I had a really gross dream.

I dreamt that I moved far away, to a place where I didn't know anybody. The first part of the dream was arriving in the travel station in my ugly new town. My life in the dream is different. I'm younger and less confident, and my "lifestyle" is considerably more conservative. I work a lot, don't smoke, and come home to an ugly, drab, suburban apartment with two or three housemates that I don't know or care much about. This is how I imagine people in the National Guard live. No art, little color, not much pleasure.

I've only ever caught glimpses of any of the housemates. This is a strictly craigslist, I-don't-want-to-ever-consider-the-possibility-of-socializing-with-you kind of thing. One day I'm making coffee, and one of the housemates brushes by, warning me that another housemate is "kinda weird. His job is making puppets."

[If you know me irl, you know the real me would be all over this.]

I just kinda shrug it off and don't process it too much. I still have the same body of knowledge as "real me," but my personality is wildly different, I don't care about the same things, if anything. There is no one else besides me and housemates. None of us have any friends.

The puppet guy's bedroom door is directly across from mine. Occasionally, as I'm walking past, I see him steal glimpses at me. He and the visible sliver of interior of his room are non-descript.

One night, this weird old lady comes into my room. Just casually. She has very floppy hands and a big hooked nose, with shoulder length gray hair. She kind of looks like one of the Triplets of Belleville, or a Brian Froud illustration of an old lady. She has a kind look on her face. She just walks into my room like it's nothing. The reason that I am not completely, instantly freaked out by this, is because I can tell that she is a puppet. My heart warms a little as I decide that this is my new housemate, attempting to break the ice in the coolest possible way.

The lady looks really good. I can barely tell. Her skin is latex-y. I speak to her pleasantly, trying unconvincingly to hold back peals of laughter. I know that my housemate is on the other side of the door, manipulating her, listening to my words. I'm on best behavior, but I'm delighted.

This goes on for a while, maybe once every three days I get a 20 minute visit from the "Old Lady." I still don't speak to anyone aside from that.

Then, one night, the "Old Lady" is visiting, and she makes some kind of a pass at me. It's gross! Now I'm just creeped out. If this wasn't a housemate situation, this might almost be romantic. But this is worse than inappropriate. The puppet is trying to touch me. This perv isn't using this thing to get me all giggly so he can come in and do me, he wants to watch me do the Old Lady puppet. Ew!

I'm so shocked and stupified that I continue responding to the Old Lady as if she is a real, autonomous person. I argue politely and shove her out of the room, asking her to please not come back. I am scared, so I call my sister, Mo, and ask her to come visit for a few days. I don't tell her why.

Now Mo is leaving. Her visit has gone by without incident. I am sitting near the head of my bed. Mo is standing at the foot of the bed, packing a suitcase. She drops a sock and glances down, and gasps a bit.

"What is that?!" She points at something under the bed. Somehow, I already know what it is. Afraid to look, I ask her to describe it. She says it looks like a human skin, but with liver spots, rubbery like a Boglin toy. I ask her if it smells rotten. She says it smells like latex and rotten feet. I tell her not to worry about it, but I am irrationally horrified as we leave for the travel station.

That night, I'm laying asleep in bed, and the Old Lady comes. She is naked, and climbs into my bed, saying really gross sexual things to me, as I struggle to wake and deal with it. All of a sudden, I am terrified: I realize that the Old Lady's body has no animatronic power source, AND there are no strings or rods attached to her limbs. This "puppet" is not being manipulated in the Henson sense. Either this thing IS a self-aware human, or it's my housemate in a suit, or it's a reanimated corpse that my housemate is controlling. I wake up before I figure out which.