A Total Waste of Marshmallows

Thursday night I took a sleeping pill before I went to bed. I was already tired because I hadn't slept the night before, but I wasn't taking any chances. I wanted to be in prime shape for the First Annual Pink Torpedoes Drunken BBQ, and I knew the chances of that happening after a ten hour drive--especially after an awful night of sleep--were slim. And that's I swallowed that pill and yawned myself into dreams.

Once there, I dreamed of my grandfather. He didn't want to admit he was an old man, a sick man, a man riddled with disease after disease after disease. I was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor of a house I'd never seen before, and my grandfather was there, too. It was rumored he'd killed a young woman--maybe a nurse--who told him he had diabetes and that he needed to watch himself. I was there to confront him.

"Face it, Grandpa!" I yelled. "YOU ARE SICK! YOU ARE OLD! YOU ARE AN OLD, SICK MAN AND YOU CAN'T HURT PEOPLE WHO ARE TRYING TO HELP YOU!"

"That's not true!" my grandfather bellowed. "That's not true at all! You're a liar! You're a horrible, lying girl!"

He dashed off. I could hear him in the room next door. He thrashed around, rummaging and rummaging and rummaging. When he came back into the room, his arms were stacked high with marshmallows. There were bags and bags of full-sized marshmallows. He tore into one of the bags and started throwing them at me. He threw them one at a time, but he threw hard. He pelted me with marshmallows, and I screamed and bobbed, tried to shield myself from his attack.

"STOP IT!" I screamed.

"I DO NOT HAVE DIABETES!" he said, and he threw an entire bag at me. Then he stuffed several marshmallows in his mouth and dashed around the room. He ran circles around me and yanked open the front of his shirt. "I AM FINE!" he shouted. "YOU ARE A HORRIBLE GIRL! A LIAR! YOU ARE A LIAR!"

And then I woke up.