Sometimes I make very bad decisions when trying to study, like taking a two hour powernap and then expecting to be completely functional when I wake up. I normally start out feeling fine and energized, but within an hour when I start falling asleep in front of my papers I assume I need only an extra twenty minutes, so I set an alarm. I get up again, feeling like the waking dead, and set another twenty minute alarm. And then another. And another. And another. It's a bad cycle that results in me being more tired and less focused than if I would have slept for 6 hours straight. I'm sitting here, drinking coffee, trying to finish this study guide without blacking out in front of my keyboard. I wonder if I wouldn't be in this situation if my teacher had posted our study guide more than a day before the final exam.
I used to have super bad insomnia years ago, which I have somehow (thankfully) mostly recovered from, potentially from me feeling happier and more well-balanced. Nightmares were my frequent midnight guests, and I would wake up in a cold sweat with a silent scream caught somewhere deep in my throat. Over time I started developing sleep paralysis with this, and whenever this happened I would realize I was dreaming and needed to escape. Immediately. This would always happen when the dream would start getting too intense. Something was coming, I could feel it, I could sense it with every fiber of my being, and I wouldn't like it. I had to get out. I had move my fingers. My arms. I had to say, "No", which would always come out as a gasping croak on the few occasions I stopped breathing… followed often by heavy coughing.
I have always woken myself up from sleep paralysis. One of the most noteworthy of these times I had been dreaming I was in a condemned house. In my dreams, I've noticed that the house I am in always somehow reflects my current mental state. Like in so many of these style dreams, all of the lights in the house suddenly die. I am emerged in total darkness, groping my way around the hallways and trying to find a way out. Then I feel it coming. All of my hairs stand on edge, and my stomach starts to churn. I feel like I am going to be physically ill, like I'm about to completely lose myself to absolute terror. I have to escape. I have to get out. In that dream, I closed my eyes and pressed myself against the nearest wall, sliding down it slowly. I started talking to myself: "I am dreaming and I need to wake up. I am going to open my eyes. When I open my eyes, the first thing I will see are my closet doors. The walls in my room are red. When I glance down, I will see my yellow comforter." Before whatever it was arrived, I found myself wide-eyed staring at my closet doors. I immediately glanced down and saw my yellow comforter.
This morning I set my alarm for a twenty-five minute nap. Five minutes to give me the opportunity to fall asleep, and twenty to dream. I immediately fell into REM and the nightmare began, innocently enough, as a normal dream. My dreams generally follow a long and elaborate story-line, almost always coherent, and when I do remember them they come back in full detail: conversations, facial expressions, the way rooms look, the emotional reactions of the people in the dream - it all comes flooding back and I dwell on it all day. This morning things were disjointed.
I started off at a skateboarding contest and bumped into two people that I won't directly name, since I'm not sure they would be comfortable with it: one I had class with and loves sailing, the other I met at an event and loves puppets. I don't think we actually talked - I just distinctly remember seeing them at the venue. In reality, I can't skateboard at all. In the dream, it was something I was confident about doing, though I left the event before it even began. I bumped into Danny, Erik, and EJ, and we all went to Danny's gallery. Mesa didn't look like Mesa, and I had driven my car into Danny's gallery. Things were so clustered that I had a hard time navigating around it and decided to bring my car back outside. There were cops waiting around a corner that made me feel nervous, so I U-Turned back to a closer parking spot. When I came back in I saw Wade there and I met his sister - in the dream, she had a huge sweet tooth, like me, and we talked about food.
Again, for no reason, the dream shifts. I told Wade's sister goodbye and went to my house, which was conveniently right around the corner. The backyard wasn't outside at all, but encased in a giant living room, complete with linoleum floor. When I entered I felt a wave of sickness. There was a dead dog in there, suspended from the ceiling, over half of its body eaten. The back legs remained, and the front as well, but bones and sinew were revealed at the tops - and that was all there was to the dog. Curly white fur on the legs, suspiciously clear of blood, and a small portion of the torso connecting them still. It was in a leaping position, as if it were trying to get away from whatever ate it.
I panicked. This mess needed to be hidden, immediately. The owner of the dog was coming by soon. I saw a long, posable gate nearby and started blocking off the mess, forming a barrier around this miniature crime scene. As I worked I spotted the ribcage on the floor, still held together by some muscle, though mostly eaten. Various other bones and chunks of fur littered the parameter, and I caught myself wondering what happened to the animal's skull. I heard a noise and froze, though to my relief it was just my own small, white dog trotting by. She started sniffing at the remnants and I had the sudden feeling it was her that had caused the disaster. I shooed her away, and then a morbid impulse to document this grotesque moment seized me. I took out my camera and switched it to the video setting, trying to focus on the floating dog, which seemed oddly elegant in its violent death. I heard another noise and stopped again, quickly shutting off the lights in the room, hoping to hide the still-suspended dog corpse in the darkness. No one came, and I felt relieved. Temporarily.
When I reached for the lights to turn them back on nothing happened. I frantically switched them on and off, hoping for the light to return. Again, nothing. Deep inside I knew they wouldn't - this scenario was all too familiar. The monsters - or the demons - arrive and the lights don't work. I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Was it something caused by the wind? My mind isn't working, clearly, as I'm indoors and there is no breeze. No fan. No circulating air. But I'm still hoping blindly. There is movement again, and I know I'm no longer alone. I start approaching the creatures to try the light switches just behind them. As I draw nearer my vision adjusts. The movement was an antennae from one of my sculptures (the roach in a hoodie). I am not threatened by this one. It's the other thing, the one that has its back turned to me, that frightens me. It's this other thing, I think, that brought my sculpture to life, that is silently conversing with it. I get so close to it that I could easily touch its shoulder. I press the light switch down, hoping once more to scare it away with the light, but the light doesn't come. I try again and again - nothing. Irritated, I growl, "Stop it!" to the creature.
He turns around suddenly, a violent sneer across his face. "No." It's his expression of malice that sends an electric shock through my body. His face is inches from mine, and he is partially crouched, as if in a striking position. His arms are out by his sides in a threatening gesture. In self-defense I try to pull myself free of the paralysis. Unlike so many previous times, I am not worried that I won't be able to wake myself up. I know it will take a few seconds, maybe ten or twenty. My fingers start twitching, and then my arms. I try to force myself to move just a little bit more, and it works. I sit up, wide awake, breathing shallowly. His psychotic demeanor is still burned in my memory. My alarm hadn't gone off - less than twenty minutes had passed.
The one thing that never stays clear in my mind is exactly how these creatures look. Maybe they are too terrible, and my unconscious self deletes them. It's always their body language and the strong emotions that they rouse that sticks with me. Every. Single. Time. I remember all of them, but I don't remember them at all. My demons will always stay with me as faceless entities.
