The Things that Go Bump in the Night
I can still remember the first nightmare that sent me running for my parents’ bedroom:
A monster with purple tentacles had chased me into a small closet. And as I braced my back against the wall of the cloistered room, I pressed my feet firmly against the door, hoping that my legs had the strength to keep the snarling, snapping, drooling beast at bay.
I can remember that nightmare so well, not because I still have vivid memories of the purple beast, but because I can still feel the anxiety that the dream filled me with. Absolute dread. Dread that inevitably caused me to wet my footie pajamas and run clamoring for comfort between my mom and my dad.
But to be sure, that nightmare was the basest of fearful dreams, preying upon my most literal childhood phobias of things living under my bed, in the attic, under the stairs, in the basement, and of course, in my closet.
Kid stuff.
As I matured, so have my nightmares.
Around the age of 9 or 10, I started having the real deal – nightmares which focused less on my body being ripped apart by one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eaters and more on the things inside my head that tore at my soul.
In what would become the first reoccurring nightmare I’d ever have, I found myself mayor of a town, experimentally situated inside of an dormant volcano. Everything was going great, my childhood friends and family populated the village, running businesses and raising families.
But life inside of a volcano can only go so well for so long.
Having been informed that the dormancy of the lava-spewing giant was coming to an end, I did what any politician would do: I ignored the warnings, sugar-coated the truth for my constituents, and acted surprised when the initial rumblings began.
Soon, it was chaos. Magma streamed down the inside walls of the sheltered colony, boulders fell from the ceiling, and huge crevices opened beneath people’s feet. Everything was in flames, and whole building were being swallowed up. As I watched the screaming, running denizens of my shire bolt for their lives, I attempted to relieve fears, calm nerves, and waylay departures.
All this death and destruction was surely going to have a negative impact on my reelection plans.
Unfortunately, as the nightmare got really…heated…I was hit by a huge rock, crushing my legs and pinning me in the town square.
Scary shit, huh?
But the fear that I experienced wasn’t due to my impending immolation. And at the age of 9 or 10, I certainly wasn’t concerned about the polls.
As I lay prone and helpless, I watched as my childhood buddies were crushed and burned.
The helplessness was obviously a terrible feeling but more than that, it was the guilt that I felt for the loss of my friends. My inaction had led to the death of everyone I loved and cared about. And I could do nothing but watch my friends and family pay for my selfishness and fear.
Sufficed to say, I remember waking from that dream feeling traumatized. And it led to a prolonged illness, like the flu or something.
I’ve had the same dream probably a dozen times over the course of my life and while the cast of characters continues to change with whatever friends I currently have, the results are always the same: fever, sweating, chills, puking, and the shits. I actually remember having it right before I got the chicken pox.
Weird, hey?
Well, my nightmares only get weirder from there.
Shortly after my mom died, I began having zombie dreams. That is to say, dreams in which the reanimated corpse of my mother would ring my doorbell, sit at my kitchen table sipping coffee, and offer me all sorts of advice.
And again, this was a reoccurring theme of my dreams.
Like American Werewolf in London, my mom would show up out of the blue, still in the dress she was in buried in, each time a little more decomposed and worse for wear. By the time the dreams finally stopped, she was barely recognizable. No eyes. A dislocated jaw. Her voice distorted from the dirt she was choking on.
But still, ridiculously cheery and chatty.
More disconcerting than her demeanor, however, was the context I had as the dreamer. There weren’t any misgivings about her state. Despite her happy-go-lucky coffee-time visits, she was, in my mind, a goddamn zombie. In addition to her perpetually more rotten appearance, she was consistently bloodier than before.
What the hell was she eating? And why wasn’t she trying to eat me?
These were the thoughts I had, as the dreamer, every time she came to the door.
I was genuinely afraid of her visits.
But now that I’m older and my situation is different, my nightmares have evolved yet again. And my living dead mother was a cakewalk compared to what my mind is doing to me as of late.
About two weeks ago, I started having a new nightmare. I’ve probably had it four times, but it has affected me so deeply that I’ve only enjoyed an average of three hours of sleep each night since. A total of maybe 20 seconds has completely wrecked my waking hours and thrown my sleeping habits into a complete shit storm.
It’s quick. Just a flash. But it wakes me instantly, and it’s only through sheer exhaustion that I let myself close my eyes again.
I don’t want to sleep because I simply cannot bear these dreams.
My dad, who recently passed away from cancer, is talking to me.
He’s not desiccated. In fact, the quick glimpse I have of him in the dreams are of just his face. Totally normal. Calm. The way I remember him best.
Each time only a sentence or two.
“It’s not worth it. Just give up.”
“Get it over with. Kill yourself.”
“Don’t be afraid. Do it.”
Now, if you knew me and my dad, you’d quickly be able to say, as most of my friends already have, “It’s just a nightmare. It’s all in your head. He would never say those things to you.”
It’s true. He would never say those things to me. I know that.
But to the unquiet mind, the mind that fights every day against sanity and safety, it is a blow.
And I need my sleep to keep up the fight.
Mister Fitz 