skin – DailyNightmare

(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.

(Female, early 20’s) I had this dream after I had just learned that my grandfather had developed skin cancer. At the time I had become very paranoid about every little bump or mole or any change in my skin.

In the dream I had I developed a rash much like Rosacea of which one of my friends suffered from in real life. My skin however would seem to move and sometimes it would be raised and wriggling with life. I ended up seeing several doctors, the last one being able to determine that there were millions of humanoid creatures living on and within me. Eventually the scientist built a machine with which the voices and thoughts of the creatures could be heard but they never revealed where they had come from.

Finally my body began to deteriorate so bad that I became nothing more than a pulpy mess on the floor. I felt no pain only anger and sadness that they would live out their lives within their cities while mine ceased to exist. The doctor had the ability to cure me by destroying them, and had even become my lover but only out of curiosity. At the end of the dream they invade the doctor as well who seems rather comfortable with the whole thing. The last thing the doctor says to me before I wake up is a line he steals from Spock, “The Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” I do remember wanting to smack him, but I no longer had any hands with which to do so.