All in my head

A conversation with my wife brought up a subject I have never thought that much about, but upon closer inspection now I have a few thoughts on the subject, Nightmares.


Nightmares are strange things, your brain cooks up such horrifying things in your dreams that you are literally scared, your own head scares you when you are at your most vulnerable. There are 5 times in my life where Nightmares have been so scary that it defies logic itself. One of the 5 is a little different because it was a recurring Nightmare I had in my youth.
But first let me say, I have had a lot of messed up dreams, dreams that at times have provoked me to write short stories describing the events of the dream and sometimes inspired me to create a board game based on the events (true story but I had neither the art skills or the tools to create the game). For instance, I had a dream once about zombies, in the dream the area I used to live in when I was younger was being terrorised by zombies, but I was not scared. I spent a lot of the dream walking around the area, I entered a shop spent a few minutes in there and then walked towards my house. At the top of the car park which was next to my house three zombies had crowded round something sqaure, I walked over and it was an old mattress, I looked down at the mattress and realised it had been burned through and I could see right through it. What was underneath was like a passageway to hell, the ground had been ripped apart and it was like fire all around the walls leading downwards, I looked up at the zombies and they all started singing a section of the song "Cry Little Sister" from The Lost Boys. I woke with a jolt in my house to realise that song was on the radio and it had slipped into my dream.


THAT dream was weird, but it wasn't scary, it didn't freak me out or anything, it was just plain bizzare. But the top 5 worst nightmares I ever had,


First off the top 5 and 4 are linked, they happened one day after another and had a similiar theme. It was when I was unemployed, I had garnered a bad habit of going back to sleep after my wife had gone to work so the first dream I had, my wife had gone to work and I fell asleep. In my dream, I rolled over in bed, looked up, our bed is under the bedroom windown and someone was reaching through the window to grab me. I woke up screaming, the very thought of it brought back cruel flashbacks of another nightmare on this list. The fourth worst was the next day, I stupidly fell asleep again after my wife had gone to work. In my dream I heard the front door open and I saw a silhouette of someone enter the house but I couldn't move. I was frozen in place and I heard the person walk into my house but I couldn't see them, I made out a shape beside the door for a second but they walked away from the bedroom, but again I woke screaming in my bed. This time I was screaming for this person to get out of my house. It was after those two dreams that I took to getting up just after my wife left for work, refusing to sleep anymore, it was like I was being punished for getting any extra sleep.


The third worst nightmare I had is a rather personal one, it happened about a year after my mum and dad split up, I had a dream where I was standing beside the bookkeepers shop in Arden, where I lived. My dad was there and he told me to stay where I was and he walked away, he just kept walking. In the dream I knew he wasn't coming back and I screamed and hollered for him to turn round, just to look at me one more time, to come back, I remember crying that I was sorry and I would be good if he would come back. I woke that morning with tears running down my cheeks, I realised I had been crying in my sleep. It was that morning I finally asked my mum if my dad was ever coming back but she handled it brilliantly, she sat down with me and explained that for both of them to be happy they couldn't live together, and that if I wanted them both to be happy then I would understand. From that moment on I did understand, kind of, it was on reflection in later years I really understood but it took a horrifying nightmare to make it all make sense.


The second worse nightmare I ever had, it is the recurring nightmare that I had for a long time. In the dream I am about four years old, it links in to a memory I have of being that young, my mum has taken us to an aunts house. I wont say which aunt, but I don't like the woman and this dream is part of the reason why. So my mum took me to this aunts house, its before my mum and dad split up because my mum wouldn't go for any other reason, this aunt is my dad's sister. So we stop in, in my dream I am sitting by the window, when suddenly it blows open, my mum has dissapeared, on the window ledge stands a witch, kind of like the witch from the Wizard of Oz but smaller and more grotesque, this witch leans over and and wraps her hands around my throat and begins to throttle the life out of me. I am crying out in fear and look over at my aunt, who is watching impassively, as if what is happening is something that barely begs her attention. I always wake up at that moment. I had this dream for years, always the exact same. The window would blow open, my mum would no longer be sitting beside me and a witch was always standing on the window ledge, like she had just flown in.


But the worst nightmare I have ever had, so bad that it still lingers to this day is stupid to describe but frightened the life out of me at the time. It takes place in my gran's house. She has a small two bedroom flat, the shape of the hallway is important here. If you are in the living room, you walk down the hall past a cupboard and on your left is the bedroom, a foot away and on the right the hallway turns and you have a small passage down to the front door, the toilet to the right just before the front door. But if you continue walking past the main bedroom, and go straight instead of turning right, you come to the second bedroom.So my dream starts with all the family all around talking and joking. My grandad is in a big armchair beside the fire, which is strange because he never sits there. Suddenly without warning, he starts convulsing, then after a few seconds he flops back still in the chair. We are all looking at him as suddenly his face starts to change, his top and bottom jaw start to extend outwards, his left eye pops out the socket and dangles down, the jaws get longer like a crocodile. We all scream as he turns to look at us, and everyone in the room runs out the room and down the hall, I run into the second bedroom instead of out the front door like everyone else and stand against the window, I hear his footsteps as he slowly walks down the hall. Its almost like he pauses at the intersection of the hall and steps into the doorway of the second bedroom. He turns his head toward me, his long jaws covered in saliva, the eye dangling againts his cheek and all I can think is, why did I run in here? I woke up then, not knowing what happens next.


Pretty messed up right? Like I said before, Nightmares are strange things and I find it weird how they kind of mimic your fears in younger life to now. When I was younger, I feared monsters, like the crocodile monster that used to be a loved one, or the witch that wanted to throttle me. Then as my parents split up, the fear of a loved one turning their back on me forever and now in later life, someone invading my home, my personal space is a huge fear I have. (I watch way too many crime shows from the US, a lot of the themes in those shows is home invasion).
My nightmares may be weird, but I have to think, there has got to be worse out there? Right?