A girl I'm attracted to asks my help in exposing the secret crimes of her rich, powerful parents. They've disowned her AND her sister. Their mom, in particular, has a reputation as ruthless, even brutal. But she's always escaped conviction--just barely.

So one night we sneak over the stone wall, onto their estate, and slink through the woods toward the mansion. We navigate by moonlight, don't dare show a light. It's dense and brambly in spots. Slow.

Suddenly my friend's jerked up into a tree! There's a popping crunch, she writhes once, then dangles, staring, still. A thin rope tight around her neck. I know she's dead--that pop was her neck snapping. Killed instantly by her mom's booby-trap.

And I don't even dare climb up and cut her down--it'd be just her mom's style to rig a second trap for rescuers.

I decide there's only one thing I can do: go on alone, and avenge her. Her mother can't be allowed to get away with murder. And right now, that's my horizon, as far as I can see a future.

We didn't even get CLOSE to exposing her father's better-covered skeletons...

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Corpse in a tree = Joseph Campbell's Way of the Animal Powers says Siberian shamans may sacrifice an animal to help their journey, and hang it on a tree. I felt angry, reading that. It's wrong to smooth your spiritual way with others' sacrifices! Give of yourself or not at all. I won't even sacrifice my own animality--I've done too much of that.
• Hanging = Stumbled on an entry in Dictionary of Myth and Fable about Judas: supposedly he hanged himself on an elder tree. So my friend may have been killed by an "elder" in TWO senses.
• Parents from hell, family secrets = when we were little my sisters and I wondered if our parents would abandon us or institutionalize us, if we got inconvenient, as they got rid of our cat Persephone.
• Echoes of Judas suggest my parents set us up as Jesus set up Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar: made us feel suicidal guilt for things our parents set us up to do in the first place.
• The trap: in several dreams this week, my abused child-self tried to expose the truth at considerable risk. The trap suggests just how high the stakes are--how much there is to hide and how far my parents will go to hide it.

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