Sunday, March 9, 2008

Where Did They Go?

So apparently writing about my nightmares makes them go away. Who knew, now my sleepytime is just as boring and monotonous as being awake......hmmmmm.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Maybe It Runs In the Family

My 4 year old daughter Alice came home from Grandmas today and told me right away about a dream she had about her cat Pickle. It never occurred to me until I started blogging, yesterday (sheesh), that we both seem to have nightmares quite a bit, more often then good dreams at least. I thought maybe I would write about hers as well, the ones she has for a 4 year old would be pretty disturbing I think, if I am remembering age 4 that is. They obviously won't be as detailed as mine, but I think I would like to have a record of hers as well. The fact that I only dreamt of my cat giving birth to her kittens last night may have something to do with why I want to blog her nightmare, who knows.

She came right up to me and said,

"you know what I dreamt about last night mom? I dreamt that Pickle had an oxygen mask on his mouth because he couldn't meow, so he went to the vet and they put a string on his mask, that connected Pickle to me and magically connected me to Pickle, but I gave Pickle my sickness and his mask got pulled off from the string and blood was gushing out of his mouth and all over both of us."

She later went to get Pickle and sat hugging him on the couch talking about how worried she was about him. I have never in all of my life seen a relationship between a child and a cat like the one that exists with Alice and Pickle. She has loved that cat into submission, from the time he was a tiny kitten she has lugged him around with her little arm underneath his front paws, him just swinging to and fro. She would sit on the couch and hold him the same way and he would lay with her and fall asleep in the exact same position he started out in, and would let her change his position multiple times without ever complaining. Over the last year and a half he has gotten MUCH bigger, while she has stayed pretty much the same, and he still lets her lug him around the same way he did as a kitten, it takes both of her arms now.

I write that only to help you understand a little better why a dream such as hers would be so terrifying, not only is it scary in an impersonal, that would suck type experience, but terrifying for her emotionally as well. She never wakes up screaming or anything though, just comes downstairs in the morning and relates her dreams to me.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

A Hotel An Ax and That Chick From Pulp Fiction

I had this one at least a few years ago. I had written it down very completely in a now defunct blog I had at the time, unfortunately I don't have a copy of it anywhere, but I still remember certain details with clarity.

I remember my mom invited a friend and I to a new hotel, it was somewhere out in the country along a super long stretch of highway that was famous for all of the Pro Life protesters who lined the road. My mom had rented out the penthouse and the main attraction was the long patio that wound away from the hotel, ending in a circular platform that stood above the highway. We were out on the veranda, and I was nervous about it because it was only supported with thin wooden posts. My mom suggested I go down to the lobby with my friend and look around since I was nervous being so high up.

The next thing I remember is being downstairs, outside in the front of the building looking around. We decided to head back in and look at everything inside. There were restaurants, shops and game rooms all throughout the first floor.

When we stepped through the front doors we saw that there was an insurance office attached to a clinic. When we stepped through the doors I recognized the man behind the desk as someone who shows up recurringly in my dreams. He waved us through into the clinic, there was a small elevator in the entrance way and in front of it a rusty metal cart with syringes and other medical instruments on it. We stepped past and into a small dormitory room lined with stretchers filled with people with various injuries, the nurse, dressed up like the nurse from The Twilight Zone, saw us and waved us back through the door, told us to take the elevator to the second floor as the shops we were looking for were up there. We were waiting for the elevator and as the door began opening we saw a man, he looked like Leatherface but bigger, holding a knife and wearing a ripped and bloody jumpsuit, we saw him revealed slowly as the elevator doors opened very slowly, it was like slow motion, but it didn't have the visual quality of slow motion.

I can't remember exactly what happened next but I remember the elevator was mangled and useless, we were running through the insurance office, and trying to remember where the other elevator was. There were only two elevators in the entire hotel, I don't remember there being an explanation for that, it was just the way that it was. As we ran we saw nothing but dead and dying children, there had been tables set up for the grand opening with games and magicians for the kids who were visiting. Some had been slammed against walls, you could see pieces of their skulls and brains sliding down the wall above where the lifeless bodies slumped over on the floor. Children were missing limbs, and screaming for their mothers, others had been stabbed and decapitated. We ran to a magicians booth to try and hide. We heard whimpering behind the booth and looked over the edge, we saw That Chick From Pulp Fiction, she was wearing a maids uniform and was curled into a ball, rocking and moaning, tears staining the knees of her uniform. She looked up at us, and said, "it will never end." She pushed the skirt of her dress up and showed us her legs, they were marked with scars, long and running across her legs, only a few inches apart in most cases. Some were still healing, others had healed long ago. She showed us her arms and they were the same.

It gets a little hazy at this part, I only remember a little specifically. That Chick From Pulp Fiction began screaming in a loud and keening way, she tried to get away and the man pulled her back and said something to her, I don't remember what, but I do remember it had something to do with what she had said to us previously. He began slicing the skin on her belly and legs.

The dream ended suddenly with me and my friend lying on the bed in my moms suite unable to move as our skin had been cut off in small strips all over our body and the man had somehow severed enough of our muscles, or whatever, to make it impossible to move. All we could do was lay on our backs, he had positioned our heads so that we would have to watch each other as our life bled from our bodies.

Unfortunately I can remember none of the emotion that made this nightmare so very scary for me. It's one of the ones that woke me up because my cheek was cold lying on a pillow that had been saturated with tears.

Mother and Son Torture

I fell asleep fitfully last night, I am not sure if that has an connection with the severity of my nightmares, I guess I will see if there happens to be a pattern while I am blogging.

My nightmare had the quality of an old silent movie, it was colored in sepia tones but had the choppy movement effect sort of like The Nightmare Before Christmas, It was silent, there was no sound at all.

In the dream I am feeding my son in a rocking chair, the chair is attached to a large machine, I remember sitting there looking at my son as he eats and sleepily swipes at his eyes, he has a habit of rubbing his little hands on his head as he falls asleep. When he was done eating I picked him up and started walking him back to our room but hundreds of small, thin wiry appendages snaked out and began picking and pulling at my hair and my skin, ripping chunks of skin and clumps of hair as it slowly pulled me and Eli back to the rocking chair. We were forced to sit back down, and the machine somehow began to slowly paralyze us so that we would be unable to move, but would stay in the same position, with me holding him in the cradle position with his empty bottle in his mouth, the only difference is that instead of looking at him I was paralyzed looking straight ahead. We could hear, we could think and we could scream (although in the dream I could not hear it.) A small rectangular mirror, like a rearview mirror was slid in front of us, it had another equally small rectangular mirror attached, overlapping in the middle. I could see myself in one mirror and my son in the other. We were left that way while the dream panned out and I saw we were on display in a museum, people were pointing and marveling at us, while Eli and I could do nothing but sit and starve, screaming and in pain in our own waste. Then I woke up.

Another one that had me shaky for hours afterwards.

Nocturnal Tears

I have been having nightmares for as long as I can remember, the first really bad one I had was 10 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child, Jacelyn. I don't remember specifics, as it was so long ago, but I remember the gist of it, and the terrifying feeling I had for hours afterwards.

I remember dreaming of sleeping in my apartment, and watching myself in some sort of out of body type fog. As I watched, a pair of men broke in and proceeded to slaughter me and my husband. They walked to the crib in the corner where my infant daughter was still sleeping, lifted her out and gently placed her in her car seat. My spirit followed her as the men walked quickly through the apartment loading her things, formula, bottles, diapers, blankets and clothes. I followed as they took her outside as they loaded her into the car and drove away. I followed her for years, watching from above in the same rooms as they consistently tortured and raped my daughter. Keeping her alive as they came up with new and different things to do to her. I never had any thoughts that were put into words in my head, I simply watched, terrified and heartbroken until she finally died. They buried her in a deep grave in some woods, miles and miles from the road. The last thing I remember is floating to her grave, going under the ground and cradling her dead body in my arms and finally falling asleep, which is when I awoke.

At first I dreamt these types of dreams maybe once every couple of weeks, over the years it has turned into nightmares like these 4 or 5 days a week. I am not looking for any type of reason i am dreaming like this, or what it may possibly mean. I just decided that I would like to have them recorded somewhere. I am planning to write any nightmares I have from now, and occasionally as snippets of old nightmares come back to me writing about those as well.

If you choose to read and follow along feel free to leave me your thoughts or ideas on the nightmares I write about, I welcome any comments.