had a deeply fucked up dream last night.
my brothers and i found out that our dad was planning to kill us, and that he was in a big brick house preparing to do it. so my brother lincoln got a few revolvers and we went to get him first. we snuck into the house and split up. i was going room by room doing that thing you see people do in movies when i looked down some stairs into the basement and saw him walking around. he had some materials with him that made it clear he was planning to trap and torture us down there. he didn't see me. somehow i knew he would come up to the kitchen so i went in there and pointed my gun at the door. my heart was in my throat.
as soon as he walked in, i yelled, "freeze! don't move!" and he stopped. then he laughed and said, "well, guess you got me." i pointed my gun at him and he just kept laughing. then i pulled the trigger and it just clicked over to the next chamber. lincoln hadn't loaded the gun! i kept clicking and my dad kept laughing, very relaxed, until finally the last chamber had a bullet in it and i shot him right in the middle of the forehead. and then i burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably with grief and relief.
a little while later he was alive again, but we still had him captured. he was still laughing and relaxed, and i was just so confused and anguished, asking him over and over why he wanted to kill us, was he this person all along, a psychopath? [it bears mentioning here that in real life i love my dad and have a wonderful relationship with him.] and he just sneered. at one point he stripped down to his underwear and put on a bright red dress and walked around the house, continuing to blow off my questions. my phone buzzed and when i pulled it out, a lot of the app icons were thumbnails of calvin and hobbes comics. i clicked on one and it brought up a strip that had the dad in it. since i was a little kid i've thought that calvin's dad might as well be a caricature of my dad: skinny, round glasses, big nose, bald, ride bikes and hate drivers, think chores build character. as soon as i saw the strip i burst into tears again.
then i woke up.