Sleep nightmares don’t usually occur in a fixed pattern. You can’t really pin its dissonance, or jot it down on a piece of paper. But what you can certainly do is arrange these scary dreams in a trophy house, to be shared. To be brought in light for those who are actually onto something. That’s what I intend to do with my sleep nightmares. Whilst The Dream Book category is gradually unfurling into a bigger flower, I can’t wait to see thousands of scary dreams and nightmare stories, all holed up in a single hub waiting for searching eyes to find them all.
SLEEP NIGHTMARES
Growing up, I have more than once been awakened by nightmare sweats. Something in my head would always be lurking in the corner of my sleep nightmares waiting to terrify me beyond limit. Whilst I forget most of my dreams, I remember ones where I choose to stay awake, and not hit the project dream zone once again. I keep thinking about it till I haul all my thoughts successfully towards reality. That’s how I remember.
But some scary dreams are simply too spooky to actually go through all that trouble. Something out of the blue happens, and I am already wide awake thinking about it. One such nightmare from my very own personal bag of sleep nightmares was when I was sleeping all alone in my room with an image of chair with my shirt on it.
The chair was actually there with a shirt covering its back. Before I dozed off into my sleep world, I was actually looking at it, with squinted eyes. I wasn’t really aware, thinking about something. It was as if I was sleeping awake. As I did, I succumbed to sleep unknowingly. My mind unconsciously traced down that image of it so perfectly that I didn’t realize I was dreaming.
A NIGHTMARE FROM MY BAGGAGE OF SCARY DREAMS
My images for dream had nothing but my own room in it with the same chair I had dozed off looking at. It still had that shirt draped around it. There was a weird stillness in the vision. Somehow my mind was convinced that I wasn’t dreaming, that I was simply lost in my thoughts, at the same time gawking at the chair with my shirt on it unfazed.
In that uncanny quiet I had a weird thought. I kept staring at the shirt thinking about the ghost in The Babadook who was nothing but an image itself. In a scene from the movie, Amelia finds a hung overcoat that had an eerie resemblance to the ghost she dreaded. Something told me that shirt was an epitome of a similar ghost. That it could come to life anytime. It was a peculiar thought. But I kept staring at the shirt.
As I kept at it, suddenly I found one sleeve of the shirt move. It shifted from its original position all the way towards the pocket, as if telling me that I had my hand on the chest again. I almost shrieked out awake, throwing whatever I could grab in my hand at the chair. But it had shaken me well enough, as I made it back to reality.
I woke up in some insane nightmare sweats only to find the shirt and the chair in the exact same position as it was before – intact. It was a relief knowing that I was only dreaming. That none of it had actually happened.
WONDERING WHAT CAUSES NIGHT MARES?
This often makes me brood over what causes night mares. I have had more than once anxiety nightmares and I always awaken to find my hand on my chest. Maybe it acts as a trigger for my nightmares. Somewhere some nerves might be going under the gavel and I end up either in a parallel universe or my own fancy sleep world. It is hard to tell.
It could also be all the exhaustion flinging me those anxiety nightmares. Not getting enough rest, and sometimes getting too much of it. I could be a victim of Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome too, I surmise. I have often found myself vexed by my thoughts till my sleep world gradually creeps up on me.
Whatever the case might be, I cannot shake it off. The sheer horror of it all, as I saw my shirt move, that inanimate thing that broke all the laws of physics to do something so mystical that it was enough for a man to doubt his senses.