Nightmare

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