Category: Nightmares

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Nightmares

#379: Anxiety Cat

(30’s, Midwest USA)

One of my anxiety coping mechanisms is to imagine a cute fluffy cat is sitting next to me, and I’m petting the creature and it’s purring. Yes, that sounds like a wonderfully relaxing scenario, doesn’t it?

I was using this coping mechanism the other night, trying to relax and sleep, holding that warm and cuddly image in my mind, and I finally drifted off to sleep to dream about the cat. However, it wasn’t fluffy anymore. It was mangy. It hopped off the bed and crawled under the sofa. It started clawing the bottom of the sofa, tearing at the polyester fabric and foam padding underneath. I realized that this cat wanted to make a secret nest inside the sofa! The cat is working hard and persistently, and soon the cat has its head, its front paws, and much of its shoulders inside the sofa. Its front claws are extended all the way so it can claw and scratch in there.

Then the fabric on the outside of the sofa, where the original tear is, catches on something. The cat starts to strangle. It panics. Because it is panicking, it can’t pull its claws back in to pull itself out of the sofa. The more it struggles, the more tangled it gets, the more it strangles.

The cat, the fluffy ideal that started out as my coping mechanism, strangled itself to death half in and half out of a hideous 70’s sofa.

I’m now upgraded my coping mechanism to a giant snuggly St. Bernard.

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Nightmares

#378: Test Pilot Test

(30’s, Midwest USA)

In this dream, I am a test pilot of some type. I’m not myself at all; instead, I’m a middle aged guy, what I imagine the first generation of astronauts looked like.

I’m testing different types of capsules, landing capsules even. I’m led over to a new capsule, and this one looks like a crash couch. The capsule is round, and the astronaut lies in it in the fetal position.

They open the top for me to get in, and the interior is very very hot. It reeks of gasoline. They need me to get in it, and they are going to fill it with gasoline. Then they will heat it up and see if the gas catches fire with me inside.

If i do this, I know I’ll die. I know the last person who tested this died, and the interior is still hot from them testing it with him in it.

As I start climbing into the capsule, I wake up.

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Nightmares

#374: Tic, Tac, Toe

(Midwest USA, 30’s)

This dream was mostly an image– one that startled me when I told the story to a friend the following day:

Someone was playing Tic Tac Toe—

On my wrist —

In my blood—

Using their teeth.

I don’t know who won and who lost, but, really, does it matter?

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Nightmares

Nightmare #374: Cut to the end

(USA, 50’s)

This nightmare was a strange one, sort of anti-climactic and almost boring, after the bang-up start. It began with a cut and ended with… I don’t know what.

I was in a strange apartment with a bunch of friends– dream friends, not real ones — but we were all there together. I think we all lived there together.

In my dream, everyone was dying.

All of our throats were cut, and all of our blood had poured out on the floor. Everyone’s neck had a big gash in it.

We were all so sad. And we felt tired. After all my blood had drained out, I felt so so tired. I was sure I was going to lie down and die any minute.

But I didn’t.

That was the weird part: shouldn’t we all be dead already?

But we weren’t. We were dying, but slowly, or at least not right away. So it seemed like we might as well do the laundry… and clean up the apartment a bit… and talk to each other. We just kept going because it seemed like a good idea, that is, to keep moving and keep doing things, even when we didn’t know when it might all end.

After I woke up, I was haunted by that knowledge: we ARE all dying. We don’t know when. Do something already.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #373 – Turning Teeth

, 

(North America, 20’s)

Recently, my dentist informed me that I have been grinding my teeth in my sleep. Her suggestion was to have a bite splint made that I could wear in the night to protect my teeth. In my family, I have always had the best teeth; no cavities, no stains, and I always get good comments from my dentist each visit. But now I was being told that by grinding my teeth, I am slowly causing serious irreplaceable damage that could open me up to cavities and bed news in the future. In an effort to be a compliant patient, I have been doing my diligence and wearing my mouth guard every night, even though it is slightly uncomfortable and I’m not used to it yet. The other night, while wearing this stupid plastic contraption I had the following dream.

I was out of town at a professional development conference with a group of women I had vague friendships with, but no one I could pick out really. One morning when I woke up in my hotel room I noticed that my teeth were hurting much more than normal, but I thought, “I slept with my mouth guard in, and isn’t that supposed to help?”

When I went to the washroom to look in the mirror and take out my mouth guard, I was horrified to discover that my mouth guard had been adjusted so tightly that in the night ALL of my teeth had been pressed inward! Every one of my teeth had been flipped nearly on its side as the roots pressed out of my gums and the tops of my molars touched against my tongue in the most unusual manner.

The pain in my mouth was unbearable, and the distortion of my teeth made me unable to speak in any coherent manner. I was scared to tell the women I was with what had happened, and so instead I tried to find ways to push my teeth back into their appropriate positions. I used my finger to feel along the inside rim of my mouth, and I began sobbing.

And as I contemplated what this would mean, that I now had the most corrupted teeth in my family, I got so anxious and upset that I woke myself up.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #372: Nightmare at the Mall

(Midwesterner, 50s)

By Kolkatan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Kolkatan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I am walking through an unfamiliar shopping mall. Very upscale, wondering why I am even here. This is not where I would ever shop. Glistening displays wherever one looks, immaculately dressed people carrying bags of goods. Expensive leather shoes clicking on beautifully shining floors.

Suddenly, the shoppers are scattering, like oil poured into a too hot pan. Moving from the center walkways toward the walls. Grabbing each other, running in huddled groups.

They have heard the announcement before I comprehend. A man’s voice, loud and booming, “There is a shooter in the mall. He has already shot a mom and her one-year-old daughter. Move to safety. Move to safety”.

How would they know so quickly that the child is one, I ask myself. What stupid things a person thinks of when faced with danger. And where is safety ?

I look up to see he is walking toward me. I say he because I assume it’s a man from size and stature. But I cannot see his face. It is covered as is the rest of his body. Layers and layers of clothes cover every inch of him.

He is holding a rifle strapped from shoulder to hip. He steps back into a stance, one black booted foot in front of the other, raises the gun and aims directly at me.

Boom!

The crowd is screaming in the distance, but the sound I hear the loudest is the bullet tearing into my skin, the crunch of my bones breaking. I know I am hit on my right side, as I fall face first, to the ground.

“Play dead, play dead” I tell myself, as I hear his footsteps coming closer. I feel his heavy boot kick my foot, looking for signs of life.

I am left alone lying there, breathing in air with the smallest of movements. The pain is searing through my right side with every tiny breath. When I finally lift my head, I am in the safety of my own bed, flannel pillowcase warming my cheek. I remind myself it was just a nightmare as I reach to touch my right hip. My side is painful. It is hurting. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a bullet hole.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #371 – Improving Memory

surgery-688380_640(Canada, 20’s) When I was younger I had a collection of operations to correct a birth defect and resulting life complications with my kidneys. One of the weird blessings about surgery is that once your IV is set up in pre-op, you are doped up on a collection of drugs that basically take away your consciousness of the situation around you. You are moved around, and somehow finagled to the operating table where they really put you under withanesthetic. Then, you wake up in recovery with a new scar and new pain meds, but with no memory of the past seven hours of your hospital stay.

In a recent dream, for some reason my memory was improving. I have been teased in the past for my inability to remember certain details of stories, or not realizing I am telling a story to a friend who was a part of the story itself. This dream was great in that sense, because I was remembering everything! I could tell you what color shirt my best friend had been wearing on the fourth day of high school; I could remember the recipe to my mother’s famous foods without needing to look things up; I was remembering everything and I loved it!

At least in the beginning.

As my memories began coming back, so did the memories I didn’t want, namely those of being in the hospital as a child. I began to remember being taken away from my parents in pre-op, wheeled down unfamiliar halls and taken in to stark white operating rooms, things I had previously been too drugged up for to comprehend. But that wasn’t it. These memories became increasingly upsetting as I began to remember times when I was actually no longer conscious, when I would have been sedated under heavy anesthetic. I started to ‘remember’ lying on the operating table under bright florescent lights, as the doctors began using a scaple to cut open my stomach. I ‘remembered’ watching them remove my kidney, how they talked about their vacation plans while I lay motionless with monitors hooked up to every part of me. I hated these memories. As more and more upsetting memories came flooding back to me about being in the hospital, I began experiencing the pain that those event would have caused. The scars on my stomach and side began burning, and I woke up with my heart racing. I looked around my room, felt across my stomach, realized I had only been dreaming, and was for the first time grateful for my inconsistent memory.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #370: Skin Issues

Electric face mask: wikimedia
Electric face mask: wikimedia

(Michigan, 30’s)

I don’t remember all the details of this nightmare, but I remember enough of what happened to my skin and what I felt to be totally creeped out.

Something terrible but vague had happened to me – – I’d been attacked or in an accident – – and I woke up to discover that I had had a face transplant. I suppose it was better than no face at all, but it was just horrible. I felt like I was wearing a mask all the time, like I was looking out from behind a layer. There was that sensation of an edge of fabric around my eyes, like my field of vision was narrowed, because the skin didn’t fit smoothly.

When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself at all. My face had been replaced with what only somewhat resembled a face. It was like I had been erased. Only my eyes looked familiar.

My new face didn’t fit very well. There were scars, and this is really odd seam-like scar all the way around my face in a big circle.

Finally, my face hurt. It ached all the time. And I knew I was supposed to be grateful, grateful to be alive, grateful to have any face at all. But it was just awful.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #368 – Scorpions

(20’s, Nevada)

When you’ve spent most of your life in the desert, you develop a cavalier attitude. Sure, the desert is filled with things that can kill you, but let’s face it—-it’s probably not going to happen.

I know people who are terrified of black widows. Absolutely terrified. But, honestly, they’re not that bad. Unless you’re very young, or very old, or very sick, a black widow bite isn’t going to kill you. Chances are, you’re not going to get bitten in the first place. Not unless you do something stupid, like stick your hand in a gardening glove that’s been left out overnight. But people who live in the desert know better.

Even rattlesnakes aren’t that bad. They’re startling, sure. But unless you’re way out in the desert without any hope of getting to a hospital anytime soon, you’re probably not going to die from a bite. No, you won’t die, you’ll just have a crazy story to impress people with. Remember, that one time you got bitten by a rattlesnake?

And sure, people have been known to die from the heat itself. Bodies have been found with their insides melted. But for the people who live here, the extreme heat is just part of it. Experience enough 115-degree days and you don’t even notice it anymore.

Yes, it’s very easy to be cavalier about the desert. It is for me, anyway. With one exception: scorpions. I know they’re no worse than anything else in the Mojave, but I’ve never seen one. I know people who find scorpions in their homes as routinely as I find black widows in the yard. But it’s never happened to me. And with every scorpion-less year that passes, I become more afraid of actually seeing one.

So afraid that I’m even dreaming about it.

I wake up in the middle of the night needing to use the bathroom, pretty normal. But this night feels different somehow. Something feels wrong from the very start. Ominous.

I creep through the dark bedroom, turn on the bathroom light before entering. I expect to see something waiting for me there, I’m already flinching, pulling back. But the bathroom is empty. Everything is normal.

It’s not until the toilet is flushing that I see it. In the corner of the bathroom there’s a tiny scorpion. My stomach sinks. I start to sweat. There’s a scorpion and I have no idea how to get it out of my house. You can’t just swat or stomp on it.

And maybe it seems like it should be less scary since the scorpion is so small, but I know better. I’ve been raised in the desert, after all. It’s the little ones you need to look out for. They’re the most venomous. The most likely to kill you.

It’s one of those milky-clear scorpions. Which makes it seems worse for some reason. I could handle it better if it were black, or dark brown. There’s something more alien about this one. And sneaky. It almost blends in with the bathroom tile.

I’m terrified and I don’t know what to do. But I’m also relieved. I’ve spent so long dreading this moment that I feel almost powerful now. There’s something liberating about knowing the thing you’ve been fearing has already happened.

I guess that’s what makes me do it—-the sense of power, sense of freedom. Instead of trying to kill the scorpion, I find myself reaching out to it. I slide my hand along the bathroom floor. Closer, closer. It moves towards me. I inch my hand forward. And soon I feel eight tiny legs moving across my palm.

I stare at the scorpion in revulsion and wonder. I bring my hand closer to my face, examine the creature closely. The segmented tail, the poised stinger.

Then I see movement from the corner of my eye.

I glance down at the bathroom floor. And realize my mistake. My scorpion had not been alone.

They’re swarming from a crack in the wall. Tens of scorpions, maybe hundreds. I try to move back and stumble. My hand closes in a fist. That’s when I feel the first sting.

I wake up suddenly. I’m in bed. There are no scorpions. But my hand still has the memory of a sting.

I need to use the bathroom, but decide I can hold it until morning. It was just a dream, but you can never be too careful. The desert is full of things that can kill you.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #369 – Full of Transformation

Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium LXXI by Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 – 1717)
Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium LXXI by Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 – 1717)

(Female, California) When I was pregnant, I had a series of bad dreams about what was going on inside me. First, I gave birth to a little stone that was only shaped like a baby, brittle and fossilized and everything a baby is not. In the next, I realized that my unborn child had somehow migrated to the outside of my body to continue its growth and was, in fact, a potato wrapped for the grocery store. I was attached to it through my navel by a tuber. I was afraid to move because I didn’t know what would happen if the tuber broke. It might kill the “baby,” or perhaps I might bleed to death. Finally, I dreamt that my baby rolled up against the outside of my belly, stretching the skin and revealing its form: it had two heads. When it was born, one head was upright on the neck, but it was defective, mostly brainless. The other head had curly blond hair and was gurgling musically with a sharp, smart look in its eye. But it erupted from the baby’s back, rooted between the shoulder blades. I was told I had to choose which head to amputate. I could keep the one that “looked right” or choose the smart head but condemn the child to a grotesquely misshapen body. What a decision I had to make.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #367: Millipedes

 (Male, West Virginia)

Millipedes disgust me.  They should disgust everyone.  The name comes from the root for million. I know they don’t have millions of legs, but who could ever be comfortable with something so ambulatory and unpredictable?

People keep telling me they are slow creatures, harmless creatures, that they eat only dead and decaying plants, not living and breathing humans. But it isn’t a fear of being eaten by millipedes I have. No. It is the fear of those legs. Segments upon segments of legs, crawling ad infinitum along my face and arms. Slick exoskeletons sliding into my mouth, my nose, my ears.  No orifice is safe.

Ugh.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #366: Hunting

(Male, Massachusetts) In the dream, I’m on a hunting trip with three friends: Roy, Liam, and Paul. In waking life, I’ve never actually been hunting, unless plinking a squirrel’s hindquarters with my slingshot as a kid counts. But in the dream, it feels vaguely familiar..?

Roy has brought us to a decommissioned quarry deep in the woods. We’re staying in an old cabin that seems to have served as an office for the mining company that was based here. Out of the way.

Maybe the second morning of the trip, Liam and Paul head out early. Roy and I are gearing up to head out in a different direction when Paul comes running back, out of breath and screaming that something came up out of the quarry and grabbed Liam. Something big, he says.

Roy insists that Paul take us to where he last saw Liam, but Paul flat-out refuses. “I’m not going back! We have to leave!”

Just then, we hear a cracking noise, like rocks smashing. Paul looks over his shoulder, then at us, and says something that rhymes with “no fit.”

It comes up the side of the quarry, and freezes when it sees us. It’s insectile in a way that makes me think of scorpions, spiders, and maybe crabs…with the key difference being that this thing is at least 10 feet high and half as long as a city bus. It reminds me of some creature-double-feature horror movie monster I saw as a kid – something warped by radiation or a toxic spill.

Roy stands his ground and fires while Paul and I start backpedaling. Roy’s hunting rifle is no use, though – bullets ricochet off the thing’s armor with the kind of twang I’ve previously only heard in movies. He might as well be shooting at solid rock. When it starts moving toward us, and we all turn and run.

Paul and I make it to the cabin only to realize we lost Roy: he’s gone for the Jeep instead. He’s already inside and backing down the overgrown path. Paul and I are cursing him for leaving us…but then the creature lands on the Jeep and starts peeling the sheet metal apart with giant lobster-like claws. It tears the roof off with roughly the effort it would take to open a can of Pringles. Once you pop, you just can’t—

Never mind.

The creature can’t pull wedged Roy out. So it pulls out parts of him instead. He screams and screams, and it eats him in mincing, tidy bites.

Paul and I hunker down and fortify the cabin as best we can. We take stock of our supplies. We push furniture against the windows and doors when the roof groans. The creature is finally done with Roy and has moved on for us. We keep as quiet as possible, hoping it will leave. The creaking and groaning noises eventually stop, but we’re convinced it’s still up there, waiting.

We pass a restless night, whispering escape plans back and forth. None of our ideas are very good. For every idea either of us has, the other quickly points out how it’ll get us killed. We quickly remember it was Roy who brought us here, and Roy who got the Jeep destroyed. Having someone else to blame settles us down.

Stupid, selfish, eaten Roy.

Early the next morning, I feel Paul shaking me. It’s gone, he’s saying. It has to be. It hasn’t made a noise in hours.

He wants to make a run for it. He thinks if we can make it down the trail as far as the tree-line, the creature won’t be able to follow. I think this is a stupid idea, but Paul doesn’t listen. As I’m still disentangling myself from my sleeping bag, he cracks the door, and I realize he’s not waiting around. He turns one last time, urges “Come on!”, and then he’s gone.

I expect the thing on the roof to leap down and grab him, but nothing moves up there, and I realize Paul was right. It’s gone. I’m on the threshold, about to follow, when the creature appears out of the quarry. Paul never gets to test his theory about the tree-line. He doesn’t get nearly that far.

As I slam the door, the roof groans and there is a rumble as something enormous leaps down from it: the first creature never left.

I’m numbed by the realization that there are two of these things. I understand that I’m never going to make it out of here alive. I start searching the cabin frantically, upending furniture, prying at floorboards, convinced there has to be some sort of hidden access point, an underground tunnel leading to safety. Unrealistic, but I keep looking anyway, and I’m still looking when the alarm pulls me out of that cabin.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #365: Spider

spider-175262_640
(Male, 30’s) On a normal night, one where you wouldn’t expect anything out of the ordinary to happen, I am sitting in my living room, in my favorite spot on the faded couch, when I notice a large spider in the corner. Not only does its appearance frighten me — it has markings unlike a natural spider, with bright red rings around its body and fangs that seem to drip with venom, although I dare not draw nearer to make sure — but I can sense a malevolent aura coming from it. Its strange eyes transfix my own, and I feel myself trying to discern its desire. For it is clear that this spider wants something from me, something bad, but I wake up before I can find out what.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #364: Ruined Vacation

isolated island

(Female, 40s) I was spending Christmas vacation on a tropical island, maybe Hawaii or Tahiti. It was really lovely.But I wandered off to another island and came upon some criminals who were holding 2 people hostage. And so they kept me hostage too.

But I had tickets home for a high school reunion, and rather than expose their plot, the criminals let me go to the reunion. They made me promise to come back or they would kill the other hostages.

The reunion was a a big university library. I saw friends I hadn’t see in years. But I was torn about what I should do about the island hostage situation. Was I supposed to keep it a secret or should I get help?

I decided to tell some of the teachers in charge. At first they were not that interested. They thought I was making up the story or that I was crazy. They didn’t really seem to care at all– until I mentioned the stolen property that the criminals had: some maker-bot 3-d printers and a big yellow robot — 6 feet wide and 6 feet tall. The teachers had only the empty boxes the stuff came in. Seems those things had gone missing so my story might be true after all.

Then I was back as a hostage in the house on the island. The criminals came and they had me hold their gun on one of the other hostages while they tied them back up again. They wanted to make us afraid of each other too. I pointed the gun at the other criminal however and pulled the trigger. I was going to shoot him, but there were no bullets in the gun.

So we hostages decided to escape. Trying to get out of the house, I ran into a man I knew. I asked for help, but it became apparent that he was on the other side. His eyes glowed like LEDs. He’d been brainwashed or taken over; he was going to hurt me, strangle me. So I had to kill him. We fought and wrestled. I was sitting on top of him, finally, and I had to drive a chisel through his neck. It was hard work and bloody, but he was dead. Then there were more people I ran into as I tried to flee the house– a lawyer, an actor, my husband. They all had to be killed in specific ways– with knifes or saws or chisels — through their necks or cutting off their heads. They were possessed and would kill me if I didn’t kill them. I didn’t want to fight them but I had no choice. I just wanted to go home.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #363: Trapped in the Sinking Car

Sinking Car

(Michiganian, 30’s) I’m at my old job, and my co-worker and I are driving somewhere in her car. She’s always pretty nervous and anxious, but today she’s even more nervous than usual. I wonder if someone said something that freaked her out? Or maybe she’s just nervous that I am in the car with her. I have no idea where we’re going.

It’s winter, the roads are a little snowy. We drive over a bridge. Are we crossing a river? a lake? I don’t know. The bridge is very low, very close to the water, and it is very narrow, very much like a pier, actually.

She drives the car off the pier/road into the icy lake, and the car crashes through the ice into the frigid waters beneath. She’s hit her head on the steering wheel, she’s lost consciousness.

I suddenly remember an episode of Mythbusters where they talked about what to do if you are in a sinking car. The water pressure on the outside of the car makes it very difficult to open the doors and get out. So you have to open the windows (ideally before the car has sunk under the waters surface), and let the car fill with water. The pressure equalizes, and you can open the door and swim out. They did their mythbusting in a swimming pool in California, not an icy Michigan lake. I’m not excited about sitting in a car placidly as it fills with icy water, but that may be my only chance to survive if i don’t die of hypothermia first. I try to open the window. The car has power windows, and the system must have shorted out because when I press the button nothing happens.

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Nightmares

Nightmares about Bugs!

bug-47069_1280
If you are looking for bug-related nightmares to inspire 100-word stories, follow the links below. Keep in mind that we’re defining the category broadly, so topics can include insects and arachnids, worms and slugs, ants, bees and creepy crawlies as well as diseases, biological, mental and spiritual.

The March 30 deadline approaches quickly! Submission details can be found here.

Nightmare #249: House Consumed by Bugs and Rats

Nightmare #222: Water Bugs

Nightmare #182: Bugs Everywhere

Nightmare #339: The Needle and the Conqueror Worm

Nightmare #336: Pick on Someone your own size

Nightmare #225: Smothering Humidity and Heat

Nightmare #310: Larval Goddess

Nightmare #75: Snakes and Straw

Nightmare #71: Snakes and Chain Fence

Nightmare #143: The Dark Carnival

Nightmare #84: Bees and Spiders… and Nazis?

Nightmare #26: Monstrous Bees

Nightmare #360: House of 1000 Copses

Nightmare #358: Child Vampire

And to be sure, there are many MORE nightmares about bugs among the collection that would prove suitable for a 100-word prose poem for the Quick Shivers about Bugs anthology. We invite you to explore, to experiment, and frankly to shake up the editors’ mailbox. Be clever, horrific, reflective, playful and wise in your word choice. 100 words allows no time for fillers, dull words, or repetition. Are you ready to try? Good!

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Nightmares

Nightmare #362: The Bad Assassin

1308547900(Male, 50’s) There is no way I can convey the absolute terror I had in this dream. Reading over what I’ve written down makes it all sound like kind of a joke, but honestly, I woke up in the middle of the night after this nightmare and was ready to swear off every sleeping again. I felt so vulnerable.

I was in a house with my partner and my father and a child, and for some reason, I just knew that someone was trying to kill me. The people around me were supportive but agreed that, yes, I’d likely be killed. I tried hiding in weird places inside the house. I squeezed in a tiny closet where I defended myself with a spray bottle of cleanser. I thought that at least I could spray my killer in the face, maybe wound him or distract him. Even though I was inside and hidden inside too, the killer could somehow get me in his sights and shoot through the walls.

There was a gunshot and the child was killed. Instantly. The boy just fell to the ground like a rag doll. Dead. The killer had missed the shot on me somehow and yet still had delivered a kill shot to a bystander. I decided to get out of there before they killed any of my loved ones. I ran out on the street which was rather crowded and where everyone was carrying guns, big showy guns. Picnic guns, I’ve heard them called. But these were weird guns. One guy in particular had an old school Tommy gun like a 30’s gangster that was shiny like chrome. It was just slung over his shoulder like a fashion accessory. And then he goes down, dead because of my assassin. I hid behind a big overstuffed couch that someone had put out for the trash. I wasn’t really sure where the shots were coming from, though, so I didn’t know if I was safe. And I watched as folks around me, one by one, were picked off by this unseen shooter. It sounds ludicrous to write it out but by the end of this spree, there were easily a dozen people shot dead, all because they happened to be standing too damned close to me.

I woke up just shaking. My first impulse — which is also pretty funny — was to see if I could hide underneath my bed, just in case this shooter from my dream could still see me and shoot me.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #361: Belief and fear

"Scared Child at Nighttime" by D Sharon Pruitt - http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/206812690/sizes/l/in/set-72157610551917961/. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scared_Child_at_Nighttime.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Scared_Child_at_Nighttime.jpg
“Scared Child at Nighttime” by D Sharon Pruitt – http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/206812690/sizes/l/in/set-72157610551917961/. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scared_Child_at_Nighttime.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Scared_Child_at_Nighttime.jpg

(Male, 40s)
As a child, I had a recurring nightmare about a monster under my bed.

The horrific thing about it was not its scaly skin, nor its long and sinewy arms and legs, nor its needle-sharp teeth (I knew its form exactly, although I could not see it).

Instead, the monster’s most terrifying aspect was that it lived on its victims’ belief and fear. If you did not believe in it, it could not harm you. The more you accepted and feared its presence, the stronger it became.

In my nightmare, I was trapped in my bed, the nightlight mysteriously extinguished, with that creature below me trying to MAKE me believe in its existence … and succeeding …

Categories
Nightmares

#360: House of 1000 Copses

By Carla Isabel Ribeiro (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Carla Isabel Ribeiro (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

(70% Female, 30% Norse Warrior, 1014 years old)
As a teen, I had a recurring nightmare that I was trapped in a house which had been overtaken by a massive, sinister forest. Ungodly large trees had grown up right through the floorboards, and the roots were a monstrously thick tangle over which it was nearly impossible for me to navigate. I had nowhere to hide, and though I could see doorways to other rooms, it was clear there was no way out. Branches and boughs draped with heavy webs of moss hung everywhere, and I knew there were things in the dark both above and below me that I could not see…things that would be coming for me at any moment. I can still remember the weight of that inevitability–it was paralyzing–and I’ll never forget the sickening sounds I heard as the giant slugs emerged. I could gradually discern their shadows; huge, slick, repulsive masses slithering out from the behind the trees and over the roots in a much swifter pace than Gastropods normally move. I was well aware that it was a futile game of cat and mouse—slug and child—and besides the impossible terrain, my body would not match the movements I was willing it to make. (In fact, this inability to move was a common element in many of my dreams.) I generally awoke just before the slugs caught up with me, but I always felt that the fear I was left with upon waking was worse than anything they could have done to me. It was the fear that stayed with me…the possibilities. The unknown.

Categories
Nightmares

#359: Very Hairy

Photo by http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Arz. Used under the Creative Commons License.
Photo by http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Arz. Used under the Creative Commons License.

(Female, 30’s)
Okay, here’s a hilariously weird, hairy dream I had recently.

In the dream, I was getting dressed to go out. I decided to hear a sleeveless top, so I stood in front of a mirror and lifted my arms to see if my armpits passed inspection or not.

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