Sg3 on 31/1/2012 at 05:05

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Nightmare—not like any other nightmare I've ever had. Nightmare doesn't seem like the right word, even. This was different. Much more horrible, and much less dreamlike.

It started with a feeling of being awoken by a small creature, like a cat or a small dog, putting its paws on the edge of my bed. The paws moved about uncertainly, like when the little dog wants to jump up onto the bed but is uncertain if it is allowed to do so, or is uncertain if there is enough room for it on the surface of the bed, high out of sight.

Then the creature—it felt soft, very soft, like a cat, but it moved like a little dog such as a dachshund, with those hyperactive, quivering, jerky movements—jumped up onto the bed and onto me, where it nosed and nuzzled around me. Again, very like a dog or a cat—or, rather, like a dog and a cat. Enough like a dog and a cat at the same time to be puzzling, because normally dogs and cats are very different feeling. Dogs are heavy and rough, even small dogs, while cats are soft and light. Small dogs move with a quick nervousness, even when they are making small movements, while cats move with grace. This was like the dog's movements, but a cat's body. A declawed cat. There were no claws. And it was soft. Even softer than a cat. Almost fluid, like it had no bones.

At this point in the "dream," I'm not yet aware that anything is out of the ordinary. I figured it's just the dog.

I don't have a dog.

As I, in this half-awake state, begin to realize that there shouldn't be a dog or a cat in the house at all, and that this doesn't actually feel like a dog nor a cat, I begin to be concerned. The creature licks my face. I lift my hand groggily and my hand meets its face. Its mouth. Its mouth is moist and jelly-like, and open. There are teeth, and while they are sharp, they're also very small and fine, so small that they don't feel sharp. They feel rough, almost like sandpaper but not exactly. More like a small fish's teeth, if you've ever felt the teeth on a six-inch lake fish.

This is the point where I feel the surge of terror. Well, terror isn't the right word for it. Horror's more like it, but that still isn't right. Naturally, the realm of words fails (as usual) to convey the requisite meaning.

So now I dimly realize that I'm half-asleep, although it still feels more real than dream, and I try to wake myself up. I also try to brush the thing on my chest off of the bed. It doesn't want to go, and it isn't quite solid, so it's difficult to move. It seems to—dissolve. No, wrong word again. It seems to tear, like very delicate fabric such as damp tissue paper or a very old wool blanket whch is threadbare and coming apart.

And then it's off of the bed, and I, exhausted, fall back asleep. I'm too tired to worry about what it's doing on the floor, or if it's coming back up.

Which, of course, it does. I don't know how long it took, but I am awakened a second time by the thing jumping up on me again. No farting around this time, it's just up and on my chest. So I again try to awaken myself, but it feels like I'm being smothered in blankets. As soon as I untangle my face from one blanket, another is pressed to my face.

I finally awaken to blackness, with a blinking light from some part of my computer (it always blinks, even when the computer is off) intermittently casting a dull path along the ceiling. I'm tired but afraid to go back to sleep. So I get up, and as I get out of bed, my mouth tastes as though I've vomited, although I haven't.

This must be what it's like to die—only when we die, we can't get the thing off onto the floor, and can't get the blankets off of our faces. I wonder if, when we die, it ever stops, or do we just keep on fighting that thing on our chests, frozen in time forever?

I am suffering from some sort of chest infection at present. It isn't a cold. I guess I have a fever, although I don't feel hot or anything. I do find it difficult to breathe at times, especially when lying down. The only time I've ever experienced fear and horror to the degree that I experienced it in this un-dream was when I once fainted (a side-effect of a medicine) and hit my head on the floor when I fell. When I regained consciousness, I felt like I was clawing to the surface of a black fluid which I had been drowning in, and I felt a terror so extreme that I cannot describe it. And, I had no idea why I was afraid at all. The fear quickly faded after I'd been conscious again for a few seconds, but I remember the fear.

It is, then, in both cases, a sort of mild (or perhaps less mild than I think) brush with death—the cessation of the intake of oxygen while sleeping, in today's case, and the hard strike to the back of the head, in the less recent one—which causes this sort of terror. So is it not logical, then, to think that being closer to death produces more of the same? And perhaps actually reaching death results in a sort of state of suspension in this dread?

Sg3 on 31/1/2012 at 05:30

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Yeah, there was some sleep paralysis going on there. I remember straining to lift my arms, at one point, to no effect. Ugh.

Sg3 on 31/1/2012 at 05:40

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That's partly why I wrote it down. The other reason being if I don't write it down, I won't remember it even six hours from awakening. I should be sleeping again now, but frankly I'm afraid to go to sleep.

Koki on 31/1/2012 at 07:12

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According to this book I have, you want to have sex with your mother.

Renzatic on 31/1/2012 at 07:35

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Ahh, sleep paralysis. Yeah, I've had more than my fair share of horrific, surreal experiences because of it. Enough that I'm no longer bothered by it after coming up from a bout. Not because I'm super brave, or overly jaded or anything. It's just that I've experienced it enough to know what I just went through when I come to, and it doesn't bother me anymore.

But during? Oh, they're godawful. I've never had the "mysterious, otherly thing sitting on your chest, choking the very life out of you". Thank whatever holy deity you believe in for that small favor. No, mine are usually more surreal, and seem to consist of visual and aural hallucinations, rather than physical sensations.

The last one I had was probably the strangest of the bunch. This happened roughly 2-3 years ago. I remember it vividly because it was the one I felt most (seemingly) awake for.

It's early morning. Time? Indeterminate. I only know it's morning because of the quality of light in my bedroom. I snap awake, and feel this urgency, this need, this pressure, to GET UP. I have to get out of bed. This sense of impending...not dread, but some dark emotion very much like it overwhelms me. As if the fate of some indeterminate largeness hangs in the balance, and only by taking action can I prevent it. Or escape it. It's vague, but it's so, so strong.

But I can't move. I can barely even lift my eyelids. I struggle and struggle, but can only manage to lift my arm just the tiniest bit above the blankets. I'm sure at some point, I drifted back to sleep. How long? 5 minutes? 2 hours? I have no idea. All I know is I come to again with that same sense of horrific urgency.

I have to get up. I must get up. I have to MOVE. And move I do. Though my arms feel like they weigh a thousand pounds, I manage to lift one up. Then the other. Through pure force of will, I manage to sit up in bed. Through a triumph of might, I manage to slide out of bed. I take one small step forward. Then another. And another. Every step feels like I've achieved some physical impossibility. All because I absolutely have to get out of my bedroom, and I'm willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal.

And my bedroom? All the angles were wrong. The lighting felt off, like it was too flat to be sunlight, but too bright to be a lamp. Everything felt...off. Alien. Strange. All I can hear is the sound of a wildly rushing wind, like putting your ear to a seashell, and magnifying the sound by a hundred. That impending, pendulum sense of dread swinging over my head, propelling me forward. All my focus ground down to a crystalline, singular sense of purpose on my door. I have to get to my door.

I made it about halfway across my room in this state, when suddenly...

SNAP

...I'm awake. The sound of screaming wind, the dread, the sluggishness, the sense of wrongness with the world. Gone. Literally within a fraction of a second, I went from weird horror story, to me doing nothing stranger than standing in the middle of my bedroom. There wasn't even a sense of relief, because it was just so suddenly...gone. It's so hard to explain, because the sudden transition in and of itself was the strangest bit of the whole experience. Not even the tiniest bit of residual dread was left remaining. No coming down from a rush of adrenaline. No feeling of narrow escape. It was simply...

I wasn't fully awake, and things were scary and weird. Then I was, and things were perfectly fine.

It was odd.