(This is a copy of my post on r/Dreams since after writing it I realized is probably up your guys’ alley)
So, I work night shift at a mental hospital and for a while I resisted the temptation to sleep on my 2-hour break. That is until recently when I tried to stop consuming so many energy drinks and limiting my caffein intake for health reasons. Soon I became so bored on my break that the only thing worth doing was resting my eyes and relaxing and soon after that I gave in… I grabbed a blanket and laid down on the slightly uncomfortable couch in our break room that’s always just a little too cold.
I don’t recall if I had a particularly weird dream that time because I was so uncomfortable that it was hard to fall asleep despite how tired I felt. But the next time I had fell asleep, I kept waking up (for real) but just before waking I would have someone in my dream either tell me I’m dreaming or to wake up. A few of those times I was just lying awake on the couch in the breakroom at work when something “woke” me up. Only for me to find myself in the same spot I was just dreaming about.
Though the dreams get weirder still. Perhaps it is because I have grown accustomed to sleeping here that I do not wake as many times as before. What that means however, is that my dreams have more time to fester and twist narratives in on themselves like a psychic ingrown hair. For instance, I was walking at night when I suddenly felt unsafe, like the hairs on my neck stood up. I looked around and saw a woman walking several yards in front of me, I didn’t feel scared of her. As she walked though the feeling persisted until a shadow leapt from some unseen place and gutted the woman in front of me. They seemed not to be aware of my presence and I realized I had become witness to something awful and my life was at risk. I backed away trying not to make a sound, but I guess I breathed a little too loud and the figures head snapped towards me. Wreathed in shadows I saw no face but I felt the piercing of their gaze upon me. So I turned and ran. I sprinted as fast as I could and in no time at all I was at home where I found my girlfriend waiting for me in bed. I was out of breath but I tried desperately to explain what had just happened only for her to shush me. It was irritating how she didn’t take my concern seriously. But she just grabbed me and told me it was just a dream.
As if by some magic word I opened my eyes to find myself in my actual bed at home, it was daytime now. Everything had felt so real as they so often do in dreams but now I was sure I was actually awake. It was odd that I didn’t remember the rest of my shift or even coming home but this is also not an unusual feeling given how long my hours can be and with the sleep aid I take to help rest in the daytime I can often forget falling asleep entirely. My girlfriend walks in to find me scratching my head at the dream I had and she remarks that I’m finally awake. She smiles at me and where I am usually filled with warmth at the sight of her smile I am instead filled with dread. The coldness I feel seems to seep from me into the room as the warm colors fade to blues and the shadows stretch on the wall. Behind my girlfriend the door inches open and a shadowy figured stalks into the room. Horrified I cannot speak as the figure pulls the blade out and guts my girlfriend in the same exact way as the woman before. My heart is racing at this point and the sheer terror of it all snaps me awake.
Time after time I am pulled from one reality to the next. How could I have forgotten I was in a virtual reality game? I pull my headset off and the next dream begins. That one ends when a deformed pale a naked version of myself, like some corpse pulled from a frozen lake, crawls towards me. My girlfriend begging me to look at it. As I do, I watch in horror as I’m pulled into its flesh… the blood and guts and bits of skin viewed from within rushing past me, my face getting pushed into the flesh until I’m looking through it like a mask, I touch my face and feel my own skin. My Girlfriend there but distant now, angry with me. Three years it’s been, since she found me in that decrepit room. I suppose I had fallen into some sort of coma or something. She tells me that finally after all this time I decided to face what I had done.
The dread comes back, that feeling before the shadow man leapt out. She turns to the sliding closet door and I know I need to look inside. I slowly open the door expecting a man to gut me when the blue light from that room shines through, I see a white foot. Attached is a pale unmoving leg… I know now somewhere in my mind what I am about to see but I cannot allow myself to accept it, I continue sliding the door open as the light pours in revealing the corpse of my long dead girlfriend. I look back at where I had last seen her next to me and see only our bloodstained bed and I am holding a knife. For some reason I kneel with her body in horror at what I must have done, yes the memory of it comes back to me. It was me behind her, me wreathed in shadows… I begged her to come back to me. “Please!” I said. “Please wake up.”
And I did. Back on that slightly uncomfortable couch in the break room that’s always just a little too cold.