|
A Nightmare
After a series of pointless and fairly tame dreams over the past week or so, I thought I'd see just how bad a nightmare could get, if one went to the trouble of preparing for it. I certainly wouldn't recommend this to any of you out there. The preparations began 72 hours prior to a rostered day off that I had arranged, and consisted mainly of sleep deprivation. The hardest part about that was finding something interesting to do during the night after I'd called all the interesting bbses (and a few boring ones), read just about everything I had to hand (twice) and after I had become completely sick of that accursed Kate Bush CD. Television? Ha. Wednesday night, I put an electric blanket on my bed, connected to one of those kambrook timer things, set to turn on full blast around four am the next day; one of my co-workers told me that whenever she went to sleep with the electric blanket on, she had nightmares about nuclear war. I had entertained the idea of sub-consciously implanting a theme before retiring; unsure of exactly how to go about this, I settled for playing the videos of Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II with the sound turned down, while listening to Coil's Unreleased Hellraiser Themes CD on repeat (no prizes for guessing the theme!) Yeah, I even had one of those puzzle-boxes sitting on the desk while I pottered around with a story which had started off as something about finding religious fetishes in a cornflakes box, and looked like it was turning out to be another Hellraiser story. I decided to pack it in around eleven; just before retiring, I ate a handful of string beans, a raw potato (yech!) and some really heavy black rye bread, washing it down with some orange juice of dubious quality. I decided to add a cassette player to the circuit with the electric blanket, set up to play some ambient music at low volume. It isn't often that I can remember the exact transition point from waking to sleep, but I do recall making sure that my dream diary was to hand. I woke up around half-past two, having experienced a fragmentary dream about pale figures wearing in white robes, standing on the steps of Flinder's Street Station. They were staring into the sky with their mouths open wide as if they were screaming silently; I wrote it all down and went back to sleep (hoping that I could read my hand-writing the next day). The main feature hit, waking me up at about twenty past four; it was bad. Really bad. I wouldn't wish this sort of thing on ANYONE. Reading back over the details it doesn't seem that nasty, but experiencing it, I was gripped by a feeling of terror that went right to the core. I knew I was dreaming - this is possibly the closest I've ever been to lucid dreaming - but there was nothing I could do to influence the flow of events; I couldn't even move. I was lying on my back, on the grass of the field across the road from where I live; not so much on the grass, but rather in a shallow hole the same shape as my body, about three inches deep. I could feel the damp, sandy soil in my ears. It was some time around six in the evening; staring straight up into the sky, which was completely obscured by turbulent grey clouds, highlighted by the glare of yellow sodium street-lamps, I could feel the earth underneath me rumbling as if a herd of cattle were approaching. I noticed that there were three figures standing over me with their hands by their sides, watching me. They were dressed in black, wearing hoods similar to those worn by ninjas in martial arts films - covering their faces, leaving the eyes and nose exposed - and they had dark kohl painted around their eyes, making them look a bit like Priss in Blade Runner. Two of them were standing side by side at my feet. The other was on my right, next to my head, and I became aware of my paralysis, unable to move except for my eyes as I tried to follow the figure as it moved around me. He reached down and took my right hand, bringing it up so that I could see it. The sleeve he wore came down to cover half of his hand - just like the one worn by the Pinhead Cenobite in Hellraiser. He said something about "Wanting to show me something"... I'd like to think that he said "We have such sights to show you!", but I can't honestly say that he did. He pulled on my hand, and I felt a pain down my back, as if I were growing into the ground and he was trying to uproot me. I saw him frown and tug on my hand harder; then he decided not to bother, and squeezed my hand, which deformed as if it were made of plasticene. Now ordinarily, I don't recall sensations in dreams -but this hurt. Really agonising; I could feel the bones snapping. He let go of my hand, and my arm stayed upright, the fingers poking in different directions. Suddenly, they all turned to look at something that was behind me (well, `behind', it would have been behind me if I were sitting up in the hole), and they departed, walking backwards away from me. I lay there, my arm poking up out of the hole, my hand still throbbing; I tried to move my fingers, and then (this is a bit strange, as my dreams aren't usually this visually detailed) a shadow fell over my hand as whatever it was behind me came closer. Something like a wall slammed down over me from above, and I was pressed down into the ground. The shock of this woke me, sweating, my heart pounding. As I said, it doesn't sound that bad when described in this fashion. You had to be there. Incidentally, my hand felt like it had been crushed, for two days afterwards (it still feels a bit sore). (typed with my left hand) |
|
|
( top )
All work on this site is © Nikolai Kingsley unless otherwise stated. |