october 30 2022

My sister Isabelle calls me out to the living room of our family's house, where she's sitting on the couch next to two boys in hoodies. Isabelle is holding a silenced pistol and a nondescript valuable object. I sit down opposite the pair on a bench we have in our living room perpendicular to the couch on one side. She's in the process of chewing them out about trying to steal her valuable object. I tell her no to shoot; it seems that this has actually happened before, and she's had to dispose of several bodies. She says OK, and hands me the gun. The older boy sudenly scrambles for the valuable item and I instinctively shoot. Perfect shot in the forehead, he dies instantly. Everyone freaks out. Isabelle and I have a terrified discussion about what to do. I consider just shooting the other boy, but we decide not to. Somehow the dream proceeds with us both having killed and not killed the younger boy. Isabelle drags the older boy over and leaves him on our neighbor's front step. We simultaneously leave the younger boy's corpse on the couch, and also take him with us to dim sum with our extended family (a regular tradition). He sits next to my mother opposite me at the table. My father is there with his brothers and they are using ASL. Opposite me, the younger boy starts talking to our mother ina a lowe voice, thanking her for lending him a towel. As their conversation goes on they get quieter and quieter, and everyone else does too, as though they're straining to listen. I take Isabelle aside and tell her look, we fucked up; because when we finidh here, we're going to have to ride home with our parents, and they'll see the body on the couch. She understands, and is scared. I suggest that I can ask how much longer the event is expecteded to go, and then conspicuously decide to just go home early on the train instead. But when we come back to the table, everyone has emptied out into the parking lot, and the younger boy has disappeared. We are now forced to drive back with our parents. We stop on the way back at a 7/11. In the parking lot, I give Isabelle a speech to convince her that we have to come clean to our parents, there's no way around it - and that she's been doing this for a while, and she was bound to make a mistake and get caught. I reason that telling them, and getting them to help us cover it up, is our only option. She cries and agrees. We get home and the body is gone. I look out the window and there's nobody at the neighbors. I turn back around and Isabelle and I are standing in front of both boys, inexplicably both alive, and we're back holding the gun on them. We stress out about what to do with them now. I decide to try to make a pact of silence with them and let them go (the implication being that we're protected by the knowledge they tried to steal Isabelle's object, and they're protected by the knowledge that we tried to/actually did kill them). They agree. Then I wake up.