Due to cyber stalker issues - mainly my ex-husband and his brood - I need to take off from Xanga and head to other pastures. I hope you will all check our inbox and join me there! :)

I am doing research for a new book that I am writing. 

 Right now I am reading a book called First Person Plural written by Camerom West, Ph. D. as research into Multiple Personality Disorder. It is his personal story in dealing with someone who has Multiple Personality Disorder. He was in his thirties when the personalities first started to appear, married and with a child. It is quite interesting, reading his experiences and how his wife handled this disorder suddenly coming to light - trying to help her husband, hold their marriage together, and shield this from their young five year old son. It is one of those few cases where I am being educated while reading a memoir. I admit, I am a memoir reader, because how people handle things is interesting to me. However, I went into this knowing a bit about Multiple Personality Disorder, mostly from a clinical point-of-view, and it is really interesting learning about it from a personal point-of-view.

I need to do some more research on human trafficking, and am hoping to either speak to someone that has been a victim of this horrible act of manipulation and control, or at least find a first person account as I did with Multiple Personality Disorder.

My last bit of research I need to do is a bit scarier. I am going to be corresponding with an inmate that is on death row. The man claims that he is innocent, that there were errors in his trial, and that the police were under pressure to make an arrest and he was the one that was arrested. Back in my small town of Wisconsin, this happened to a man that was accused of murdering a woman that I knew. His case ended up getting overturned and the DA dismissed it a few days into the appeal trial because he had no real substantial evidence against this man and many of the witnesses that came forward for the prosecution had either made things up, were adding their opinion to testimony, or simply didnt remember. I have connected with a man in Louisiana and am hoping that I will be granted vistiation at Angola to properly interview him. I am still waiting for word on that.

I finally made it for my date with slumber, after trying to meet it in my bed, the trick was to meet it on my couch, one of those over-stuffed numbers clothed in leather, cooling to the touch on a hot New Orleans night. Despite being uncomfortable in the temperature of my home, I needed to be wrapped in a blanket, like Linus in Peanuts, it offered me some sort of unexplained security. As I lay there, thinking, those thoughts that kept me from my date with slumber started to slow, then faded away. Slumber and I met once more.

I heard a noise, voices, come from outside. I lived in the city, so I should be used to these noises by now, but I'm not. This is New Orleans, a place infamous for it's crime rate, though national news reports often forget to mention that the crimes are between those that know one another. Or committed by cops. I turned around, blocking out the voices, being a light sleeper it really doesn't take much to make me stir. I heard another noise, the hard sound of my kitchen door opening. It must have been my husband, getting up to get a drink. I tried to go back to sleep, until I heard a noise from behind me, near where my daughter was camping out on the loveseat.

I turned over and I saw him, a tall looming figure, dark-skinned, wearing a newsboy hat backwards, muted green and orange. I recognize his face, but I couldn't remember were. I focused my eyes on him again, feeling my heart jumping in my chest, going over every scenario in my head. He looked at me, raised his eye brows, shook his head, his lips tightening as if he was disappointed he had seen me, as if he was disappointed he was going to have to silent me. He lifted his gun in front of his face, holding it cocked, causing his face to be broken by the diagnal of steel. It was him, the guy that tried mugging me once while walking my daughter home from school, the guy that I told to fuck off as my daughter and I ran full speed away from him into the Wal-Greens.

Slowly he pointed the gun at me. I heard it cocked, ready to release the bullets that would penetrate me, taking me from this life into the next, leaving a daughter motherless and abandoned, a husband without the one that takes care of him best. I started to scream.

"Help!"

"Help!"

"Bryce, help me!"

I felt myself come to terms with the fact that no one would help me. My husband was a heavy sleeper. He wouldn't hear me. He wouldn't be able to save me. I wasn't going to let him see me cry though, this punk, because he didn't deserve to see me replay my life in those last moments.

I attempted one last time, knowing soon, for me, it would all me done.

"Help!"

"Mom! Mom! Mom!" I heard my daughter shout. I felt myself being shaken.

"Mom, you were screaming in your sleep. Are you ok?" my daughter, eight, asked.

It took me a moment to realize where I was, who was here, and more important, who wasn't. 

"I'm ok, Baby Girl. Mommy was just having a nightmare."

   

I just blogged about my scariest nightmare to enter The Uninvited Scariest Nightmare Contest for 1,000 credits. You can earn free credits too! Brought to you by The Uninvited - In Theaters January 30th.