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The dream is always the same. I’ve grown comfortable with it now over the years, with the familiar, the predictable. In fact, since I’ve encountered it so many times, it seems almost logical, none of the sketchy, fading, nebulous confusion of other people’s dreams.

I left the bus for the three block walk to my home. Now we all know that we can take a plane to the train or a train to the plane, but we cannot take a cab for a three block walk from a bus stop.

I walked in the Autumn stillness through darkened moon swept streets, briskly, authoritatively, for this is my turf. Shall I whistle a happy tune? No need , for I know every sloping sidewalk, every crumbling curb.

I approach Public School Number 159, which looks much smaller than I was a plump six year old on the first day of school a hundred light years ago. I smile, remembering a roly-poly child with round steel rimmed eyeglasses and missing teeth. I glance at the school yard where we’d line up every morning for six years to file into class. The yard is empty now, of course, except for the basketball hoops. It is now that I hear the footsteps. Is someone shooting baskets at this late hour? In the summer, maybe, but not in the chill of late October.

The footsteps grow louder, mingled with the street sounds….dried rustling leaves. Sheets of newspaper whipped flat against the chain link fence by the wind, a distant car horn, a clanging gate, the yowling of mating cats, a beer can caught by the wind, swirling, careening wildly into the gutter.

The muffled footsteps grow even louder, through erratic….run, dodge, leap, sprint, closer, insistent, phantom sounds, actually.

I quicken my pace involuntarily, clutch my purse to my breast for there is always the delicious element of pursuit. As the steps grow louder, my heart beats in tandem, my breathing hastens in gasps. Can I run in these high heels? Is there anything to really be afraid of?

For now the wake up part comes. I ALWAYS wake up in time. I never see the owner of the footsteps.

Until tonight, when I feel his hot putrid breath upon my neck. My scream lies frozen in my throat as I am roughly spun around to see him face to face, at last.