I’m in a town that is not named or known to me, but it looks like the north end of 55th Avenue in Yakima, the street and the town in which I grew up, so we’ll just say it’s that.

I’m walking with two friends around my own age. One is a guy with whom I work in real life, the other is a woman who I don’t know in real life. The two know each other in the dream, though. We’re walking up at the end of the street, where Cascade Avenue meets 55th, and there are two young hoodlum kids walking around near us, trying to associate themselves with us. We try our best to ignore them, and we turn and walk away, down the hill toward the Chestnut end of 55th.

The two kids stay up at the end of the street, which leaves the three of us. I’m a few steps ahead of them, so I stop to let them pass, and the woman asks, “What did you do that for?”

I replied, “Oh, it’s just that I hate to have people walking around behind me, so I usually just let them go around.” [This is true in real life too, actually.]

“Oh, okay.”

We’re keeping an eye on the two kids up the street, and then my companions decide it’s time for them to go home, and they turn and walk in a different direction, away from both me and the kids. I’m now walking alone down the street, and I hear the kids start to yell something to me. They’re trying to get each other fired up and talk themselves into whatever it is they’re intending to do to me. I walk deliberately slowly, to show them that I’m not afraid. I turn and walk into my house.

Inside, the house is nothing like our house on 55th was. It has windows that stretch clear to the floor, with large vertical blinds covering them. The walls are painted black, except where they are white above the windows. It’s very stark and interesting, and also decorated in a very Modern Art style, in a way that our house definitely was not.

From inside, I can hear the two kids yelling things to each other like, “Hey, I think he went into THIS house.” They run from window to window, trying to see in, and I’m quickly trying to turn off lights and close the blinds to make it appear that no one’s home. Too many blinds are open, and that worries me, but the kids don’t seem to notice me, so I go around to the back of the house, where there is a bay window that is rounded instead of angled, with a cobblestone floor. It’s sort of a room that overlooks the gardens in the back yard. I lie down on my right side against the cement wall, and one of the kids comes to the window and puts his face against it. I’m directly beneath him, so he can’t see me. I panic and my panic awakens me.

I’m lying in the same position I was in in the dream, except that I’m on my left side, so it takes me a minute to orient myself and figure out what just happened.