DailyNightmare
(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?
(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.
(Male, 30’s)
I don’t remember the whole nightmare story, but I remember one awful scene involving a child vampire.
(Female 40’s) I don’t know if this counts as a nightmare, but it was a bad dream. It’s got the same things happening as other bad dreams I’d had, which is kind of funny when you think about it: pain, embarrassment, lots of blood, and not being about to find the bathroom.
I was on a trip at a hotel with some friends. I’d gotten separated from them, and I was wandering around among the common areas of the hotel, like the bars, meeting rooms and reception rooms. I realized that I was breathing strangely, like my breath whistled in my nose and it hurt. I slid my fingers up the skin on the side of my nose, and I could feel it was all lumpy, like something was huge stuffed way up deep inside my nose. At my nostril, my fingers touched the end of something sticking out that felt like a green bean! What the hell? I wondered. How did I get a bean stuck up my nose?
So without thinking too much, I yanked it out. The bean came out in one piece, but it hurt like hell, and my nose began to bleed. I didn’t have a tissue, so I plugged closed with my finger, but it was bleeding hard. I walked around then, trying to find the bathroom.
I came to a bar and looked around the edges of the room, but I didn’t see any signs or arrows. There were some men drinking; I didn’t think they’d know where the women’s room was. I saw waitress and I asked her, forgetting to hold on to my nose so the blood started to pour out again. She said this bar didn’t have a women’s room and I should try another one.
I walked around again and I came to an arcade, a big one, like those arcade rooms a lot of hotels used to have, only bigger. It was full of pinball machines, skeeball, driving car games, everything. Then I saw a pay toilet! That made perfect sense. I almost laughed out loud, but then I realized I didn’t have any change. Plus someone else was just going into the room. So I left again.
I came to a conference hall. I started to walk across this huge room full of people and booths and tables, and I saw a table with a big spread of sandwiches. I was suddenly very hungry. I picked up a sandwich, and my nose began to bleed again, so I held the sandwich in one hand and my nose with the other and hurried away. I had to get some tissue soon or sit down somewhere. I still had a bloody nose and I was starting to feel faint, and then I woke up.
As Elsa L was relaxing on the porch this weekend, she watched a police officer amble down the sidewalk while chatting on a phone. This was a real police officer, gun and all, not a rent-a-cop. We don’t have beat cops in our neighborhood so this was an unusual sight. A few minutes later the same police office walked by again. Elsa greeted him.
He asked “You didn’t happen to see someone run past here last night who was bleeding profusely, did you?”
Elsa answered “No.”
The officer mentioned that a window had been broken and whoever had done it didn’t get away unscathed. He thanked Elsa for her time and departed.
Ever curious, Elsa got up and followed the blood trail herself.
“Quite impressive, really” She told me. “It goes two blocks up this street and a half a block down past the corner. The person lost a bit of blood.”
By the time I made it by to to take photographs, the blood was dark brown. Oxidized I suppose. The spatter pattern looked like drops of very thin paint and there were quite a generous number of them. Some places looked like the person had stopped, perhaps to catch his or her breath. I walked the trail up to the broken window — now patched with a piece of plywood — and tracked it back past Elsa’s place where frankly I lost interest.
I did get a couple dramatic pics… well, dramatic only if you know the back story.
“… I began to worry if Mom would have enough blood left in her…”
(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.”
(Male) I had just gotten off a bus with my wife and daughter who in this dream was maybe ten. We were in a big city with skyscrapers and busy streets and we had to get back to our apartment on the other side of town. The two them wanted to walk slowly but for some reason I had to make it back much quicker so I took off on my own, walking at a much faster pace.
I had only gotten about a block away from them when I noticed all traffic had stopped on the road. There was literally a wash of partially clotted human blood pouring across the street. An SUV had run broadside into a bus and then two more cars ran into the wreckage from either side. It looked like there were no survivors, just human body parts scattered and this horrifying puddle of blood. I was quite fascinated because it didn’t look like blood in the movies and not even like the blood I’ve seen at Red Cross locations but I thought it best to keep moving so I kept walking, leaving bloody footprints behind me, all the way home.