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I woke up with a crazy vivid dream. It all began with news that an aunt in my family, a conservative women with a bunch of children in her late 40s, would be divorcing without explanation. Because of family estrangement, my parents were kept particularly in the dark, and my father (my aunt's brother) had only just heard of it at a family reunion we were attending and was more inquisitive, while the others had already accepted it having known for a while. We arrive at a large lakeside mansion that has been rented near an old abandoned mountain mining town with imposing industrial machinery in the distance, giving it an atmosphere that is mostly warm with a shadow of darkness to it.
We enter the mansion and I follow my father and grandfather through its halls, who have transformed into Tony and Paulie Soprano. This was part of a lengthy "interrogation" chapter that I think I've largely forgotten, but it was a sort of exploration of psychological motive, the one I remember well involved a flashback to an old water park from 25 years earlier. We take the longest and most intense water slide down, and at the bottom it opens to a semi-circle top but deepens at the bottom to about 5 feet. Due to a mechanical error, the pump is overly strong, elevating the water level to the top of the rim, while simultaneously causing a clog at the end that causes people to pile up and drown. We escape and then my aunt appears as a younger Elaine from Seinfeld, gushing over how the water jet and mass crushing stimulated her pussy just right and gave her the best orgasm she ever had.
Then I'm back at the mansion and the "curtain falls" literally, revealing a kitchen where a now-older Elaine is singing and dancing naked apron style. My father in Tony mode pleads with her to reconsider and give up this unresolved selfish sexual fantasy, but she laughs him off. The door bell rings and she runs down with a briefcase to leave with a guy who appears to be a Chinese triad member, and they drive off in a limo. We stalk the limo to the abandoned industrial site, first entering the mountain through a large tunnel with blast doors, then making it out a smaller tunnel with a dangerous high-wire platform section that vaguely resembles the Half-Life level Blast Pit, only outdoors and overhanging a multi thousand foot drop.
At the end of the platforms is a connection to another mountain with a luxury combination restaurant-lobby-boardroom where presumably executives once lounged 100 years earlier, walls mostly glass, the entire area showered in a lovely rich gold from a setting sun. A sweet, soft voice comes in over an intercom and asks the triad member to return our aunt and the briefcase, but he refuses. In an instant the scene turns dark, the only source of light a single tube television displaying static. Around a corner, Charlotte of Magica Madoka appears, only instead of flying she shuffles around like a Pac-Man ghost, expressionless. Suddenly, her face lights up like neon and she goes full horror survival on the triad guy's ass, chasing him down as I watch horrified yet unmolested, baring its row of sharp teeth before eviscerating the guy. She collects the briefcase, revealed to have 50k USD in it, and then walks off as the sun now rises, again flooding the area with a golden warmth.
In the light I realize that "Charlotte" was actually wearing an oversized blue hoodie, and hear a sad piano-led song begin to play on the intercom, sung by the same voice that had spoken earlier: "I can't even dance / Roooomance / They're eating the cats / Enjoy yourself, fats". I follow her back over the platforms from which we first entered, and she turns to face me, shark teeth bared wide, eyes closed but welling tears, and waves goodbye. An open-air elevator to my left activates as she walks through the upper bulkhead tunnel, the door slowly closing, and I have the strongest urge to run through and chase after her, but then it slams shut and I wake up.
