Hello. My name is Andrew and I have been having the same strange dream for the last year and a half, although at this point, I don’t think it’s a dream anymore.
I work as a salesman at a small phone store, and I have been managing by myself just fine for these last couple years. I had never worked before, so it was stressful as hell having to not only manage the store but achieve sales targets all on my own.
I say this because the only times I’ve ever dreamt in my life was during periods of especially high stress. It’s usually nonsensical nightmares that sound sort of interesting upon recounting them, and I’ve never really had ‘scary’ nightmares. Most of the time I was aware I was dreaming, so any and all emotions I felt during those nightmares were muted.
At one point I had a nightmare of a lady smiling from ear to ear, not an inhuman smile mind you, but a smile that seemed plastered on her face as she was slowly approaching me. I was looking up from the bed. I don’t remember being tied to it. I wanted to move my body… but I couldn’t. It’s what I imagine having sleep paralysis being like. I could not see her lower body, but she moved with an unnatural smoothness. It didn’t look like she was taking one step at a time. It was a small slide, repeated at irregular intervals.
It was the scariest dream I ever had. And that’s how I found out what actually scares me the most. It’s how unnatural it felt having that lady approach me. Not in an artificial way, like puppets on a string, but it was dancing on the line of being mostly right, but not quite right. It hits harder the more solid your view on the world around you is.
I attempted to lucid dream, to control my body and the things that happen while I dream, but it never worked. I tried and tried for months. I am an aspiring writer, so being able to fully explore the world of my stories through my own lens and not through the lens of a main character sounded god damn exciting.
I also bring up this because I don’t think I’m lucid dreaming.
The first time I had this dream was one year ago. It was an uncomfortably hot summer night, and I don’t think I got more than thirty minutes of good, quality sleep, but it felt way, way too real…
I had no control over what was happening and most of the time it started out the same, with me having something akin to an out of body experience until I slip, so to speak, into my dream body. It always starts in the same place too.
I find myself at the intersection 50 meters away from where my high school is, a place where I made many memories with my friends. Felt sadness when my first girlfriend broke up with me. Felt happiness for my friends when they managed to get a high paying job right out of high school that also allowed him to do college, although it took him a bit longer than you’d usually need to get his masters.
The moment I gain control of my body, the world around me stops in place. It’s not a gradual slowing down either. It’s like the tracks of time completely come to a halt. It would be a cool dream, albeit strange if that’s all that happened but it wasn’t.
The sky literally turns off like a light bulb for a split second and when it returns to normal, the people don’t look the same as they did. They look mostly the same, just… different. The first time this happened, I panicked and woke up drenched in sweat and equipped with the heart rate of a marathon runner.
The next time I would have the dream would be the next week, on the same day. This time, as capricious as weather is where I live, my room was very comfortably cool. I was comfortable going to sleep which lead to me falling asleep really quickly and I found myself in that place again.
The events played out the same as last time, as if I was watching a recording. Same faces. The posture of the people stopped in time was identical too. That same foreboding feeling, that fear that rises out of the abyss of the line between identical, but not quite right came to grip my heart once more. I managed to keep my calm this time. The sky became pitch black a couple times, always reverting back to normal a couple seconds after, after that though, I was left to my own devices.
Moving through air that was stopped in time didn’t feel as strange as I thought it would. It felt somewhat interesting walking through a strong breeze, displacing the wind with my body felt indescribable. I could barely feel it, likely because it wasn’t moving at the speed it usually would…
I walked down the street, to where my high school was. I’m not sure what I was expecting but what I saw once I got there were teens of varying ages with smiles on their faces as they talk to their friends, some had their fists up, ready to fight.
Even now, I don’t know what compelled me to look back, but as I did, everything looked to be the same… just a bit different. The fear became uncontrollable, and upon closer inspection, my heart fell into the depths of my stomach as the realization hit me that what was different was the postures of the people around me.
It felt like my heart stopped in place as images from that one episode of doctor who I used to watch on repeat when I was thirteen came to the forefront of my mind. This was disturbingly close to the weeping angels. I began to hyperventilate as I kept trying to rationalize to myself that this was a dream.
I woke up soon after, in the arms of my dad as he kept shouting at me with a very much worried look on his face. His voice came out muffled and I could barely feel his hands on my shoulders as he kept my body upright, shaking me to get me to wake up. It was like I just woke up from an especially deep slumber.
I explained to them what happened, and they advised me to visit a psychologist and talk about my dreams at length with him. That was the one thing I did not want to do. I didn’t want someone to rationalize this dream and this recent development in my life as just my subconscious mind having its mysterious ways, and that I should forget about them.
With a monotone life such as mine, this made me feel alive. I am deeply ashamed to say that I peaked in high school, and it hasn’t been the same ever since. It’s also the way adult life tends to take the fun out of things you once used to do.
My life progressed as usual in the meantime. It was the usual stress of having to achieve nearly impossible sales targets, considering I’m the only person working there. It’s because I always somehow make it at the end of the month, that they don’t bother to send someone to help, but I like money and I take at least a little pride in being able to achieve so much by myself.
You people might enjoy reading about my experience, as posting to a mental health sub would result in most of the replies being a recommendation to a psychiatric doctor.
I have to go back to work, as I took the time to write this during down time but expect an update tomorrow. It’s going to be a lot longer than this post, as a lot of things happened in a short amount of time after that.
For now, I bid you all farewell and a good night from the dingy phone store at the edge of town.