(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.