Night Terrors

“My sleep wasn't peaceful, though. I have the sense of emerging from a world of dark, haunted places where I traveled alone.”

― Suzanne Collins,

Night Terrors

What’s the scariest dream, or nightmare you ever had? If you haven’t told anyone, please comment below and tell me yours, because I doubt I’ll ever forget mine. Even though I had more in depth nightmares before, some I still remember even though it’s been a decade or more since it occurred, but I doubt I’d ever truly shake the feeling my most recent nightmare left me with.

In my dream, I was out somewhere, having an argument with someone and we were outside on a bight sunny afternoon. Like most dreams some details were lost upon waking, so I can’t remember what the person looked like, or what we were arguing about. I just know the argument became heated, and exasperated with trying to reason with this individual who refused to see reason, or let me try to meet them half-way at least, but eventually I had enough, and decided to simply walk away by retreating to my car. But as I neared the driver side door, I heard what sounded like thunder, which struck me as peculiar, since it was as I said and thee wasn’t a cloud in the sky and before I could tilt my head to look up, I felt the sharp pain at the back of skull and my body was pitching forward.

     Then I was lying on the grass with the pain in the back of my skull rapidly dissipating and I found myself unable to draw breath, but I could feel blood running down the back of my head, and bubbling from a hole just above my left eye, I tried to move but found I was unable, I couldn’t even blink, close my eyes or look away from the pavement, or the horizon, seeing only the street beneath me and the blades of grass further on the horizon, with my vision taking on a red tint as blood ran down into my eyes. I had known almost instinctively that I had been shot and I could hear the panic in my killers voice as he paced behind me,

                “Why did I do that?”
                “Why did I shoot him?”

                “I can’t believe I just did that.”       

All the while, I could feel my life leaving me, rushing out of me, like water out of a balloon after it’s been punctured.

                “No!” I screamed defiantly, “It can’t end like this, I have too much to do and I can’t die, not now!” But no sound escaped my lips and then I could feel myself being pulled from my body, despite how much I struggled, or strained to remain, I was like a child slowly being lifted from the crib, there was nothing I could do, but still I raged on, I strained and struggling to live again my sheer force of will alone. Thinking if I fought hard enough, I would somehow escape this fate and regain my life. But nothing I did worked, I was being pulled effortlessly from my body and suddenly there I was, slipping out of my body as a snake would do it’s skin, and I saw myself laying there on the ground with blood slowly pooling around my head, my killer was masked in shadow, but I could see him, with his hands on his head, pacing back and forth, with the gun lying on the ground by his feet as he stared down at my prone, lifeless body, as a crowd of people I never seen before slowly crowding in and around my body, murmuring to themselves and to each other. 

                Then I awoke, in cold sweat, with the feeling of death still all around me. I still felt the pain and fear of dying, unable to shake any of it. More than anything I wanted to reach out, talk to someone, hear a friendly voice, get some confirmation that I was in fact still alive and well, I wanted someone to tell me it was all just a dream. But being single and seeing that it was only 6:37 in the morning, I knew that there wasn’t anyone I could talk to at this late hour, no one who would care to hear about some crazy dream where I had died. One of the many drawbacks of being single is having no one there to tell you it was all just a dream and that everything would be alright, to remind you that you’re still here and still very much alive. But I awoke alone in my bed, feeling more alone than I thought possible and feeling as though I was already dead, but stuck in a sort of in-between.

The strangest thing is, I never really been afraid of dying before and have always thought I was ready to die and with my depression, I have often at times wished for my own life to end, imagining how I would I would go. Feeling although I would embrace and accept my death when it came, but now I’m not so certain.