Do you ever have those dreams that just shake your very core? Where when you awake you feel as if your mind has you trapped there still. Where you’re not quite sure of reality and fiction and the environment that surrounds you. I remember being eleven years old and the school doctor diagnosing me with night terrors.
“Night terrors are a sleep disorder characterized by anxiety episodes with extreme panic, often accompanied by screaming, flailing, fast breathing, and sweating and that usually occur within a few hours after going to sleep. Night terrors occur most commonly in children between the ages of four and 12 but can also occur at all ages. Affected individuals usually suffer these episodes within a few hours after going to sleep. They appear to bolt up suddenly, and wake up screaming, sweating and panicked. The episode may last anywhere from five to 20 minutes. During this time, the individual is actually asleep, although the eyes may open. Quite often, nothing can be done to comfort the affected person. Very often, the person has no memory of the episode upon waking the next day.”
I still have occurring episodes but nothing as intense as my childhood dreams. Today I fell asleep around four and woke up at 6 PM. The dream I had was unlike the peaceful ones that I’ve been having. In the dream I was at a friend’s house with mutual friends enjoying a barbeque with friends and family of one of my friends who we will call, John. I remember children, and grandparents smiling and laughing and happy with the sunlight that was pouring through the windows. I remember being happy to be surrounded by people I loved. I remember John, being a negative character in the dream although he’s not in reality. He was pushing our friend Tal around making him clean his room and pack his things and load them into a car. They were moving him out of the room during the family event which was his own family's. I found that unfitting for John’s realistic character. It seemed like he wasn’t enjoying the day at all, and any encounter I had with him in the dream he was vulgar and demeaning. Anyhow after he and Tal left to move his things to wherever he was going to be living, I snuck into John’s room to nap for a minute because I was very tired.
I remember sunlight flowing through the windows, I remember the smell of John’s cologne on the pillowcase, I remember the colors of the room and the people in the room next to me enjoying the celebratorius day although I’m not quite sure what we were celebrating. I remember closing my eyes and feeling safe, and I remember every prior feeling being obsolete when I woke up alone hours later. The room had transformed and was dark, there was no more laughing, there were no more people, there was no more sunshine and no more feelings of comfort. I didn’t know this place and I wanted to be out of it as soon as possible. It was eerie how silent the house was, there was no way it could be the same house I’d fallen asleep in. There was dust everywhere, there was no color, and everything seemed to be black and gray. It smelled damp and old. It wasn’t a home where anyone would want to celebrate anything. I walked silently and drearily to the front door which was still in the same place as the home I’d fallen asleep in; except for when it opened the door, the exterior environment was so different. I was no longer in a safe suburban neighborhood I was in some ominous, neglected compound. Broken cars and trash littered the community area in the middle of it all; the little wind that did sift through the air carried a smell of aged newspapers, trash, gasoline and dog shit. There was no one around for as far as I could see. I decided to take a left and walk alongside of the house because their seemed to be a concreted corridor that led to a little room on the edge of the main house.
My car was no longer their but I noticed an old broken down baby blue Chevy truck sitting in front of the house. Still upset and confused that my friends had left my in this ulterior world, and in some alienated house, I walked nervously to the edge of the house. All of the sudden, bizarrely but it’s a dream so most of it was eccentric, a small man no taller than three ft came running from the room that I was walking towards. It appeared that a small beam of light stayed with him as he ran past me in his small plastic doctor’s boots. He didn’t seem to notice me at all as I stared at him. He seemed as if he was training for some competition, he looked strong but tiny with his child sized headband and tiny shorts. After he ran past, I kept walking and found myself in one of those rooms that most apartment buildings residents share mail. The whole lot of mailboxes had their keys in them as if everyone had checked their mail at the same exact time, and then ran away leaving their keys in the doors. For some reason in my head I knew that one of these key sets had the key to the Blue Chevy that sat in front of the house. And just like every female I grabbed as many as possibly but dropping many along the way back down the now concrete corridor. Where was the beam of little that the mini-man got, didn’t the dream lord want me to see where I was walking? Guess not.
When I got back though the blue Chevy was alive and bustling with people in the bed of the truck and the interior. Some faces I recognized some I did not. My close friend Gabriela sat in the front seat beside my friend Tal who was now driving. John wasn’t among them. Three other men were in the bed of the truck; they didn’t appear to be a threat and were apparently friends of Tal and Gabriela. What was strange to me is that Gabriela and Tal were among the faces that surrounded me in the happy house only hours before but now we were all in this strange compound and they didn’t seem surprised by it, but were also in a hurry to leave. They ushered me to get in the truck so that we could leave. As we drove down the bumpy dirt road through the middle of the compound Tal stopped because we’d apparently gotten a flat. When we stopped we were on the side of the road trying to find something in the trash that surrounded the place, that could possibly help patch the truck tire up enough to get us outside the walls of the compound. Shortly after being broken down, an old yellow car came rustling down the same road with his front lights out. He got out drunk, bald, missing quite a few teeth and stammering on about something. He seemed harmless but inane and void of any feeling at the moment, because he was completely out of it. He opened his trunk sorting through old junk trying to find anything that would help fix the tire. But everything he was throwing out was trash that wasn’t much different than the things that surrounded our very own truck. We realized at that moment that his efforts were worthless and had nothing that was going to be any use to our tire situation.
Then suddenly Tal noticed out of the corner of the left of the compound there was a young male, shirtless, and purposely walking towards us with something in his hand pointed at us. Then all the sudden, John, who’d been a forgotten negative character in the dream came from behind us in the right direction of the compound holding his hand up pointing it to the fast approaching man on the left. They reached other finally at a point that was about ten feet in front of our Chevy and there were holding up nothing but their fingers at one another, as if a child’s game of cowboy shot guns but they each placed the gun finger to the other’s forehead and continued to stare into each other’s eyes as if a bullet was going to come shooting out of each of the opposing fingers, and knock the other one unconscious. Then surprisingly the shirtless boy dropped a piece of rubber onto the ground that unrolled into a stretchy band with brass balls at the end of it. He dropped his finger from John’s forehead smiled, pulled the rubber band up quickly and it flew through the air towards the Chevy Truck.
All my friends were in the bed of the truck, and I was hiding on the opposite side of the truck against a tire where the shirtless man couldn’t see me. In the dream I just remember a feeling that all of this was for me; all of what was happening was to keep me in the compound. The man didn’t want my friends and they knew that, but I had just found that out. They all stood in the bed of the truck unafraid of the flying weapon. The weapon that I feared was coming straight through the air for me. Tal was sitting on the bed of the truck looking into my eyes as I looked up scared not knowing what was coming. As soon as I saw the weapon flying through the air I changed position from where I thought it would strike, every time the shirtless man missed me he would just keep rolling it back up and striking again. I could see the fear and selflessness in Tal’s eyes each time, he knew that there was no hope, I knew there was no hope, but after six strikes I was still safe. Finally I as pushed to the point where I was sitting under the tailgate. Tal’s feet to the left of my head and the muffler to the right. All the sudden I saw a long strand coming towards me through the underneath of the tailgate, the band struck me between both my eyes and I was knocked unconscious. When I came back too I remember my sight being hazy but my hearing was strikingly present. I could hear Gabriela and Tal pleading with the boy to not do anything to me, saying that it wasn’t my fault. When I could see again I realized that I was standing up and the shirtless male’s face was directly in front of mine and he was holding my gun finger to his forehead and his to mine. Gabriela and Tal were on the sides of me pulling and screaming but all the sudden all I could see was the boy, I could see the anger in his eyes, I remember being confused at why he had so much hate for me, I heard none of Tal or Gabriela’s screams, and although I know they were pulling me I never felt so still in my life, it was like I could see right through him………… and then I heard a loud bang and……. I woke up in my bed.
Dreams, not sure why we have them not sure if the characters in are dreams are people that we may meet on day or the struggles that may present themselves to us.
“To dream that you are fighting to the death indicates that you are unwilling to acknowledge a waking conflict or your own inner turmoil. You are unwilling and refusing to change your old attitudes and habits. Generally speaking, to dream about new things and new places corresponds to what is new in your waking life. You may be trying to learn and analyze what you already know from past experiences.”
