I had the strangest dream a few days ago, and I call it a dream because I did not wake up the next morning with the sense of dread and fear that I have now. My name is Townier Skoal, and I apparently have 2 days left to live.
THE FIRST NIGHT
I don’t usually have profound dreams. Sometimes I dream of my hopes and dreams, other times I have what could be best described as ‘pleasant acid trips’, and more often than not I just go to bed and then wake up without time seeming to pass, rested and ready to go. But the night of the 14th I had a dream like I would expect, except for a single detail that remained in my mind into the following day; a man.
This man didn’t do anything, he didn’t interact with me or play any important role in the dream I was having, but his presence was important, and I remembered this into the first day. I work as a school teacher, and during the mornings I teach middle school, so I tend to forget about a lot of things as making my class function can take a lot of focus. And for a bit, I forgot about my dream and this man like any other day, but by the time mid-day came around he snapped back into my consciousness like the important figure he would come to be. No face, no real details at all to make out at this point, just his presence. I went to bed like any other night, but now hoping to know more about this man. And now I wish I didn’t seek anything more about him.
THE SECOND NIGHT
The problem as I would come to find out, is that this man exists because he is acknowledged. Had I simply taken a Benadryl that night and just passed out scrolling my social media, I probably wouldn’t be where I am. That night I dreamed with a purpose, to know more about this man. At first, I just remembered falling asleep with my girlfriend close by. But in what seemed like minutes, I had restarted the dream from the previous night; and that man, he was ever more present than before.
As hard as I tried I couldn’t really interact with this man, when I walked towards him the dream would shift and I would be in a different scene, and I would be doing something new; but that man would be in the frame of the dream, this time with more details. Like a painting coming into this world, small details started to become clear to me as I paid attention between the scene shifts. He had these shallow cheekbones, and a thin, flat chin. His low inner eyebrows shaded his eyes from me, and there was a deep indentation at the top of his nose. His limbs seemed just a tad too long, and his torso was bloated with a skinny chest and a distended belly. What I did notice in that moment, is that I cared a lot about his features, but I did not pay any attention to his clothing. Had I done so, I might have still had a chance to make it out of this.
By the time early morning was rolling around, I had gotten and retained all of these details about the man, but here started the problem. Like the old saying, I stared into the abyss for too long, and now it had left a stain on my soul, weighting it with a mild sense of dread. If you’ve ever gotten one of those emails from your boss along the lines of “We need to discuss something after work today”, and had to go for hours just doing your job until that time arrived, that sensation would best describe this feeling.
The next day was awful, because that meeting would come the third night.
THE THIRD NIGHT
The third night disturbed me. I took my proverbial seat in the administrators office, and waited for what was to come next. At this point, I just wanted to know the importance of this man, and the now series of dream I was having. This wasn’t like me, I don’t have dreams like this, and my girlfriend was convinced that I was just under a little too much stress at the end of the trimester. I can’t blame her, she was right, but this was different, and by the time I get to where I am now, I would just love for someone to believe me.
This dream started differently, I was dreaming of some space, and while I could make out general colors and shapes, the whole eluded me. Then, from behind some hidden layer, the man began to move into focus. Some of the features that I saw from before were occluded, and again the whole was out of focus; however his presence was unmistakable. This state of affairs lasted for what seemed like hours, the two of us locked in some stasis, each trying to understand the other. Then in an instant, a sequence of events would batter my conscious and send me into a panic the likes I’d never felt before.
The room came into focus, it was my bedroom. In fact the point of view was from where I was laying; by all means I was awake now, and that realization sent a shocking horror down my spine as I realized that the layer the man was protruding from was my bathroom door into the bedroom. My stomach dropped as I made the connections that this man had entered my reality, and in another instant, every nerve in my body fired sending me flying to my feet. My brain had hit its fight or flight mode, and for a moment I thought it chose flight, but my soul had a different plan. My girlfriend was on the side of the bed closest to the door, and as a function of who I am, I had to protect her. What I thought was flight, was fight. With every ounce of force in my legs I sprang from where I had landed a moment before at the foot of the bed, sending me to the door of the bathroom, slamming it closed.
The man wasn’t there, according to my girlfriend nothing was there. But she was now as terrified as I was, because seeing her once stoic and goofy lover act so rashly, so unhinged; it broke her own sense of self. Neither of us were okay, but she would at least make it past the 21st.