Has anyone’s dream ever followed them into their waking lives?
An odd question I know but this has happened to me a few times lately and it is a most terrifying experience. Although certainly old enough to know better I still suffer from nightmares. Put it down to a vivid imagination, or reading too late into the night (as my mother used to tell me when I was a child) or to stress (which seems to be the main explanation given for adults who suffer). Although all these things are quite probably true, it is just something that has plagued me most of my life and for the majority I am used to it. Last night’s dream though was of a different type that I have had a few times lately. This one involved my little cousin and our old house. I say little as that is how she was in the dream, she is now a full blown adult, but in the dream she was around 10 and the lively inquisitive young girl who used to follow me around everywhere, that is another reason I knew I was dreaming. A friend had told me she believed my cousin was being haunted, I asked her to explain more and she said she couldn’t, she just wanted me to know so I could keep my eye on her. Strange. In the next scene my cousin is in my front room, I tell her about her friend coming to me and she just shrugs and says “I dunno, maybe”. Then I am walking to her house in the dark (she only lives across the road, another sign of being in the dream), but still I am nervous as I walk, it seems pitch black, even though the street lights are on, they somehow enhance the darkness and create shadows everywhere. I walk past the fishpond in the garden and stare into the blackness, a small dot appears, causing a circle of ripples to cast across the water, confirmation that there is something there. As I walk to the front door it opens and the light from the house floods the pathway, her friend stands in the doorway, “It’s happening again”. I follow her friend up the narrow staircase and as she approaches the bedroom door, she steps to one side and nods towards the room. Before I enter I can hear the music coming from the room, not the usual kind of bubble-gum pop Emma listens to, but some kind of low, jungle, heavy bass, thudding, music. As I look in the room I can see Emma sitting at the desk her head bobbing to the music, she is chanting to it. “Em”, I shout across the room and painfully slowly Emma turns her head round to look at me. That is when I know it is true, my heart has been thumping the whole of the dream, it now begins to hammer in my chest. Her eyes. I can see it in her eyes. Her lips continue to chant, and she turns back around focussing on her task. I step into the room, I feel like I am rushing towards her but I must not be, as I take the time to notice the sound system on the small shelf on her desk has water leaking through it. And it is running onto the desk in front of her. Her hand is in the water. My mind starts to run, shouldn’t she be electrocuted, or is that just a myth? I pull her round to face me, yanking her arm of the desk. The chair swivels round easy as her body is limp. I start to shake her, I know I am shouting “Em, Em, Emma, Emma, come on wake up”. The eyes I stare deep into the eyes while I shake her, come on, I will her to wake. Her eyes begin to roll back in her head and her eye lids start to flutter. I must be getting through. “Emma, can you hear me, I need you to wake up now, I need you to listen to me”. I lift her small body from the chair and take her to the bed lying her down gently, the rolling her into the recovery position, I push the hair stuck to her face out the way. “Emma, please, please hear me, please just open your eyes honey”. I start to shake her again desperate, and watch as a manic grin spreads across her face. “Noooo, Emma I need you to wake up right now.” The small body starts to move I can see the battle going on behind her eyelids. Her body begins to cough, it is weak and pathetic but I know it is her and I reach out to help her, then I wake up. This is when my dream will not give in, despite having been so active in my dream, I am rigid in the bed, although my heart hammers my chest in panic. My whole body is straight as a board, like I am in a coffin, my hands trapped tightly to my side, my legs clamped shut together. The strange thing is my legs feel as though they are raised slightly off the bed. I look down on them and I know they are flat, I can see it but they feel as though they are raised slightly, and my mind overrules. Why can I not move, it feels as though my whole body has gone to sleep, almost as though I will have pins and needles any moment. The more my mind wakes up, slowly I regain control over my body I first manage to move my legs, then my clamped arms, I am then able to roll over. I know this whole process, only takes seconds, but when I first wake from the nightmare in this trapped state, it feels like minutes. As I roll over on my side, my mind replays the fragmented dream over and over again, while my eyes scan all the shadows in my room, just to make sure I am safe. Hopefully morning won’t be too long. Link
made our way inside. The seats I booked were the cheapest and literally the back row of the theatre, practically in the rafters (I hadn’t thought this through as I have a disabled mother and a grandma with me!) but we got to our seats and waited for the show to start – the small theatre was packed out. Half an hour, my mum and my grandma were giggling along with the rest of us. Nothing to worry about at all. In fact the funniest bit of the evening was my grandma rolling her eyes and saying “yeah right” at one of the scenes, this made my mother and I laugh even harder!..
——————–Post prompted by: – Just Jot January – 
New2Writing 