It always fascinates me when people talk about nightmares. From scary clowns to spiders to being chased, nightmares come in all flavors and varieties. But not for me.
I pretty much have only ever had one nightmare.
Let’s ask wikipedia – what is a nightmare?
“A nightmare is a dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the sleeper, typically fear and/or horror. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror. Sufferers usually awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a prolonged period of time.”
Okay, I buy that. So, if we go by that definition, I have only ever had one nightmare. It has, however, repeated itself from time to time.
Worse, I know when it’s about to hit me.
It’s odd, I know. Here’s how it goes: I will be asleep. I’ll wake up and realize that something is wrong. My whole body will be tingling and I’ll find it impossible to move. I will immediately realize that the nightmare is coming. I’ll start to struggle to move, to turn over, to do something to keep the nightmare away. There have been a couple times that I’ve succeeded. You would have thought that I’d run a marathon.
The majority of the time, I don’t succeed. My eyes roll in my head as I fight to keep them open while arms and legs refuse to respond. Before you know it, my eyes crash closed and everything goes still. I start sinking.
My stomach lurches. The bed beneath me is no longer solid, or maybe it’s me who is no longer solid. I fall through it, the layers of it passing before my eyes. Then I’m beneath the bed, staring up at the box springs. I still can’t move. It doesn’t end there. I start to melt through the floor.
Again, I can see the layers – of the wood, the vents, everything in the floor beneath me. When I have lived on second or third stories, I will pass slowly through the apartments beneath me, seeing details of these places as I fall through.
Eventually I pass through all the man made structures and into the earth. Dirt and grass swallow me. It should be dark but I can still see, still make out the layers of earth, rock, bugs – everything as I fall deeper and deeper, unable to move, to scream, to-
I wake up.
Never really varies except for wherever I am sleeping. Hasn’t happened in a long time, then it happened just a few nights ago. I was caught totally off guard.
I woke freaked out and didn’t want to go back to sleep for a long time.
Nightmares…
~P
2 Comments
I have weird dreams but rarely are they nightmares, even if they aren’t always sweetness and light.
Like the one I had last night involving a secret Edwardian era German invasion of New Jersey by attacking the sea docks underneath the rambling house I was staying in…
Comments are closed.