Last night I had a dream that for some reason struck me. It is unusual for me to have such a lucid, scripted, sensible dream. More often they’re incoherent, images and impressions, or snapshots of moments. This one had a plot, a beginning, middle and end.
It began with a sweeping view of a fine, middle class neighborhood, with ample green lawns surrounding large, suburban homes spread widely over gently rolling hills. The visual appeared to close in to where a young girl was playing in a drainage ditch beside one of the houses. She was playing with a dog, who lay across a light runoff stream trickling in the crease of the channel, forming a dam.
It was a fine day, and the smell of salt air wafted from the nearby sea just over the low hillside.
Inside the well-appointed house a woman was working in the kitchen, preparing dinner perhaps.
After a few moments, a knock came at the door. She answered, and silhouetted in the outdoor brightness stood a tall man in a long black coat. He had a scarf around his neck and a hat low over his face.
Suddenly, he lifted his hand from his topcoat pocket, drawing a revolver. Just as the husband descended from the stairs saying “who’s at the door honey?” the stranger shot the woman once, killing her instantly.
The husband screamed, and after a moment’s shock, ran to the door, but the man was already gone.
The little girl returned at the report, wondering what the sound was, and her father picked her up and away from the scene before she could see her mother lying there dead.
…
After much searching and researching, an entire murder mystery later, the husband learned to his dismay that his wife had been married before, and there had been no record of a divorce from a man matching the killer’s description.
…
Finally, it turns out the killer had learned that his runaway wife had remarried and mad jealousy drove him to seek her out and punish her for leaving him.
The husband finds the man and after a dramatic confrontation, kills him with a garden weeder.
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What do you make of that?