In my sleep, my dreams tell me.

I was in the neighborhood where I grew up: a suburban midatlantic neighborhood, with lots of old trees, and big backyards, and short chain fences you could jump over easily if you were playing.
But I had just come back to the neighborhood, and it became a super-dangerous war zone while I had been away. Like, you couldn't show your face outside during certain hours, or enemy marksmen would shoot you full of holes with their AK-47s. We were at active war with communists, in my dream.
Next door in the dream lived a beautiful southeast Asian girl, I think she was Vietnamese. She wore a black uniform. The first time I saw her, I was running for cover as she raked my back yard with bullets from her assault rifle, and as I dove for cover behind a wall of cement bricks, I realized I was in love with this girl, and pretty sure she was in love with me. We had to hunt each other, see, because she was Viet Cong and I was American, but through the kicked-up dust I saw her smiling sweetly with one eye closed as she aimed her Kalashnikov. I was pretty sure she was intentionally not killing me.

Later on inside, as I was loading up my arsenal to go out in the family station wagon to hunt the Vietnamese girl, a hippie uncle, who does not exist in waking life, called my mother on the phone. I could hear him saying that, while he acknowleged the necessity, he was frightened of the kind of stuff my generation was into. I ignored him and went out to the car with my shotgun, pistol, and my own AK.
The girl and I would only hunt each other during the daytime, when it was generally safe to be out and about. We had an understanding about one another, both being off the beaten path as we were, and we were both deadlier than the average soldier.
I drove around all afternoon looking for her, with my rifle pointed out the window, and I never did find her. My alarm woke me up, and I was relieved because it meant I never had to decide whether or not to pull the trigger.

the end