This is for Mary Reilly.

I shot Julia Roberts.

Well, actually, gina shot Julia Roberts… and if we’re getting technical, the shooting actually happened in a bizarre dream I had the other night. And if we’re getting really technical, I have a feeling it was a combination of Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie, because there was a moment where the widower was Brad Pitt. Maybe I was just confusing “reality” with The Mexican.

I (stupidly) told a co-worker about this dream, and he had a very reasonable question: “Was there a motive?”

Maybe some people might actually have a motive to kill Julia Roberts, but I am not one of them. I hold a special place in my heart for Julia Roberts. So special, in fact, that I am able to overlook such movies as Mary Reilly and Runaway Bride. I was downright obsessed with Julia in high school. I have seen Pretty Woman probably 200 times. When I first visited Los Angeles, I was staying with my friend Becky, who worked in Beverly Hills. I would go to work with her during the day just so I could walk around and find all of the places where Pretty Woman was filmed. (I can show you the Regent Beverly Wilshire, and even the store where she served the mean saleslady a taste of her own medicine.) I have also managed to find the apartment she was staying in with Kit. Yeah. I’m that person.

And even more confusing, I would certainly never want to harm Angelina Jolie. That obsession started well into adulthood, and while I have kept it bay pretty well, I would turn into a 12 year old if I ran into on the street (for the third time). I won’t go in to the intricacies of my everlasting love for Angelina because I have been told more than once it is trite and common, but I’m just saying I have no ill will towards her.

Why then would valuable dream time be taken up by these murderous visions? As I thought more about this, I realized that this might actually officially be a recurring dream theme. Gina and I were just discussing recurring dreams, and I realized I don’t have any, save for the occasional dream where a plane crashes, dreams which (not surprisingly) started after 9/11. But after this movie star murder dream, I realized I have had quite a few dreams where I have killed or have been directly involved in killing someone.

The dreams always begin after I have committed the crime, never before or during, and I am overwhelmed by a crushing sense of regret and doom, and a tangible disgust in what I have done. There is never even a remote possibility in the dreams that I will get away with my crime, but it’s not the punishment that scares me. It’s the disappointment I know I will face from everyone I love, and the disappointment in myself that I so clearly lost control. And even in the haze of my nightmare, I am suffocated by the desire to go back in time, to undo what I’ve done. Even though it’s a dream world, where anything can happen, I am never able to fix the situation. I’m never able to bring the person back to life – I never get a second chance. The best thing that happens is that I wake up whimpering, then terrified, until that warm relief of consciousness washes over me.

I’m not sure what any of this means. I only hope the next dream I have about either one of these women involves much less gun violence and more naked cuddling.