As a child I suffered from night terrors. I’m not exactly sure how everyone experiences them, I’ve read it’s common for people to wake up screaming, unable to remember what or why, but it’s not the case for me. For me, my brain would get scrambled and get caught alert on the cusp of dream. I would be absolutely convinced that I was living in the real world even while I was still experiencing the dream I was sinking into. Not quite sleepwalking, because I was slightly aware of my surroundings, it was just in the setting of my dreams.
There’s a few that I still remember vividly. They’re all as nonsensical as dreams normally are. One time I had driven myself to overexhaustion because my family and I walked the fair the whole day. It was a good time, many great memories, but I was tired with a capital T. I woke up that night believing with every fiber of my being that everything was wrinkled, that the whole world was wrong. I could feel the wrinkles in my bed sheets and knew that the whole universe was connected to them, and nothing would be ok again unless I could smooth them out. My parents found me sobbing uncontrollably, kneeling beside my bed and desperately trying to smooth out my sheets. Everything was depending upon me. Nothing was right. And no matter how hard I tried, the wrinkles remained.
Another was a little more comical. I was sick with a fever, so I was on the couch next to my parents’ bedroom. It still makes no sense to me, but at the time it was entirely serious; there was an upside-down Z moon in the sky. How I understood a Z was turned upside down I have no idea, nor how the moon got to be that way, but I was deep in it so I accepted it as fact. My parents heard me thumping around and came out to find me standing on my head, ankles against the wall because I couldn’t hold my 7-year-old body that way without the support, explaining very matter-of-fact how the moon was both a Z and upside down, so it only made sense to make it right side up. I had to stand on my head. There! See, now it looks fine.
It happens mostly to children, so as an adult, it stopped happening to me. Every once and a while I felt the strange near-panic, the bordering on out of control that it made me feel, but I have a greater understanding of myself and a better hold of my body. The past four days though, I’ve had a cold. Just a common head cold, nothing extreme, no covid, no flu, but it knocked me flat on my ass. Last night was the first time in decades I experienced a night terror. It was a horrid feeling experiencing it again, but thankfully I do have the tricks and understanding that came with experience. I live alone, so there were no parents to calm me, no partner to talk to. I had to rouse myself and shake the false reality from my head. I didn’t sleep well after that, but I did sleep. Called out from work, kept resting. I was feeling better, so I hoped that tonight would be different.
Tonight was definitely something different.
It was just normal dreams this time. When you’re tossing and turning due to illness, you remember more of your dreams because you’re not sleeping as soundly, as deeply. There was a whole bunch these past few days, but one stuck out to me. Just me, driving in my car down the street, almost like driving from one dream to the next. It was the equivalent of cartilage or connective tissue of dreams. But there was one weird guy that was walking down the street who, when I drove by, adjusted his path to walk at me. He seemed off, maybe a little disturbed or special needs, I couldn’t tell as I kept driving by. I passingly wondered if he did that with every car that drove by, but I was glad he was behind me now.
It kept happening that night specifically. Many different dreams, but it at least happened a second time that I remember. Again, I just drove down the street, he walked at me with purpose, I drove past. Strange, but I was experiencing a great many strange dreams. Yay for sickness brain.
Tonight I experienced him again. Twice, yet again. The first time I passed him in my dreams, I noted that he was significantly closer to my starting point. I thought to myself, that’s weird, why wouldn’t he remain at the same point he was before, dream logic style. Then I questioned, if he was walking down this same dream street for the days in between my sleep, would this be where he made it to? If his travel was linear, then wouldn’t it make sense he was that much closer? Again, an odd thing, but my dreams were still being strange thanks to the tail of the cold.
The second time though.
I finished one dream and was off to the next, and I saw him again. He was at the closer point just as the last time, and I was passing him by in my car. But this time, he called to me by name. It was a shout of need and yearning and desperation, he wailed at me as I passed. It was so intense that I broke from sleep in bed, my heart pounding hard enough I felt my bed rock slightly even though I lay unmoving. The thought that he might do that to every car that passed was dashed, the newfound fright that he had moved that much closer to where I began my journeys realized.
I’m not a lunatic, I’m not going to say “this is a killer that is roaming the street outside, that much closer to my home!” I know it’s a dream. But the truth is, dreams have affected me in the past. My psyche is already shaky thanks to the reappearance of night terrors when it had been missing for decades. And my brain already works in the shapes of stories, the tales we tell ourselves and is how the world makes sense to me. I genuinely worry what falling asleep will bring me tonight.
Is this an aspect of myself, trying desperately to get my attention? Is it needy for me, or is it trying to help me, bring some essential puzzle piece to me? Is it a fabrication of sickness, on the edges of my mind just waiting to pounce as soon as I pass by too slow? What the fuck happens if I fall asleep and the first thing I see in my dream is his face staring down at me, having arrived at his destination? The most maddening thing is, me considering all these details are possibly feeding into the dream and making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Having typed this out, I feel a little better. There’s time passed between the dream and now, so I’m calmer. But god damn, I’m tired and I’m anxious and I’m nervous, and I’m really looking forward to when I’m feeling better, body and mind. I really wish this were a piece of creative writing fiction. I don’t think I want to go back to sleep just yet.