No, not just anybody.  Today I’m going to listen to the Beatles on repeat.

It’s bad enough that for the past three nights, I’ve been falling asleep to It’s a Wonderful Life on my dvd player.  Clearly, I need help.

I’m not quite sure of the exact time when it happened because I never opened my eyes, but in the middle of the night sometime, I screamed.  HELP.  I didn’t just scream, I rattled. I screamed, “help” so loudly that I startled myself loose from the grip of a dream. 

In the dream, a man was straddling me under a table.  We were both fully clothed; this wasn’t frisky.   He was pouring numbing liquid on my neck and spine, and then down my throat (this makes sense as I’ve been sick with elephant glands and a very sore neck).  But I’m somehow able to ask if he’s going to kill me, but he doesn’t answer.  I know he is going to.  I decide I need to struggle for my life.  I try to scream, but nothing comes out.  The silent screamer dream reoccurred in different forms when I was younger and terrified of being kidnapped.  This time, when the screaming wouldn’t work, I dug my hands into the man’s mouth and began scraping my fingernails on the roof of his mouth.  He hadn’t numbed my hands.  Finally, my neck was able to move, and I was able to scream.  HELP. 

Then I woke up, worried a neighbor had heard and buzzed the doorman.  Linus crawled out from under the covers.

I might have found my voice, but it’s screaming out for help.