I’m so fucked I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve been awake for 65 hours now because I know that if I fall asleep again I will never wake up. I can’t keep my eyes focused and my head is pounding, I know I won’t be able to stay awake for much longer. I need to get this out there, if someone is ever in my shoes I hope this might help, though I don’t know how…
Fuck! Where do I even begin? How do I even…
Ok, I’m back.
I just took another coffee.
Shit my hands are shaking now.
Well never mind that. To be able to make sense of this I guess I’ll have to go back in time a little.
I’m not even sure if “Nightmare” is a good description of what I am experiencing. Night terrors or sleep paralysis also resemble my situation but not quite the same, those are not this real.
It started when I woke from a coma after almost drowning. I don’t remember anything about the incident but they say that when they found my body the paramedics had declared me dead on the spot. It was only upon closer inspection that they had found a pulse. I had been floating naked on the surface of the ocean until the tide eventually washed me upon the shore to the horror of a couple trying to relax on the evening beach. The paramedics had been able to warm me back up and brought me to the hospital. That was two months ago, I spent the next three weeks in a coma. When I woke up I had no memories of who I was but the doctors had explained the situation. I had been floating in the freezing ocean for longer than they had ever seen anyone survive, luckily I had been floating on my back, bobbing up and down in a cold cradle. No one had reported me missing and since I had no Id or wallet on me the local authorities had put me up in a local motel while they investigated the matter, trying to find anyone who might have known me.
Ever since I woke from the coma I have had trouble sleeping. It began with dreams of floating on the surface of the water, bathed in warm sunlight as the waves rocked me into a deep relaxed state. But as the days went on the sun moved down towards the horizon and the water became colder. What had previously been a relaxing experience soon became the source of my deepest terror. My doctor told me that it must be my body reacting to the trauma it had experienced. A sort of unconscious response, similar to how survivors of war often have nightmares in which they are in an active battle field.
At first I thought she was right, it made sense, even though I could not recall the incident my body could and with enough time and therapy the dream would subside. But as the dreams became even darker and colder I had more and more doubts. I would wake up every night in cold sweat as if from a fever, and the dreams became even more vivid. It was as if I was actually floating on the surface, I felt each cold wave splash against my side, spraying me with salt water. Soon the sun had set entirely and the coldness was unbearable, the dreams were so vivid I could look around in them but I could not move. It was as if I was trapped in a corpse floating somewhere in the middle of the actual ocean. Some nights the waves were fierce and rain showered me with ice cold nails piercing my skin over and over. Other nights the star filled sky was above and nothing else. The dreams were so vivid that when I had woken I never felt rested, instead I felt just heavy, like a blanket that had soaked up too much water. All I wanted to do during the days was to sleep but I also knew that sleep inevitably meant back to the dreams.
Three days ago a new sensation began to appear. In this dream the sky was black with shapeless clouds, no stars, no moon, nothing to illuminate my new world. Some time into the dream I began to notice the depth of the water around my waist increasing. My arms began to very slowly sink below the surface. Before my body had always felt weightless as if I was a balloon filled with air floating just a few inches below the surface effortlessly. Now it was as if my balloon had sprung a leak, slowly letting out air. As time went on the crease of my arms sank to just below the surface and by this point panic had set in hard. Not being able to move I realized that I would drown all alone in this cold world if I could not wake up. I struggled to move, I tried to scream to raise my arms or to just wiggle my toes but it was as if it was not my body, nothing I did mattered. All I could do was look up at the sky as my fate was being sealed.
That day I woke up to find my entire bed wet, too wet, as if I had sweated out my entire body’s worth of fluids into the sheets. I could hardly move during the day and I was still shaken by fear. I was certain that something bad would happen if I sank during the dreams, like I would not be able to ever wake up from the dream. I spent the rest of that day researching my situation to see if anyone had ever experienced anything similar. At first I tried medical research but found no disease that fit me or any recorded patient with a similar story. I even called my doctor but she was of no help, again insisting it was natural and that I should try to ‘relax’. As time went on and night approached I desperately began searching online threads for more implausible answers. One idea was that this might simply be a bad trip or that someone was secretly dosing me for some twisted experiment. But I found no drugs that would result in persistent dreaming and nightmares in quite this way. And even if there was one I don’t know anyone, the police haven’t been able to find one person connected to me for ages now, who would even have a motive and how would they even do it. Another idea was aliens but that rabbithole only led me down paths that while some shared similarities with me they were all too different from one another for me to be able to learn anything.
I needed something concrete.
I needed someone who was having recurring nightmares that got progressively worse. The problem is that a lot of people suffer from recurring nightmares, so I had to narrow it down even further. Drowning is also, I found, quite a normal nightmare so no luck there in narrowing it down.
The hours spent staring at a computer screen in the lobby without eating or drinking was finally wearing me down. I found nothing, no one to share this experience with. I feared falling asleep, I did not want to sink again. Floating in the cold and dark was terrible but compared to the unknown depth of the dark ocean I would willingly continue the nightmare for the rest of my life if I could avoid the abyss. I left the lobby and walked down the block to a pharmacist and bought sleeping pills thinking that they might let me rest without dreaming. Sadly, as I was about to discover they only made things worse.
This was my last dream I had before typing this and recalling the memory still sends a shiver down my spine.
The last dream started much like the others I was floating on the surface. This night was pitch black with even with my eyes fully open I saw nothing at all. The wind had died down, the only sensation I felt was the water along my back. It was as if everything in the world was fading away, the moon, the stars and the winds were all gone. This only meant that the imprint of the water was more clear. I had no concept of time but it felt like hours passed before anything changed. I felt the water crawl up my side excruciatingly slowly, the icy touch climbed the soles of my feet and into the crease of my arms. Hours passed until my ears were fully emerged, every inch of my body was sinking at the same rate and now the cold was sinking deep into my bones. My ears now below the water I could hear something.
It was no sound I had ever heard before, a dark rumbling that rose and fell in pitch and tempo. Like a record that had been scratched or corrupted and played at half speed. As I sank the noise came closer and closer. It really felt like a song, or rather, a slow rhythmic speech in a foreign language. By now the water had risen to cover almost my entire body, soon it would prevent me from breathing. I prayed that the end would be painless. For that one second I almost felt relief from the knowledge that it would soon be over. But then I felt something touching me. Something slimy began slithering along my spine and immediately I began to panic, every nerve in my body was firing, run, run, run, flee, death, flee. Then another began gliding up my foot and between my toes. It was warm, wet and sticky, even recalling the sensation of it touching me is making my stomach twist and turn. The noise was now so close to me I could feel vibration in the water, it was definitely a voice, a deep dark twisted voice chanting in a foreign language. More tentacles were embracing me, slowly tangling up my body in its grasp, just waiting for the final moments when I would finally sink so that it could finish me. Each tentacle was gently pulling me down, water was beginning to flow into my eyes and to cover my mouth. I could see nothing and only breathe through my nose. Then one tentacle writhe itself around my neck and slowly started to constrict. I could feel its muscles begin to tighten as water flooded into my nose. The darkness was embracing me, I was suffocating, I was dying, my consciousness fading.
That was when I woke up. The sun was setting but the small amount of light in the room felt like staring into the sun after having been in complete darkness for days. All I could do was lie there tensing every muscle in my body. The bedsheets were covered in sweat and I had never experienced such exhaustion this was magnitudes worse than the other nights. After a while the fear subsided and I tried to stand, my whole body felt wrung out, withered like a plant that had been kept in darkness for months. I stumbled my way to the bathroom and drank glass after glass of water, then I threw up and drank some more. I looked at my watch, I had been asleep for 21 hours, I felt resigned. I knew that this would be my last waking day in this world and I had nothing to fight my fate with. It was as if the monster in the depths had been robbed of its prey and was now coming back to finish the job through my dreams. When I recalled the sensation of its warm tentacles slithering against my skin I had to hug the toilet again. Night had come before I was strong enough to leave my room.
I went to the store and bought things that would help me stay awake.
I also bought things that would help me never sleep again.
I thought the choice would be easy but I still don’t know what to do. Everytime I tried to rationalize what was happening to me, saying that they were only dreams, I would recall that darkness and the embrace of that entity and every instinct in my body would tell me to flee. Death or darkness. Not the choice I would have wanted.
I guess that whatever I decide to do I won’t be here tomorrow. I’m nearing my limits and have to make a choice soon. I don’t know how this will help anyone but I don’t want my existence to have been entirely wiped clean from this world. No memories, no friends, no family, no legacy. No one to miss me, the perfect target. If the darkness engulfed me no one would come looking.
I can hear the blood pulsing in my head, my entire body feels heavy as lead. I have to decide now before I become incapable of rational thought.
Please pray for me.
Goodbye.