually explaining it. :(
Anyway, it occurred to me some time ago, and not during a dream, that there are only three possible ways for me to avoid having to deal directly with Pav ever again - I move overseas or else I die or else she dies.
She could get run over crossing the road or she could get pneumonia or a bunch of things could happen - it's not necessary that she be a fatality because my mother isn't a perfect driver.
So the tying-my-mother-into-it part is guilt, and when I think about the Pav situation the phrase that always comes to mind is monkey's paw, after a "classic" horror story I read sometime in middle childhood. I most likely chose to read it (in an anthology belonging to my father) because of the word "monkey" in the title, because as a kid I loved monkeys more than anything else. If you're not familiar with the story you can read it here, or if you just want the gist, go here instead.
Once you know how the story goes you should have some idea of the ugliness inside my head.
And I'm going to have to finish this later. I'm feeling sick from trying to put my thoughts into words.