A dream invasion just in time for Halloween:
After a brief exchange with author Leigh Stein on Instagram about how she wrote a murder mystery without a murder (If You’re Seeing This It’s Meant For You), I dreamt I murdered someone.
Or did I?
Only my subconscious knows. The dream involved an annoying woman and her grown son who came to my house. I didn’t know what she wanted from me, but she kept yacking in my ear, waving her arms around, complaining about everything, until I’d had enough. I hustled her out and packed her and her son into her car— it was open, like a huge kiddie car— and I shoved it down the steep driveway.
“Goodbye and good riddance,” I thought.
I might have pushed a little too hard. The car went down the first flight of wide wooden stairs (remember: dream) and then it picked up speed, racing down the second flight as the stairs broke apart. The car sailed over a cliff and crashed just before it spit the woman out.
Her crumpled body and handbag lay on the ground below me. It was an awful sight. She was dead, no doubt about that. Her son was running toward her; I was thankful he didn’t die.
I feared her death was my fault. After all, I had pushed her. But the stairs fell apart! I didn’t know that would happen.
A good district attorney would surely charge me with murder. “Isn’t it true, Ms. Sienkiewicz, that you were angry? Isn’t it true that you pushed her with ill intent?” I imagined the tense courtroom drama playing out, the son as a witness for the prosecution.
I was so screwed.
A steady diet of TV autopsies doesn’t help
What surely fed into this bizarre dream are the reruns “Bones” and “NCIS” that my husband watches, turning our living room into Murder Solving Central. I sit with him and read a book (definitely not a murder mystery). I usually get sucked into the drama while, at the same time, I have to cover my eyes. So many complicated murders! So gross!
What struck me most wasn’t the horror of my dream, but how my brain stitched together scraps of conversation, TV noise, and irritation into a full-blown murder trial. That’s the strange alchemy of storytelling: how a dream, a passing remark, or an annoying stranger can turn into narrative drama.
Thankfully, no blood is on my hands, and I woke up without handcuffs or an orange jumpsuit. I’ll leave the actual mysteries to Leigh Stein and TV detectives, and stick to safer storylines in real life, without cliffs or crumpled bodies.
Thank you for visiting!
Author Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a wrangler of words and big messy feelings. Her second novel, Love and Other Incurable Ailments, is coming October 27, 2026, from Regal House Publishing: When love letters from a despondent stranger land in her lap, an anxious overthinker becomes convinced she’s the cure, and sets off to save him, and herself, blissfully armed with nothing but magical thinking.
Connect with Linda on social media via LinkTree. Check out Linda’s Books.
Sign up for her newsletter and never miss an event, announcement or giveaway!