"goodfellas" was also a favorite movie of john wayne gacy

the swing shifts are marvelous and i am much happier, but it is taking a while to adjust to my newfound nocturne. after going to sleep around 4, i woke at 8 this morning; after sprawling on the sofa in the sunshine and reading about serial killers (more on that in a moment) i took a brief and deep nap, during which i had yet another fucked up dream:
i am pet-sitting a grey parrot named ike. (this is directly related to the amazon parrot named frank that came into work just as i was leaving last night. he ate a battery of unknown size whilst being cared for by a friend. he clawed the shit out of my arms.) i take ike with me to a home-depot-type store to procure plants. he is docile enough to ride on my shoulder. there is a huge reflecting pool in the middle of the greenhouse area, filled with koi. "look at the fish!" i am singsonging. he hops off my shoulder and starts to saunter off; i follow him out of the store, worried that he's going to fly away. we're suddenly on a rocky beach. it's a grey day; there is a patch of grasses and driftwood, then pebbles and water. my parents are walking nearby. "look at the bird!" my mother says, running over to him- he's wandering on the ground, ignoring my continued pleas to return to my shoulder. he's startled by her and moves further away. i'm frustrated and annoyed- "mom, leave him alone" i say.
she continues to harrass the bird- he's less agitated now and watching her curiously, still just out of reach but not moving, like a naughty child. i notice there is a red backpack and some rubbish on the shore. i investigate: the rubbish is seaweed wrapped around a tattered ballcap and a wet satchel. i unzip the dripping backpack and pull out a plastic bag. i look inside. it is a severed head.
i drop the bag and curse. my father runs over. i tell him what it is. "and you didn't use gloves to touch anything?" he asks. "you mean, you put your prints all over this?" he is furious. "you just destroyed all the evidence" he says disgustedly.
i start to shake, gasp "i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i didn't think", nearly hyperventilating. meanwhile my mother has gotten distracted from the bird and meanders over. she takes the head/skull out of the bag and starts rinsing it off in the water. "what are you doing?" i scream. "it's dirty" she says nonchalantly. "but you're washing off all the evidence! maybe it was dumped here! they could have traced it from the blood and dirt on it!" i am yelling at her in the dream, even more hysterical, begging her to stop, while she calmly ignores me, while ike the bird saunters on the periphery.
i wake up panting, tiresias still in the crook of my knees, lines from the cushion embedded into my face. only twenty minutes had passed.
analyze that one.
i have a few ideas. "that which you most hate in others" comes to mind.
i had been reading about gacy at the time, so it's not as out-of-the-clear-blue as some of my reveries. ever have a completely specific and bizarre word introduced to your vocabulary, only to suddenly have it be EVERYWHERE? for 29 years i have never heard, considered, or needed the term "adicopere" (sp?). but now, twice in the last week, there it is. gacy's crawlspace, for example, was "filled with an icy sludge of mud and adicopere."
adiocipere? i know which letters compose the word, just not the order in which they go.
i love the english language. it covers all the bases of real and imagined nastiness.
*
this afternoon i drove in the glorious sunshine to "my" abandoned dairy compound near olympia. it had been awhile since i'd visited. today i concentrated on the house only; some of the window coverings had been pried off by ne'er-do-wells. i had never seen the inside before. i did not go in, because the place is a rotting death trap, i was right next to the road (my turquoise car parked jauntily in front of the 'no trespassing' gate), and there were two kids already trespassing in the barns, invisible but audible. i did not want to be a further bad influence on their virginal minds.
the house:

the basement, visible from a knocked-out window. i expected to see a corpse floating in the corner- why the fuck did i read that shit earlier? this area is part of the floodplain and was inundated during december's torrents.

the living room ceiling, the attic, and the sky:

and the cozy porch:

the kids were walking towards the gate as i was leaving. two boys, maybe junior high. "you live around here?" i asked. "what's the story with this place?" they were very polite. one said that the dairy went bankrupt and the land was turned into a wildlife preserve by the state. "there's usually, like, 25 elk wandering around" he said. i asked if they ever got bugged for going on the property. "no, nobody's ever said anything." i thanked them and wished them a "cool day", then drove off, wincing at my feeble phraseology.
when i was their age, had i had such a place, i would have stumbled out reeking of shoplifted cigarettes, fresh hickeys on my neck. just saying.