This is probably why I never have nightmares

[brigdh]

I had a dream the other night, and I feel the need to share it with you all, because it pretty aptly demonstrates how I am like no one else I know.

I dreamed that I was sleeping in bed, at night- which I suppose is a fairly realistic place for a dream to begin- when someone opened the door, waking me. I froze, waiting to see if it was my roommate or someone else, and they froze too, waiting to see if anyone had woken up. After a moment, they pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside, and I could see that it was someone much taller and broader than any roommate I'd ever had, and a knife in his free hand glinted in a thread of light from my window. I was silent and motionless for another breath while I planned out what to do, and then I jumped to my feet on the bed, grabbed my pillow in my right hand and yanked the metal table lamp (the sort like in the Pixar logo) off the table next to my bed with my left hand. I remember a vivid image of the cord snapping, I grabbed it so hard. And then I launched myself at the burglar/rapist/murderer, tangling the knife in the pillow and knocking him down, and beat him over the head with the lamp until he stopped moving.

And because apparently even in dreams I'm concerned with the boring details of the aftermath, I then did things like send my roommates behind locked doors and called the police and parents, and watched the guy to make sure he wouldn't wake up and escape.

But none of that was the actual scary part of the dream. It turned out that I'd accidentally killed the guy, and I had to go to court for it. I felt guilty about it, but was worrying a lot more about how to get out of it without going to jail. I remember trying to come up with ways to trick the jury into thinking of me as a sweet, innocent, little girl, and I even went shopping to get a flower-patterned dress that was vaguely reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie. The dream ended while I was standing in front of the mirror the day the trail was supposed to start, worrying if the ponytails would seem like too much.

Now, tell me I'm not the only person in the world whose nightmares end in court for beating the monsters too well.

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

If I tell you you're not, will that be too depressing?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, no! I'd just assumed that I must be alone, since most of the nightmares I've heard of tend to involve far more tenacity on the part of the monsters. But I want to hear about other court (or similar anti-climax) nightmares!

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Mine have tended to involve making flights rather than having to go to court, but the emotional structure sounds eerily familiar. I don't have these dreams all that often (or if I do, I don't often remember them), but I've had enough of them to know the pattern. I'm doing something relatively normal when an attacker shows up. The attacker is big and strong and scary-looking, but no matter how scary, strong, and well armed he or they may be, when we get to the point where something bad might happen to me I remember that I have all this extra strength and speed I can call on. So I do, and I wipe the floor with the attackers.

And then I realize that having had to stop and have this stupid fight has made me late for my flight to Paris, or Los Angeles, or Kamchatka or someplace. And I'm not done packing, or I can't find a cab whose driver knows the way to the airport, or the fight turns out to have taken place in Heathrow and I have a connecting flight at Gatwick that I'm never going to make in time. Sometimes there are people who're meeting the plane I'm about to miss, and I have no way of getting hold of them to tell them not to drive to Toulouse for that flight, because I've been rebooked into Bordeaux.

Which seems to me to be a fair equivalent to your courtroom sequel. Ghastly in their own way, but nothing like, you know, nightmares.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*laughs* You're right; that is all but the exact same thing. Which makes me wonder what the dreams symbolize, if they're more common than I thought.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I'm curious, now, about how common they are. It's all very well for me to jump in the instant I saw your post to say that you're not the only one who has them, but now that I think about it, you're the only other person I've ever heard describe this dream pattern. It could be that we're both way out there on the end of the distribution curve.

I used to have a sort of hopeful notion that the supernatural strength and speed that you suddenly realize that you've always had in these dreams is the mysterious and elusive chi, and that it should be accessible to us in the waking world if only we could learn the disciplines that would unlock it. Sort of like the way that it seems clear to me that the extraordinary power we have to visualize things in dreams should be accessible somehow in the daylight world, so that we could draw anything we'd ever seen accurately from memory. It's not as if we don't have the information in our brains somewhere, after all.

Not that I can do it, any more than I can draw a chunk of turf from memory. But some part of me still hopes that if I live long enough, I'll figure it out.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain that I've had similar dreams before, though like you, I don't remember hearing anything of the type from anyone else. I don't remember most of my dreams, but describing this one to write the post set off faint memories, particularly the part about afterwards needing to hide what I'd been capable of doing to avoid trouble.

I adore your theory. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could do everything we're capable of in dreams? Though I think I'd have to take the power to fly before anything super strength, speed or memory.

[kohakutenshi.livejournal.com]

At least your monsters stop moving. I stab mine and they look at the wound, NOT BLEEDING, and laugh.

One I remember the most was where the guy said, "No no no, you're doing it wrong. It's stab and TWIST."

And he grabbed the knife with my hand on it and did that to himself. IN HIS HEART.

O.O

*runs away scared*

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's pretty awful. I haven't had actual nightmares- in the sense that they're, you know, scary- in years, and even then they tended to feature nameless horrors lurking somewhere in the shadows instead of actual face-to-face problems.

[kohakutenshi.livejournal.com]

Wow. Come into my mind sometime. It's frightening, because I have realistic dreams sometimes, and when I realize that I'm not really awake, the shadows come after me and the light switches no longer work.

And you can't scream. It's trapped in your throat and all you can manage is a weak rasp!

KYAA~! *hides in your sock drawer*

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hey, I remember the can't-scream thing from my nightmares! That was definitely the worst part. I heard somewhere that that is supposed to represent your feelings of defenselessness in real life, but I don't know how much I trust all those universal symbolism theories.

[questionable537.livejournal.com]

Most of my dreams tend to be total randomness. My favorite recurring one is where a bunch of penguins are pulling the rope so I can parasail across the sand dunes of where I lived around ten years ago while a huey helecoptor tries to shoot me out of the sky. Another recurring dream is where I'm driving a friend down the highway to meet my parents.

I actually only remember having one nightmare in my life. This isn't to say that I don't have them--I just don't remember them. It was where my aunt and her husband took me out to eat, then hundreds of rats came and ate my aunt while her husband and I watched. I don't remember actually waking up from that one....

Under normal circumstances, my dreams have no plot or character development. They're just random scenes that would probably make more sense if there were scenes in between.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! I love the penguins one; I want dreams that random. Mine tend to have a least a semi-coherent plot

I don't have many nightmares either, I haven't had any in years. But that rat one... creepy.

[questionable537.livejournal.com]

The penguins always show up. I have no idea why, though. 0.o

Actually, my roommate had a recurring dream that fits the anticlimatic theme a bit better than anything I could come up with. She was walking home from her job from three years ago when the lead singer from a band that she likes pulls up and asks for her help. She agrees, and gets in his pick-up truck. They drive for a bit, then he pulls into a random driveway out in the middle of nowhere. Then she's asked to help him bury a body in the middle of the driveway. They just finished when the owners of the property arrived--who then took one look at the torn up driveway, the shovels, and the dirty pair...and asked them over for dinner. The dream ends with my roommate sitting down wondering if anyone would notice the blood splatters on her clothes.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Because penguins are cool, of course!

That's totally an anticlimatic dream. I guess they're a lot more common than I though!

[wolfpilot06.livejournal.com]

I don't dream often, but your dreams are amusing me. XD

Me, when I do dream, am the sort of type to half-realize I'm dreaming, not like where the dream is going, and then change it to my tastes. It's gotten to the point where I hardly ever have nightmares, 'cause if I see the dream going in a direction I definitely don't like, I change it. =DD

Like when I was little, and I had a dream where everyone in the world - except for me - turned into a werewolf and was out for my blood. Then, being eight, I decided I really was at a disadvantage, not knowing how to drive and stuff. So I went back to the beginning of my dream and made it so that it was everyone in the world - except for me and my sisters - that turned into werewolves, and then edited the dream so it was everyone except me, my sisters, and the gas station attendant. =D

And speaking of being the only one - please tell me I'm not the only one who only ever has cried in response to academic nightmares. o_O I've only ever cried in my sleep twice, and they were both in my senior year. One regarded college application essays and Nazi teachers taking over my school and not letting me go to Math League; the other regarded a stupid band teacher taking over band and failing me just because she didn't like me. Both dreams were odd in that they were after the fact - the former happened after college application essays were done, and the latter took place two years after I quit band. o_O

**Wolf**

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I live to entertain. *grins*

And that's pretty neat! I realize fairly often that I'm dreaming, but I'm usually content to let whatever happens happen. I agree that I might have to change a world of werewolves, though. Hee.

I've never cried over academic dreams- I only remember crying in response to a dream once in my entire life- but I've had them worry about me. Though I'm more likely to lie awake fretting than to dream about those problems. ^^;

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Hmm, no courtrooms, but I haven't had nightmares since I was seven and read some article from one of my dad's scientific journals about lucid dreaming (being able to recognize when you're dreaming and control your dreams). That night, just knowing there was such a thing as lucid dreaming allowed me to start doing it, and I started being able to kill all the monsters and save the day.

These days, I don't often control my dreams because I'm curious to see where they go. I still don't have nightmares in the sense that I dream things that scare me, but I do get a lot of anger dreams. Anger really is my outlet.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I haven't had nightmares in years either, though not for nearly as long as you- seven is so young to figure out lucid dreaming! I do tend to realize that I'm dreaming fairly often, though like you, I'm usually content to just watch and see what happens instead of trying to control it. I don't even get anger dreams so much. Mine- the ones I remember, at least- tend to be fairly boring, everyday type things, or else completely random ones that usually don't involve me or anyone I know.

[b-hallward.livejournal.com]

Um, I've never had that kind of dream -- or at least one that mixed such different genres. Worst one I can remember is being executed (beheaded, actually) -- and then becoming a ghost. The freakiest bit was trying to comfort my mom by telling her I was still here, but in the manner of all good ghost stories she couldn't hear me -- which I guess meant the whole thing was just a circuitous route to a plain 'ole frustration dream. But the part that stuck with me the longest on a visceral level was going out and standing in a downpour, thinking to myself, I can't be dead, I can still feel the rain. I've always wanted to write a Yami story that used some version of that line ^^

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is a lovely line. And you should totally write fic for it. It's surprising sometimes, how dreams can come up with moments of the most sudden beauty and eloquence, given that they seem be mostly a muddle of altered memories and nonsense. I'm always amazed at what can come out of them.

But on a totally random and less meaningful tangent, that reminds me of a line from the American Ring 2 (which is an awful movie and you should not see it): "The dead don't sleep". It was delivered with all the passion and creepiness appropriate to such a line, but the impact was somewhat lessened given that, in other parts of the movie, the dead watch bad cable TV and eat sandwiches and are susceptible to sleeping pills. It was the height of everything that was bad about that movie, and my roommate and I have been saying to each other for months now.

[solo.livejournal.com]

I get something similar sometimes. Usually along the lines of: get attacked (yawn), kill attacker (easy-peasy), and --- OMG what do I do with the freaking BODY?? The last bit is the nightmare bit as I race around the place trying to buy chainsaws before the shops close, deliver chunks of dead person to various rubbish dumps, etc etc. And usually at some point, the car breaks down...

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! I suppose at least I didn't have to try and hide the body; it seems like it muxt be rather gory. (Chainsaws?)

[cyne-dias.livejournal.com]

I don't know... I had a dream that Godzilla (the cheesy japanese version) invaded my school demanding a tax refund.

*hugs you with the anti-climactic* XD

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Godzilla? Now that's a cool dream! Though one has to wonder how Godzilla would file a tax return...

*hugs!*

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

As a nonresident, I expect, with income effectively connected to a U.S. trade or business.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! *snerks*