A bad dream - yeah, I'm aware that it makes me sound nuts

Ok, here's a nightmare I had two nights ago.

There was a killer on the loose. He'd killed before, but I don't know if he fit the bill of a 'serial' killer. He gave notice that he was going to strike on a playground east of some mangrove trees. I was on a balcony in a high rise apartment building, looking down on the beach, when I noticed a playset that matched the warning.

Immediately the cops were dragging in the killer, a blond man with curly unkept hair, along with a messenger bag of 'trophies' in his hand.

Then I was in a movie theater, once of the lush, velvet palaces that would be extinct if not for places like The Oriental. It was storming, and rain was pouring in from dozens of holes in the roof. There were five gallon buckets on many seats to catch the water. I knew it was my friend Tre's theater, and I literally climbed over rows of seats - passing his father as I did - to find him.

I did - Tre was weeping to the side of the stage. I seemed to know what was wrong; it was the reason I had journeyed there, but as I went to comfort him . . .

I was now outside a home, one superficially similar to my mother-in-law's home. It wasn't the same tho'. There was a long driveway, and there was a house with its side 'crossing the T' at the end of the drive, and another running parallel to it. There was dumpster full of large, broken pieces of blue ceramic. I asked what it was, and was told [Dirty Jobs host] Mike Rowe had a workshop there, and those were the discards of his attempts at pottery.

Then, presumably because Rowe's appearance sparked thoughts of reality TV, I noticed a very steep and snowy, forested hill across the road in front of the house. A huge pine tree was being cut down. It slipped out of control and slid down the hill at high speed, right into the busy motorway. Much of the tree broke off on impact, but the rest continued skiing down the road towards houses in the neighborhood. People began running after it to witness the carnage.

Then I was a child in the house I stood next to, and my 'mother', a woman dressed in an apron and house dress, picked up a large lambskin copy of the constitution and began to read aloud. She then declared we had a right, under law, to claim the lumber from the tree as our own. We set off to the scene of the accident.

Once again I was an adult, and I remember I felt very weary and emotionally drained. In my hands was the messenger bag from the start of the dream. I was in a garage with a workbench, and I told my (female) partner it was wrong that no one had looked inside the bag when the arrest was made. It was now old and water-logged, and removing the items was like sifting coins from the sea floor. The last item out was a womans wallet.

Inside was some money, misc. cards, and a high school ID that was now decades old, showing a girl about four years my junior.

"So he killed her," my partner said. "At least now the family can get some peace. Nice job."

And then I woke up.