When I'm very stressed and/or drinking a lot and/or not sleeping well, I sometimes dream of being stalked through an immaculate and half empty two-story suburban house. (with salmon-pink carpeting, except for the stairs, which are usually either white or green. The decor was sparse and sort of.. Bland McMansion type modern decor meets early 90s kitsch.) I am always a guest in these dreams. The house belongs to three identical teenage sisters and one older brother. Their parents are always mysteriously absent. Usually it all begins with me walking past their house at dusk and being called over by one of them (sometimes they're crouching on the roof, sometimes they're standing in a tree motionlessly) and led inside. The sister's scarcely speak (they peer out of the doorways of their separate bedrooms on the second floor when I walk down the hall in search of a window because all the other windows are covered in flowered sheets and duct tape, and peeling off the duct tape would have been too loud to do surreptitiously) and they're always dressed in ill-fitting Laura Ashley-style dresses with puffy sleeves. Anyway, I had a variation of this dream last night, I think. The most stressful part always takes place in the completely empty upstairs loft/"playroom" area. Sometimes the walls and ceilings would be carpeted, too, which made it feel like some horrible cocoon. The brother would always corner me in this room, right by the balcony, while asking me repeatedly to stay for dinner (he'd always mention that his parents were away at their lake house but that they'd left them a casserole and that it would be "very rude" if I didn't try the casserole, etc etc)-- which all sounds like typical mundane dream stuff but for some reason this particular dream is always deeply unnerving.
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