Category: Nightmares

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Nightmares

Nightmare #238 – Flesh-Eating Mutants

(Female, 50’s) First of all, when I told my partner about this nightmare about zombies, he told me they weren’t zombies. So what the hell were they? Second, this dream was weird because it seemed to take place over days, maybe even weeks. Like I woke up and went to sleep and lived whole DAYS in this dream. The other weird thing about this dream was the depth of emotions I experienced during it. I felt things. Like really, really scared. And really, sad. And then really depressed.

In this dream, some friends were visiting us, and it was evening– just getting dark out. Not friends we really have, and we didn’t live in our real house, but in this cottage-like structure. Their van was parked in our driveway, and they were getting ready to leave. They were a couple and their three little kids; one was already buckled in his carseat. The husband stepped over to say hello to one of the neighbors.

“…there was nothing that could be done about the monsters. People went on with their lives…”

Then in the distance down the street, there came this band of marauding flesh-eating mutant humans. They attacked every human they saw and simply tore them apart. We watched for a moment, horrified– the woman and I– and then I called her two children, a boy and a girl, to me. She hopped in the back of the van and tried to get the child out of the carseat. I scooped up the other two children in my arms and ran into the house. I waited at the door, calling “Hurry, hurry” but it was too late. A monster reached into the van and pulled the woman out, and I covered the children’s eyes as the monsters tore her apart. I closed and locked the door, and then I started shutting and locking all the windows and pulling the curtains shut. The little girl wandered over to a window, and there was a monster on the other side. The monster said, “There’s a living one in there” and tried to reach in so I quickly pulled the girl away and shut the window and the curtain, and then I moved the the center of the room and made the children sit still on my lap. Then the monsters couldn’t see us any more.

So a few patterns emerged: They only came out at night. They could only see you if you moved. They could talk to each other, but they weren’t smart or organized enough to get into houses; they only caught people outside. They didn’t change the people they caught into monsters like them but tore them to shreds and ate them. The next day the father came to pick up the kids, and they went home. It was so sad and so scary.

But the weird thing was that people seemed to cope. There was nothing that could be done about the monsters, but people went on with their lives. Like, our teenage daughter went to college every day and to her job– just making sure to be inside by dark. My husband drove her somewhere that took longer than they’d planned so they stayed overnight to be safe, but I was so worried about them and so relieved when they came home the next day.

For the most part, life went on, although there were occasional deaths in the community because people forgot the rules and stayed out too late after dark. Everyone else was managing, but I was frightened and worried all the time. Really sad. And really depressed. I couldn’t see any point in doing anything anymore.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #237 – Party Gone Wrong

(Male, 30’s) I was with a group of friends, not people I actually know but within the dream, we were friends. We were tight, almost a gang. A half dozen or so. Maybe a few more. We were living inside an abandoned warehouse.

At one point, we were sitting around an old wooden table. There was an empty plate sitting in the middle of the table and then this strange whistling sound started. It’s like it was coming from the plate somehow. We picked it up and found there was a current of air coming from a hole in the floor, like a heating duct or something and that was making the edges of the plate ring like a bell.

“…these two were ritually murdering gang member for some kind of black magic…”

It was night. Actually it was night all the way through this dream but it came time to go to sleep. We had lit a fire on the dirt floor of the warehouse but it had pretty much died out. I tried to get it going again so we wouldn’t be cold. It was almost entirely burnt out. There were just a few very tiny embers buried in this large mound of ash. I sifted through it, trying to find these tiny embers since I hoped I could find enough to kindle a fire. Instead, I found a set of keys. The keyring was brass and had a stylized portrait of Saint Francis on it. It sifted through the ash and found more sets of keys. I knew immediately that these each belonged to former gang members who’d been murdered.

Just then, two of the other members, that is, two of my friends pulled out huge hunting knives and started toward me. I had discovered their secret. I had a knife too but there were two of them. I slowly edged around, trying to keep an eye on both of them while trying to exit and run off into the night. For some reason I knew that these two were ritually murdering gang members for some kind of black magic or something. I was climbing up on a stack of boxes which would have put me closer to a an open window when I woke up.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #236 – The Accidental Vampire

(Female, 30’s) The other night, I had a very short dream that left quite an impression on me.

“…and there was a spurt of blood that shot out and hit the wall…”

My husband was sitting in chair, like in a dining room, and he didn’t have a shirt on. I walked over to hug him, and when I bent down to put my cheek on his shoulder, I noticed this scab on the back of his shoulder. It was about the size of the eraser on a pencil. I reached over and picked the scab off— and there was a spurt of blood that shot out and hit the wall, leaving a big red streak! Quickly, I bent down and put my mouth over the wound and started drinking his blood. There were like 8 or 9 spurts before he stopped bleeding.

I don’t know if I did picked the scab off on purpose or by accident. Did I want to drink his blood, or it was just an impulse to keep the wall from getting bloody. What a strange dream, huh?

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Nightmares

Nightmare #235 – Junior High Undead

(Male, 40’s) I tried to tell this nightmare to someone and they just laughed because it sounded too much like slapstick comedy. But it was scary when I was having the dream. I also woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to the bathroom but thought twice about it, y’know, because of the zombies.

I was driving a twenty year old station wagon that used to belong to my Mom. I was going to a rock concert that was being held in an abandoned factory but to get there, I had to cross a lane of freeway exit ramp traffic that was moving very quickly. I gave up on the concert.

And somehow I ended up at the junior high school where my dad used to teach. Both my mom and dad are dead. The place was trashed, probably because of the zombie apocalypse, now I think of it. There was a demonstration happening in my dad’s old classroom. There was someone showing, I think, how to make gasoline or something. Where most science experiments would involve tiny beakers of chemicals, this guy was using huge vats of chemicals that sputtered and splashed from one container to the other. He concluded quickly, saying “I hope you all paid attention because you’re all on your own now.” The zombies had found our location.

We all exited the classroom quickly. As I passed a display case that was smashed in, I took a large ceramic chicken award. It was pink and it weighed a ton. I thought it might be a good weapon. We continued to move through the dark school and we got ourselves trapped in a glassed in hallway. There were zombies trying to get in at either end and there was another batch of zombies outside the windows trying to get in. I had an idea so I got on the loudspeaker and somehow made it sound like we were all in the auditorium. And for whatever reason, the zombies all ignored us and started shuffling off toward the auditorium. I thought this would be our opportunity to pick them off, one by one. I tried to sneak up behind one of the zombies and bash its brain in with the large ceramic chicken. This task proved much more difficult than I expected. After about a half a dozen blows, the zombie was no closer to being neutralized and in fact, I’d started to attract the attention of other zombies. I decided to join the others but they were gone.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #234 – The Half-Pint Haunted House

(Male, 30’s) In this dream, I went to a Halloween haunted house. It was rather unique because attendees arrived before dark and the house was actually built around us. There were no secrets. We watched the frame work go up, the walls, everything. It kept getting closer and closer to dark.

“…they were doing there best to be scary…”

There was a dim kind of illumination, very suitable for a haunted house. Then arms started reaching out from the walls. Very creepy, very Bergmanesque. Or at least for a moment. It was as if the arms were reaching out between the rolls of wallpaper, as if the walls themselves had disappeared. Then we were able to see who was behind the walls. All of them wore those cheesy rubber monster masks. And these masks all looked particularly ludicrous because all of these people looked like they were 5 or 6 years old. The masks flopped on their heads because they were all way too large for these kids. But they were doing their best to be scary.

But these tiny monster were getting a bit rough. Their hands were grabbing with a bit too much force, their fingers pinching. For some reason, I had a plastic tube, like a hollow baseball bat. Was it part of my costume or something? I gently hit a couple of these grabbing hands. Before I knew it, the little creatures were pushing between the tattered sheets that once were walls. They kept pressing in, more and more of them.I tried to keep them at bay with the plastic bat but soon they had knocked me down. It wasn’t that their flaying arms were particularly forceful or that the blows were painful. Rather it was more a problem that I was becoming crushed, suffocated by the weight of their bodies. More and more of them. Eventually, I woke up.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #233 – The Shrinking City

(Female, 40’s) This was a weird dream, with very slow-moving action taking place over what felt like a long time. I was in a city, with all the survivors. Outside the city were the zombies. They were the old-fashioned slow-moving kind. There was a big fence around the entire city keeping the zombies outside. We survivors on the inside felt rather smug.

“…the people you knew were slowly disappearing too…”

But the problem was that the city was getting a little smaller every day. The zombies would manage to break through in one spot and take over a building and kill all the people in it. Then we would move the fence in and life would go on. The people you knew were slowly disappearing too. Near the end of the dream, we were down to about a dozen buildings and maybe only 100 survivors.

Then I walked into a room where there were 3 or 4 people down on the floor. “Are they zombies?” I asked someone. Then I realized that no, they were survivors like me. They were down on their hands and knees eating the carpet, because it was all that was left to eat.

Things were looking pretty grim.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #232 – That Deadly Gelatin Garbage

(Male, 20’s) Weird but strangely terrifying. This bit happened at the end of a relatively normal dream about driving a car around with my girlfriend. We were in a small town, semi-rural area and were heading back into the residential area when I saw this guy holding a trash can. He was shaking the can vigorously, like he was obsessed with getting something out of the can and into this other trash can. The guy with the trash can didn’t live at the house, I don’t think because there was someone else inside the front door watching the whole thing. The guy in the house kept the glass door closed though, like he knew there was something dangerous about what was happening.

“…there was also that slightly weird sense that the gelatin might have been alive…”

I got out of the car and walked closer to investigate. The guy was holding one of those old style metal trashcans and inside it was something strange. It was a cube of some vivid blue gelatin, roughly six inches to a side. It was firmly stuck to the bottom of the can so no matter how violently the guy shook the can, the gelatin only wiggled back and forth. However there was also that slightly weird sense that I always have with jello that it might have been alive, that it might have been holding on. The other weird thing about the cube of gelatin was that it was glowing slightly and for some reason, this made me think of radiation. As I write this down, it reminds me of the way a lot of the ghosts are drawn on Scooby-doo with that eerie glow.

And about this time, I realize that the guy who is shaking the can like crazy actually IS crazy. He turns to me and starts ranting and raving about “Just try to call the ambulance now.” And when I look at his face, I realize also that all of his flesh is this same transparent glowing blue gelatin. His clothes were just dense enough to hide this, I guess. I knew that if he touched me that I would start to turn into this blue goo as well so I started to run away down the street. But the guy drops the trash can and advances on my girlfriend who is basically trapped in the car.

That’s when I woke up, right at that moment when I’m still wanting to run in terror yet also needing to protect my girlfriend.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #231 – Zombie Skunk

(Male, 30’s) This nightmare I had kind of cracks me up when I write it down but there was nothing funny about it at the time. I’m almost embarrassed by how silly it sounds.

“…Seemed a pretty awful situation. …”

I was in the house where I grew up, a place I haven’t even seen in like 10 years. There were people on the front lawn who were doing something. I went out there to yell at them. They were painting the countertop of their kitchen cabinets. The paint was this hideous green, like a yellow green, a color from a 70’s rental property. I told them to get lost. And then there was a policeman who told me they’d be OK. See, their landlord was kicking them out because the building was being foreclosed and soon to be demolished so they were down on their luck. I asked the cop what was with the countertop and he said that the landlord was making them fix up the place or they’d lose their security deposit. Seemed a pretty awful situation.

I looked around the neighborhood and it was a decaying, urban nightmare. There were multi-story buildings that looked like they’d been bombed. Whole walls were missing, not just the windows which were all smashed out. The cop and I walked around a bit and there was just block after block of wasteland, tall buildings ready to collapse under their own weight.

“…”…It was a zombie. And it was a skunk. How much worse can you get from that!…”…”

That’s when we saw the skunk. It jumped out at the cop and started running for him like it wanted to bite him. The skunk was sealed in a plastic bag and chunks of its flesh were falling off. The cop was stupid, just standing there but I knew to start running away immediately. I knew somehow that this skunk was infected with the zombie plague, probably the same kind of epidemic that was causing the whole world to go to hell. The scientists has sealed it in a plastic bag to keep it safe because in this future skunks were an endangered specie. They were trying to protect the genetic material even though it was sick, er, I guess, dead. It was a zombie. And it was a skunk. How much worse can you get from that!

So I started running because I was afraid of what would happen when the cop turned to a zombie. Every pile of rubble I passed seemed to have another zombie creature creeping out of it. Possums, squirrels, a mangy old cat. I was just running and running, hopping over piles of rubble trying to get away and the terror was all around me.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #230 – Shot AGAIN

(Male, 40’s) Twice this week, I’ve had dreams that involved being shot or nearly shot with a handgun. I have woken up with my heart just pounding. The second one wasn’t very remarkable apart from getting shot – I should probably mention that I don’t own a handgun and I’ve never been shot, nor is it one of my great fears.

However.

“…I get him to put the knife down…”

In the first nightmare, I am visiting my grandmother’s house, a grandmother who’s been dead for decades now. Her house was never in a great part of town and it’s only gotten worse, like far worse over time. I am responsible for cleaning out her stuff, all her furniture and belongings. When I go to the door my daughter greets me and I’m a little shocked that she’s there and not at college. I ask her if she’s alone in the house and she says no. And then I ask if she’s safe. She shakes her head like she’s answering a different question, “Oh Daddy, it’s not like that at all.” I ask her to go and wait outside with her mom in the car. I enter the house and the first thing I notice is that there is a huge whole in one wall like someone has driven a car into it. And there’s a man with a knife. I ask him if he’s OK. I offer to get him some food. I get him to put the knife down. I explain that I’ve got to get rid of the stuff in the house. And he starts acting as if it all belongs to him simply because he’s in the house. I simply reach over and take the knife from where he’s set it down and I throw it behind me because in a fair fight I’m pretty sure I could take this guy. “No, you don’t own any of this stuff and you better get moving before I call the cops.” He says he’s got a gun in his pocket, which I think is pretty unlikely but I don’t want to take the chance so I jump him. We wrestle. He’s trying to get his hand in his pocket. I keep hitting him, trying to knock him out. All of a sudden a shot is fired. I don’t hear it as much as I feel it shooting straight through my heart. It felt more like I was getting an electric shock. I woke up with my heart simply racing, pounding hard like I actually had been in a fight.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #229 – Doomed Expedition

(Male, 30’s) I don’t know if this really counts as a “nightmare” but it was a pretty bad dream where I was pretty sure that I was going to die.

“…It’s very likely you’re going to die…”

I had somehow gotten involved with an expedition that was either going to climb a very tall mountain or go to the South Pole, very possibly both. We were on the runway of this desolate spot, not so much as a building, just an expanse of tarmac. There were about a dozen guys, all very serious and all very busy loading boxes onto a plane. They were all dressed in thick suits, that reminded me a lot of the kind of thing that parachuters wear with lots of webbing and padding. The suits were all olive drab like military uniforms.

Some of the boxes were marked “Cashmere” because, at least in the dream, cashmere is very warm for the thickness. Other boxes were marked “Non-cashmere wool” because wool, again at least in the dream, keeps its warmth even when wet. Everyone was busy and I was just in the way. Finally I got the attention of someone. He looked a lot like a guy I work with in fact. He said “Look, kid, I don’t know how you got yourself involved with this but none of us have any time to teach you how to survive. We’re mostly ex-marines, in fact. This isn’t a vacation. It’s very likely you’re going to die and if you don’t get out of the way, you’re going to cause other people to die.”

There was nothing I could do. I just stood around and waited to board the airplane, and eventually freeze to death.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #228 – Dead Horses

(Male, 40’s) I have this enduring fear that I’ll end up living on the street in a damp cardboard box and this nightmare for some reason called that up.

“…the carriage itself was jet black as were all four of the horses…”

I was downtown in a big city. It had a pretty thriving city life, though things were very grimy and a big run-down. Like there were two extremely tall wooden houses built with timbers probably a foot or two thick and covered with dirty yellow clapboards. These houses must have been ten stories tall and then BETWEEN them, that is, over the street another house had been built that was supported by being wedged between them. It was a busy street and the supports to the middle house were obviously falling apart. It was just a matter of time until it fell.

I was dressed like a street person. I’m not sure that I actually wasn’t a street person. In one hand I held a large clear plastic bag with ice water and a couple dozen cans of soda. I guess I made my living selling soda to the commuters as they came out of the buildings to evacuate the city and go home to the suburbs.

There was a crowd of people. I had made enough for the day to cover expenses and get a meal so I was about ready to sell the leftovers to this other street person who had the same gig. Then a loud clackitty clanging sound came up the street. It was a horse drawn carriage. It looked like a couple had just gotten married, because the woman was dressed in a frilly white dress and the guy was in a tux complete with a tall top hat. Except the carriage itself was jet black as were all four of the horses.

And the strangest part was that three of the four horses were dead. They hung lifeless in their harnesses while the fourth and final horse dragged the whole carriage along. The people in the carriage acted as if it was nothing to have three dead horses attached to the carriage, perhaps as long as things kept moving along they didn’t really care about how it happened.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #227 – Blood Thirst

(Male, 30’s) This was such a strange dream because it had all this backstory to it that I just knew in the context of the dream but that’s like total bullshit, that never happened. The only thing that I can think that started this nightmare was that I in fact gave blood earlier in the week. Due to the imagery, I should probably also mention that I’m also not a junkie.

“…I was a human pincushion…”

I was in a hospital clinic though it felt more like a waiting room. The walls were red brick and there were potted plants with long green fronds. The couches were arranged in sort of a maze that ended at the nurse’s station. I was there for a blood test. I had had something like fourteen blood tests in the past week and the weird thing is that my Mother had scheduled them all. Yup, I’m a grown man. I live on my own and yet for some reason my mom scheduled all these tests. Each test also seems to take out a fair amount of blood, I might add. I also had the sense that by scheduling them all pretty close together, it was skirting the limit of how much blood could be removed in such a brief period but I also get the sense that all the different clinics even at the same hospital didn’t have a clue at all what any other one is doing so they could very easily end up bleeding me dry before they realized that’s what happened.

So I’m waiting and then finally the nurse calls my name and I realize that I’m carrying a syringe in my hand. I must have stolen it from one of the other appointments. I have no idea how long it has been in my hand but it’s slightly sweaty, like I’ve been holding it for a long time, holding onto it tightly. The syringe is empty but I have no idea what I’m doing with it. So I’m embarrassed and I hide it in my backpack, trying to make sure that the nurse doesn’t see what I’m doing.

“Right arm or left?” And at that moment I remember that I still have a bandage wrapped around my right arm where blood had been drawn earlier in the day. Again, I felt embarrassed, like this was something I should hide, so I slipped my other hand up my sleeve and picked off the bandage. I presented my other arm to the nurse.

“…I felt nauseated…”

We look down at the arm together. On the inside of my arm there were a good half dozen holes, including one that looked like it was square. The flesh hadn’t sealed back over these holes but it hadn’t scabbed up either. I was a human pin cushion. I felt a little nauseated. The nurse tapped at one of them, the square one, I think, and said “That’s from a test you took last Monday. You have to wait five days before you get the results from that one before you can give any more.”

And at that point I just went crazy with anger. I stood up and yelled “Why did you make me wait in line, then? What if you hadn’t recognized that hole, would you have taken more blood out of me anyway? Do you really need to take so much blood every time? I really can’t believe that someone important would have to give this much blood. It’s only that I don’t matter, that I don’t count…”

And just then, my mother arrived. She was there to pick me up. Her hair was shock white. In life, she’s gray but dyes it auburn. She wore this very fashionable pant suit that also was bright white and around her neck was this long flowing scarf which was also bright white. She was a bit younger than she is now, more mobile, more confident. She was like a ghost or an angel. But I started yelling at her too, “Just stop making these appointments for me. If I want to be healthy, I’ll make my own appointments. Just leave me alone.”

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Nightmares

Nightmare #226 – Clown Hospital

(Male, 40’s) This nightmare was strange because it was a dream inside a dream.

“…a commissioned series of art photographs of circus clowns from the 1930’s who also had great physical deformities, like side show performers…”

I was dreaming that I was visiting my great Aunt Clara in the hospital. Aunt Clara died 30 years ago, by the way. She was having some kind of heart surgery. In her recovery room there was a commissioned series of art photographs of circus clowns from the 1930’s who also had great physical deformities, like side show performers. Grainy black and white photographs.

I spoke with the doctor. He gave the standard line “…resting comfortably… too soon to tell…” But then he mentioned that the photographs in my Aunt’s room had given him nightmares the night before. He started to walk away and, inside the dream, I thought “I gotta ask him about his nightmare so I can tell Jim.” Isn’t that hilarious?

So the doctor thought about it for a moment, like whether her was going to tell me. He said in his nightmare, he was in a hospital that he’d come into a patient’s room. The bed was made up but the sheets were made of rubber, like a tarp, I guess. He pulled back the sheet and discovered there was nobody there. Just then three of these creepy clowns appear at the door. They were carrying a covered metal serving tray. They lifted the lid and said with a disturbing giggle “Would you like some instruments, doctor?” To be honest I didn’t see what was so scary about the nightmare but the doctor seemed pretty shaken.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #225 – Smothering Humidity and Heat

(Male, 30’s) The weather around here has been crazy hot and humid the last couple days. That’s the only explanation I have for these couple nightmares. I sent them in together because they’re not too much on their own.

First Nightmare: I’m on a roller coaster, sort of. It’s also sort of like public transportation because it travels on city streets, just a little bit too high so the sides of the car are whipped by the tree branches. All the passengers are locked into our seats by a metal bar that locks down across our bellies. And everything is super hot, made even hotter by the costumes we have to wear. Yup, to ride on this trolly or streetcar or roller coaster you have to wear one of those full body, furry team mascot kind of costumes. They actually lock the head piece on top of the costume so you can’t take it off until the end of the ride. You can only see through these round holes in the side of this head. There’s no breeze and very little air getting inside too. So there’s this whole car of people dressed up like life sized teddy bears. I got through the ride – I don’t like roller coasters because I get nauseous pretty easily – and I get unlocked from the trolley car but I still have to stand around waiting to get out of the teddy bear costume. In the heat and the dark, I finally start to feel myself pass out and I’m terrified I’m just going to suffocate.

Second Nightmare: I’m at home and it’s evening. But instead of everything getting dark, the whole neighborhood is getting flooded. Like instead of darkness, there’s water. It’s warm, like skin temperature so it’s not shocking but it’s also not refreshing either. And it’s kind of invisible so I’m not really certain how deep the water is. I find it rather hard to breathe. Everyone else is gone inside and they all highly suggest that I do too before the bugs come out. The first thing I see that looks like a “bug” is something I take for a crawfish but it’s over a foot long. It’s flexing its tail and as I watch it, there are suddenly two of them, and then three of them. All this time, I feel like I’m getting bitten by mosquitos. I look down at my arm though and I see that I’m being attacked by tropical fish, like the kind that people keep in fish bowls except these fish are huge, like the size of a dinner plate. As I look around there are lots of things around me. The water must be as high as the tree tops now because there are weird creatures swimming around at least that high. I’m a little scared but since I’m standing on my front porch I’m not panicking too bad yet. Then I see some kind of a flat worm that’s bigger than I am. It’s translucent brown and it keeps appearing and disappearing, each time getting closer. It looks really scary, like if it bit me, it’d take a big chunk. I started pounding on the door but now no one inside seems to be able to hear me. And once I started to panic, I also started finding it hard to breathe again so even if I survived being attacked by the brown worm, I still would likely drown in this weird, warm water.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #224 – Workplace Panic

“…As I kept talking, my voice started to fail. I was unable to make any words, just the honks and squeaks that might come out of a saxophone…”

(Male, 40’s) To my knowledge I’ve never had an actual “panic attack” but those are exactly the words I’d use to describe this terrifying dream I had the other night. I was at work talking with a co-worker in the hallway of an unfamiliar building. She was explaining how the IT department, that is, our department were entirely unable to manage certain key attributes of the computers we’d deployed just last spring. As I asked more questions about what that actually meant, I learned that the computers couldn’t communicate on the network, though there would be no error given to suggest the attempt didn’t succeed, and what’s even better, these computers couldn’t reliably be counted upon even to save data to their own hard drives. Again, no error message would be given. My co-worker was telling me all of this in a matter-of-fact, world-weary sort of way, I gather the same way that we were supposed to inform the users. But I started going crazy. I couldn’t believe the callous attitude. I also couldn’t believe that there hadn’t been daily if not weekly memos from the IT director warning the users that, basically, none of the work they were performing was safe in any way. As I kept talking, my voice started to fail. I was unable to make any words, just the honks and squeaks that might come out of a saxophone if you didn’t know how to play it. My direct manager had been listening in but at some point, she had wandered off and this frustrated me because she needed to hear about these problems.

At this point, I found it impossible to stand still anymore so I just walked off down the hall. It was an unfamiliar, one-story building with offices that looked like elementary school classrooms. I was trying to find my cell phone. Inside these offices were large desks that were covered in construction paper, safety scissors (remember those? the kind with blunt tips so students couldn’t stab each other?) pots of that sticky white glue like they used to have in kindergarten… all this stuff on the surface of these executive’s desks. I needed to find my cell phone because I could tell there was a conversation I needed to be a part of. I could “hear” part of it when I held a can of spray paint. But it was white paint. I needed to find a spray can of black paint because I needed to spray paint my hair black. I started just running up and down this hallway, looking into similar offices, entirely unable to relax. I grabbed onto the can of spray paint tighter and tighter until my muscles were shaking. It was horrible.

Boy am I glad there’s a weekend coming up.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #223 – Sad Apocalypse

(Female, 40’s) This is probably the saddest dream I’ve ever had, and I think it should count as a nightmare.

It was the end of the world. Everyone knew it– everything was shutting down. The government had fallen apart. There were no utilities– no lights or heat or water. There was chaos in the streets. There would soon be no food. It was like a war zone.

I was in my home with my husband and our two kids, our son and daughter– they were all a little younger than they are now. Somehow, earlier, for this situation, I had obtained from a pharmacy 4 suicide kits, and I had kept them until the last moment because we could either die together now or soon all die horrible deaths. We were all together in our living room, sitting on the floor, and I was busy doing what I always do– making sure everyone had what they needed, a drink of water, whatever. So I missed following the directions– there was a liquid to drink and then about 20 pills to swallow. My family members were already through the process when I was just starting. And I was confused– what do to first? But they were falling asleep in front of me, losing consciousness. They looked like they were peacefully asleep, but I knew they were each dead. And I wasn’t– not yet. It was so sad that they had all died without me.

I swallowed the liquid and the pills in some random order and waited. They were taking effect, but very slowly. I felt myself getting tired, and my arms and legs getting heavy. Some neighbors came in the house, looking for food. I told them, “Take whatever you want. We don’t need it. You can even have our house, if you want.” One of my neighbors had had cancer, I knew, and I thought how odd it was that she had outlived my healthy children. My veins felt tingly and I felt cold. I knew I just had to be patient and soon the drugs would take effect. I could hear people running and guns outside. I kept telling myself to relax. I just had to wait.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #222 – Water Bugs

(Male, 30’s) This dream was going fine until the very end when something happened that continues to creep me out now I’m awake.

“…some kind of insect has attached itself to me…”

I was at some kind of cottage, maybe even a campground with a bunch of other people my age. I think we were all grownups, that is, I don’t think this was a youth summer camp but they were folks I recognized from high school, just all grown up, folks I don’t normally see. A group of us had been swimming in the lake which wasn’t the greatest place to swim. There were lots of leaves floating in it and it didn’t really feel like it had a sandy bottom, more like little bits of rotten leaves and things. Still it was the lake we had. It was a co-ed camp, men and women so we were splashing each other and I think we were all carrying drinks in glass stemware, like martini glasses.

We all got out of the lake and went into the shower room which was one big room with many individual showers each separated off with a curtain. I went in and started a shower and as I washed I could hear other people talking. For the most part, they were all talking about the wild sexual experiences they’d had. These were the people I’d gone to high school with, who’d lived their whole lives in the suburbs and they were talking about some pretty crazy stuff. I was by far the most innocent one there.

I get out of the shower and start to dry off and I realize that I am still wearing my bathing suit which is so stupid. Who showers with a bathing suit? And as I notice that fact, I also notice that some kind of insect has attached itself to me. It’s body is probably two inches across and it’s got sharp, beetle like claws. It was attached to my belly roughly four inches to the left hand side of my belly button. I touched it and it squirmed, still very much alive. It didn’t hurt, in fact, I couldn’t even feel it. On impulse, I grab it and yank it. It snaps apart leaving its head still buried in my skin. I’m thinking, “with all the scummy lake water, it’s sure to get infected.” The body of the bug that I held in my hand was still alive, its legs still twitching.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #221 – Well Armed Vacation

“…every adult who came into the county had a loaded hand gun with them at all times…”

(Male, 30’s) I was taking my family on vacation, a good old-fashioned pack-up-the-station-wagon, let’s-go-camping kind of family vacation. We drove to this wooded, semi-rural area and when we stopped at the tourist station / ranger post, a man in a uniform warned us that there was a known serial killer operating in this county. He’d killed at least 26 people and stolen at least 13,000 dollars. In fact, the authorities knew exactly who it was but they didn’t want to proceed on the case until they were certain they could have a case that would stand up in court. It was too important a case to have the guy just walk free on a technicality. In the meantime, the authorities were making sure that every adult who came into the county had a loaded hand gun with them at all times. My wife had never shot a hand gun, at least she hadn’t in the dream, and I was a little uncomfortable carrying around an unfamiliar firearm, especially not off into the wilds of this rural county. Anyway, off we go. We stopped in a store for supplies and the woman behind the counter was a little concerned. At first I thought it was because I was carrying a gun in her store, but actually it was because she’d been warned that the serial killer was headed in the direction of the store. Just then the door opened and she yelled “That’s him!” So I guess I shot at him. So did the store woman and I think my wife even got a few rounds off. Then we realized that it was just Bill, an old friend of mine who I haven’t seen in years. Thankfully, none of our bullets had landed anywhere near their mark.
Now I’m awake though, I wonder if we were supposed to think that my friend Bill actually WAS the serial killer. Anyway, it was one of those dreams where it seemed pretty clear that I was going to get killed one way or another, either by the serial killer or by some jackass shooting at me. Both funny and scary at the same time.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #220 – Keys but No Resolution

(Female, 40’s) I had two strange dreams involving keys within the same week.

“…If I didn’t know how to use the key, how as I ever going to drive that bizarre car?…”

In the first dream, I somehow got stuck proctoring the SAT exam at the new local high school. It was the dream equivalent of sitting in a room for 5 hours. After the test was over, a friend who was also giving the SAT invited my husband and I to a cook-out at her and her husband’s new home. She offered me a ride and my husband would meet us at her house. They had just gotten a new car too. She and I went out to the parking lot, and I saw a car unlike any I’ve ever seen before. It was a two-seater, but the seats were arranged like the cockpit of a bi-plane with the driver in front and the passenger sitting behind her. It was build something like a bobsled with a glass bubble cover. We got in the car and we drove along. When we got to her house, my friend instantly got busy with making a charcoal fire in the grill and starting to cook these huge filleted chunks of fish. Then I remembered that I’d left my purse at the high school. “Here, go back and get your purse,” my friend said and she handed me something unrecognizable, which was the key to her new car. It was about the size of a credit card and made of plastic, but it was cut into a very odd shape. “How do I use it?” I asked. My friend was exasperated with me. “Just snap off the protectors and enter the code. I already used one set up so it doesn’t matter.” I looked down at the key in my hand, still totally puzzled. If I didn’t know how to use the key, how as I ever going to drive that bizarre car?

I don’t remember all the details of the other dream, but only the image of holding the key to the station wagon in my hand. I was feeling worried. I was holding the plastic end of the key in my hand and I was rubbing my thumb over the metal part of the key. As if from metal fatigue, the prong of the key started to crumble and fall apart into pieces in my hand. Would I be able to put the bits into the ignition and start the car? I had no idea what to do.

Someone I work with said keys are really important symbols in dreams. If either of these keys represent some aspect of me, well, that seems like a bad thing.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #219 – Lost in the City

(Female, 40’s) I had spent the weekend with my good friend in the Big City, and now it was time to go home. I had to catch a train in 2 hours and she was leaving on a plane in 3. I guess I went to check out of the hotel. I rode down in the elevator to the lobby, which also connected to a large shopping mall. The lobby and mall were really crowded with shoppers and I had to dodge my way across the concourse. When I turned about to head back up to our room, I had no idea which way to go. All the possible paths looked the same, with shiny walkways and store windows and doorways.

“… I kept walking around, conscious of the passing time and no closer to finding my way…”

I started to wander, but I was lost. I didn’t know which way to go. I kept walking around, conscious of the passing time and no closer to finding my way. I was feeling more worried and panicky all the time. Then I found myself at an exit, and I decided I should go outside, because I’d be able to look at the building and see where the hotel tower (it was very tall– we were staying on the 18th floor) was in relation to where I was.

Outside was even more disorienting. The facade of the mall was so tall that I couldn’t see any other buildings behind it. I was surrounded by tall skyscrapers; I was standing in their shadows and I felt cold. I decided to cross the street so I could see better. I turned about to see that there were 8 lanes of traffic on the street. The corners were far away, so I just started running across, dodging traffic as I went. I still couldn’t locate the hotel. I asked someone walking by where the hotel was, and he asked which hotel. I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of our hotel. I said, “I think it’s the Constitution.” “There’s no hotel named that.”

Then I got a text message from my friend: “Where are you?” and I wrote back, “I am lost.” She texted me again and said to come back inside. I went into a subway station and she was sitting on a bench waiting for me. She had my suitcase with her. She had packed it up for me. I sat down to double-check that all my stuff was there, but when I opened the suitcase, nothing inside looked familiar.