.The Significance of Dream Elements

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I sat down at the table across from Mary, sipping my coffee.

"How was your night?" I asked her.

"Okay, I guess," she replied around a mouthful of bagel. "You?"

"I had the weirdest dream. I dreamed I worked for a serial killer." Just then, my own bagel popped up in the toaster. I got up to butter it, noting the silence at the table behind me. Well, it was a hard line to follow up on.

I continued once I was seated again. "She kept people in her basement."

"The killer did?" she asked.

"Yeah. She'd torment people for a while, before offing them. There were four small cages. A bigger one for whoever she was working over, around the corner. That way the others couldn't see what she was doing, just hear the screams."

"Oh, god, that's horrible!" she said. Her eyes were wide. Mary crouched down in her seat, something she did when she was nervous, and sipped quietly from her coffee cup.

"That was the idea," I replied. "Anyway, in my dream, I kept letting people go."

"Why?"

"I wanted her to get caught," I said with a shrug. "So I'd release a victim, they'd run out of the house, and they were SUPPOSED to tell the cops, so she'd be shut down. But somehow, either she caught them again or they never told, or it just went wrong somehow." I ran a finger through my mustache as I gazed across at Mary.

"Are you saying that you think I...?"

"Oh, no, dear. I don't think you were the source of any of my dream characters." She relaxed...a bit. "I wonder what it means, though?"

"That you should let me go?" she answered quickly. I shook my head.

"Time for work," I said. I rose, scooped her out of the dollhouse kitchen, and placed her in my pocket. As I turned towards the studio, I pointed out: "You think all my dreams mean that."