Proving Ourselves

So in my dream, I'm a kid, but also my present age, and I'm with my immediate and extended family at "an old friend's house." In real life, I feel like it was my parents very old friends, the Kumars (Dr. Kumar sold my parents their first house for a buck or something and their son was a county supervisor here in Madison until last year). But the family we were visiting did not look like the Kumars. They were Indian, however. Just a different family.

There were two men in their twenties and one who was a teenager, maybe about 13 or 14 (the sons of the family we were visiting). While our parents sat in the dining room talking, the older sons came into the side room of the house where my siblings and cousins and myself were. The two men were holding machine guns and had bandanas around their heads that looked curiously like what Ralph Macchio wore in the The Karate Kid.

The two men announced that we were about to play a game to "prove ourselves." They headed out to the giant, dark backyard, guns in hand, and we all kind of looked at each other. Their younger brother got ready to go meet them, and we all knew he was about to get shot because nobody was as good at the game as the older brothers were. He looked devastated and full of dread as he slowly walked outside.

My siblings and cousins and I sat around, half watching television and half talking about why we shouldn't have to participate in this game. We kept saying things like "Isn't it time to leave anyhow?" And "We should check with the parents to see if we can get a ride home." We knew our turn was coming though.

At some point, one of the older men brought my friend D into the room and held him up against a dark green door. He used some thing on him that looked like it shocked him, and then something else that looked like a nail gun. He put the nail gun right up to D's chest and shot it. We knew D wasn't hurt or dead - he had just lost the game.

Finally we went into the room where all the parents were, which was bright and pink and yellow, full of cakes that were pink and white. The carpeting was yellow too. "Why didn't you guys get dessert?" my mom asked?

Then we left.