Elise

I want to talk about last night's dream because it was lovely, hot, heart-wrenching, and weird. It's been a while since we've talked about dreams, so: I was living in this underground community which was divided into two factions of unrest, but not really fighting. I had been dating, and was totally in love with, this wonderful girl named Elise, and we went on a date to a place that was filled with giant gumball looking machines, but I think they were arcade games or slot machines. It was the go-to place in our community. Afterward, she took me back to meet her parents.

All throughout dinner, these huge spider things kept crawling toward my foot and were scaring me but Elise's father told me to lift my foot up and they would scuttle away, so I held my foot aloft and noticed there was a thick web attached to my shoe, but when it was held up they stayed away. I put my foot back down for a moment, and this giant (I'm talking foot-long) spider bit me.

Elise started freaking out and so did I because the spider had metal jaws and it hurt. Her dad started laughing about how I would pivot my whole world around Elise and it would be the thing that destroyed my faction. I realized he was part of the rebellion and the spider was a man-made metallic instrument, perhaps poisonous or explosive, but definitely bad. Elise started to fight, reaching for me, screaming at her father that she loved me and didn't want to spend her life apart from me. He held her back and threw me into another room.

There was an explosion. I woke up on the surface with hundreds of people around me, digging for Elise and the "lost family" that had been buried under some sort of freak accident or earthquake. I pounded on the ground, screaming for Elise, crying. Someone rubbed my back and I looked up to see Elise, smiling at me. She pulled me into a hug and I burrowed into her warmth.

"I don't want this to separate us," she told me. "I didn't know what he was going to do. I'm so sorry. I love you, I really, really love you," she pleaded, brushing away my tears. I nodded, heart in my throat, only glad she was alive. I swept her hair off her forehead and tried to memorize her face, still so worried she'd disappear.

"The machines!" someone cried in the distance. "All the buttons are loose and it's a code violation! They're going to take them all down!"

"Everyone, go! Turn them clockwise- to the right! We can fix it!" I shouted out directions. I knew Elise would be with me on this. Our reunion could come after. The machines were important to the happiness of our community, and they were special to us as well. I lost sight of her as we all ran amongst the machines, tightening, fixing. After a while the inspectors backed down. Everyone made their way back to the digging site, but I couldn't find Elise.

"We haven't brought anyone up yet," the foreman told me when I questioned him about her. "Haven't even broken through."

Had she come out through a secret tunnel? Had I been dreaming? Had anyone else seen her? 

Frantically, I began to dig.