In the dream I was sleeping somewhere, in an unfriendly school maybe, and I must have tried to say something out loud, because then I felt these hands against me, my back and the back of my skull. So typically the dream turned into this story where someone was sneaking behind me to kill me, and I couldn't move to struggle or run away. Actually, I think that the dream's imagination made up the entire story of me sleeping and getting killed the moment I felt threatened, nonetheless it made complete sense and was very persuasive in the context.
I tried to scream to call for help and I must have screamed in the real world for a while. But the hands remained there, since it was just Libi trying to soothe me (so much for meddling into someone's dreams to save him out of trouble, I guess).

I never entirely woke up, I just managed to roll away from Libi hands to calm down. I knew my mouth was dry because some weird new allergy clogged my nose, and I knew I had to wake up to get me some water. But I had to finish my dream first.
There was a memory of when I used to go visit my dad in Trento, few years ago, before he retired to Liguria. I was a student in Venice and sometimes I had to ride the Valsugana "little train" up to Trento to stay at his place a couple of days. The Valsugana "little train" was a blue and white diesel train with two carriages mostly used by students in the weekends. Among them was this beautiful girl I really liked, from Borgo Valsugana. She had long gorgeous legs and long black hair, and I never dared to talk to her. I never knew her name. But this has nothing to do with the story.
I was never happy to visit my dad, it was very stressful (in fact I don't do it anymore). But it was an occasion to eat real food, meat for example, since I never had any money.
At my father's I used to sleep in the living room, on a small folding bed shorter than I was. Before falling asleep into it, all my care was devoted to resist at masturbating into it. I stayed awake until late instead, reading. I used to read a lot then, in the before-I-had-a-computer days.

Many of those nights in the short folding bed I could hear my father screaming in his sleep, which was something he probably always did since when I first knew him and we all lived together under the same roof. From those days I think somewhere in my mind rests the conviction that grown-ups scream in their dreams, so that others can pity them and admire their troubled soul.
Now every time I have a loud dream I get in the back of my head some immediate reward, because I finally got to be a troubled adult (not that I ignore how much it sucks to be one). But then I also get some guilty feeling, because during those nights in Trento I never got out of bed to wake my father out of his own bad dreams.

I left him there instead, calling for help. I just stayed still, turned toward the wall that divided the two rooms, until he had finished calling. I probably thought he couldn't appreciate my helping him out, since he always made so much to hide all his soft spots (but then I knew them all).
Probably I also had thoughts like "now you see what it means to be scared, jerk". What a jerk I was.

In the dream I wondered if I had to make up for this. Call him, visit him, soothe him out of his bad dreams. But isn't it exactly this that scared you even more tonight? I argued.
Then I remembered Art Spiegelman's miraculous words: "I'd rather feel guilty", and slowly I came back from the sleepers.