A noise wakes me up. Someone's breaking into my apartment! Crawling in the window.

Wrong. Three someones. It's a middle-aged white woman with two Asian teenage girls. All strangers to me, but they act as if they recognize me.

They say they're my ex-wife and my children! Funny--I don't recall being married or having kids! And if I'm not Asian and she's not Asian, how come our daughters are Asian?

Though she climbed in the window, this instant ex talks as if I did--like I've slunk home, defeated. She sounds sweetly poisonous, with little notes of nasty triumph. I turn wary and matter-of-fact, trying to collect more facts about this bizarre situation.

I tell 'our' kids "Use the bathroom now if you need to; I'm gonna take a shower in a minute."

My 'ex' She says "I'll cook dinner." I say "fine." She's more openly scornful now, triumphant. I thought I was only in my twenties, but she treats me as middle-aged, like her--an older guy acting out some midlife crisis. She talks as if I left her for a much younger woman, an aspiring actress here in Hollywood. Did I mention she thinks we're in Southern California? I went to sleep in the Bay Area...

Anyway, my ex-wife assumes I'm alone because my new girlfriend just dumped me for some younger guy! No wonder she's triumphant. Only... my girlfriend hasn't dumped me.

None of this makes sense, and at last I just leave. I'm a student, and I recently moved into this off-campus apartment. Let her have it! I'll go back to my campus room and forget this whole crazy pseudofamily. I doubt I ever WAS married to her--too many contradictions even amnesia can't explain. A trick, a delusion, mistaken identity?

But I forgot and left a few key items behind. I decide to risk going back to pick them up--she seemed malicious but not violent. I open the house door--my key does work here, I notice. So it IS my apartment, not hers.

All dark. I think "Good, she's gone" but then my bed creaks. I decide to scare her--get even with her for her contempt earlier. I slink in like a burglar. She panics and turns on the light. But then, I lower my balding head--wait a minute, am I middle-aged? I don't recall being bald! But suddenly I am... is she right after all? I'm as puzzled as she is... But I lower my balding head to at the doorpost, and bow ritually to her, mysteriously... And pick up my textbooks and leave! She gapes at me, bewildered. She even forgets to curse me as I walk out. For a minute at least.

But she regains her style soon enough. Hires a detective, has me followed, and finds out where my girlfriend lives. She really is an actress, that part is true. A skinny brunette named Cassandra, gifted but easy-going.

My ex-wife, or whatever she is, goes over, address in hand, when I'm in class, and knocks on Cass's door, and introduces herself as my ex-wife, who I "neglected" to mention. "How like a man!" This backfires, since of course I told Cass about her, it was too bizarre a story NOT to tell... but Cass keeps a straight face and invites my "ex-wife" in. Sipping tea in Cass's kitchen, she assumes that Cass must be with me for money, or for my film-industry contacts. No one could love me for me!

Cass goes along with her cheerfully. "Yeah, I get a new boyfriend every two months or so, when I start to get bored and they quit spending as much on me. But I'll string this one along a while longer if you'll help. I'll go on a lonnnng romantic trip and get his expectations up, and get him to blow some big money on me! Then it'll really hurt when I dump him for a younger guy! Can you front me some of the trip money, is it worth it to you, to see him suffer extra?"

And my ex falls for it! She's THAT malicious. Cass can't believe it, she was piling it on to help this woman see how absurd this all is. Not even a B movie--try Z!

But she takes Cass up on her offer. For the first time in history, someone believes Cassandra.

So this woman I never even heard of before today pays Cass to go on a long romantic trip with me and wring me out and dump me, in revenge for ruining our nonexistent marriage.

And so... Cass and I get to go on a wonderful vacation, all expenses paid... courtesy of my crazy, bitter ex-wife!

Or whoever she is.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• I'm middle-aged, divorced, live in LA, gone back to school, film industry contacts: ALL wrong--I'm in my twenties, single, live in the Bay Area, not a student, no film contacts.
• Cass echoes a short recent dream, Cassandra & Otter.
• Jealous ex, sure no one could love me, sure women will use me = didn't look like anyone I know. My ex-girlfriend Kay? Or does this voice go all the way back to my mom? She too was quite sexist about men. But maybe I still believe this stupid tape-loop--whatever its origin.
• Two Asian daughters = uh-oh. They looked like Silky, my spirit-girlfriend, in her human form. Has she been fooled into believing this malicious side's bullshit, is she following her around now? I don't think so... Cass resembles Silky too, and she wasn't at all under my ex's spell.
• Cassandra, in Greek myth, gets cursed by a god; she always tells the truth and is always disbelieved. But my ex-wife BELIEVES Cass--the first in history to break the curse! So what does she believe? A joke, not even meant to be a plausible lie! So my pseudo-ex ends up screwing herself just as badly as the ancient Cassandra's skeptical listeners did... to Cass's benefit. Ha.
• Our happy vacation, funded by malice = I seem to be healing, getting beyond the hurt my mom's man-blaming caused me. Not only does my pseudo-ex's malice backfire, but, more importantly...
• I'm with Cassandra now. And she breaks the pattern. For Cassandra's not just hot and/or prophetic. She's (O subversive quality!) nice.

2021 HINDSIGHT

If I'd dreamed this today, it'd be obvious to me what it's about--not me, but my brother-in-law! 'John' is a balding white guy with an ex-wife and two Asian-American daughters (rock climbers who'd easily freeclimb to my high bay window), and he did go through an intense midlife crisis. Not all details match--his ex isn't white or vindictive, he lives in California but not LA, he loves a writer not an actress... but then Cassandra the Greek prophet seems, forty years later, an obvious symbol for predictive dreaming itself. My confusion--old, young, married, not?--also makes sense if it's a dream of the long-term future. One announcing itself--Cassandra the prophet is one red flag, my time-confusion a second. I could dismiss one flag; not two.

Readers rejecting ESP be warned: I've had clearer long-term predictive dreams, like Bill Cosby's Wife, Breast Bandit or Trump on the Run; so I know first-hand that the phenomenon is real. Not easily explained, but real. So when a confusing case comes up, I can't casually dismiss it as chance.

If you have a dream like this, showing genuine bewilderment about what decade you're in, don't be dogmatic or get all symbolic--maybe it simply is spanning time somehow. Taking a dream literally is, after all, the simplest assumption. Occam's Razor often works.

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