The longest-running recurring nightmare I have is something like that. I'm in a lot of trouble with the police/an authority figure for some reason, but I haven't been caught yet. The dream always starts after I apparently did the bad thing that I'm in trouble for, so I'm never really sure if I did it. It mostly involves agonizing over whether or not to turn myself in and then deciding to go on the run
The only other recurring thing is a stress dream where I need to keep a group of people from doing stupid things during the apocalypse
My longest running recurring bad dreams involve severe weather/tornadoes.
The only two dreams that have made me do the close wake up in a fright are one where I was riding my bike and then for some reason I couldn't move the handles anymore and I was riding straight at my mailbox (at the time a large brick chimney looking affair) and I woke up just before I hit.
The second time I was riding in a helicopter with Will Smith because we had to attack Jurassic Park (a movie that gave me PTSD as a young child) and as we were flying over the island some dinosaur grabbed the helicopter's skid and yanked us out of the air and I fell out and woke up just before I hit the ground
I tend to semi-lucid dream, to the point where I've made "programs" that I can activate at will through various conditions in any dream. So I can fly, ignore damage, and have telekinesis. One that's more random is if say an effect I can bring it out, like yelling "Ice!" to freeze somene. My dreams are also random, but with stories to them. There's background and plots happening throughout and can span a very long time. Some of them I remember more clearly than others, but I remember enough to know that I don't have nightmares. How's my subconscious supposed to scare me when I can either opt to fly away until a new dream happens or pulverize the threat?
There's a common theme to my dreams I've noticed though. The world tends to be fucked for various reasons and things are going haywire. Maybe it's a war between gods, maybe vampires decided to exterminate humanity, and one time it was the sun going nova to kill 9/10 of the population until the whole planet and remaining people were teleported to a new location. However, each dream begins with the world going pear-shaped but the story progresses towards things getting better. The gods are pushed back by an alliance between their former forces, a group of people discover the powers of a Paladin, and mortals-turned-divine guide civilization over hundreds of thousands of years back to its former glory.
Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
Sass
Sass are you sure you dreamed that?
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
+3
Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
Also come visit me I miss your face
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
0
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Supposedly the teeth-falling-out dream is because people are grinding their teeth in their sleep. Lots of people grind their teeth so a lot of people have the dream. It's not so much "repressed anxiety" so much as "anxiety causing you to grind your teeth when you don't realize it."
Also you know those dreams where you're naked or in your underwear and it's all embarrassing? I have those dreams a lot, but in every single one I remember to pretend that everything is perfectly normal and fine and act as if I know exactly what I'm doing but still not make a big scene about it and manage to get away with it. One time I had to cross a busy restaurant while naked and I figured that everyone would either be too engrossed in their own concerns to notice (like that video of the people playing basketball and a guy in a gorilla suit walks through the middle of it, stops and waves at the camera, and keeps walking out, and people who are watching the game don't even notice the gorilla suit man - and yes that was the example I thought of in dream) or too polite to mention anything. So I just walked straight through at a regular pace without a fuss.
Supposedly the teeth-falling-out dream is because people are grinding their teeth in their sleep. Lots of people grind their teeth so a lot of people have the dream. It's not so much "repressed anxiety" so much as "anxiety causing you to grind your teeth when you don't realize it."
Tangentially related: getting a mouthguard for when I sleep was legit one of the best things I have ever done for myself, I've almost completely stopped waking up with stress headaches
My most memorable recurring dream is that I'm back in the Marine Corps, and surprise! My unit is on deployment, so I'll just pop up on an aircraft carrier, either up on the flight deck or somewhere down below. Nothing particularly memorable ever happens in these dreams, but it does gives me that lingering dread of going on deployment for a minute or two after I wake up.
My most memorable recurring dream is that I'm back in the Marine Corps, and surprise! My unit is on deployment, so I'll just pop up on an aircraft carrier, either up on the flight deck or somewhere down below. Nothing particularly memorable ever happens in these dreams, but it does gives me that lingering dread of going on deployment for a minute or two after I wake up.
I once dreamed that I had been recalled despite my medical discharge (knee) but I had been out for over a decade so I had to go through boot camp again.
I do grind my teeth. I bought a mouth guard, but I ruined it when I tried to mold it to my teeth. I got mad and didn't buy another one. I probably should.
Just to clarify, the eye dream wasn't scary or anything, it was just suuuuper frustrating because I would take my time and OK it's definitely back where it should be, now I'll just close my mouth and DAMNIT
I once had a dream where I was standing in a room that was empty except for a mirror. When I looked into it I was shocked to see that I had gotten old, 70-something, and somehow I knew that they did this to me. Some evil unspecified they had tricked me into wasting my entire life on their bullshit and now it was all gone.
But then the realization hit me that I could still prevent this from happening. I just had to find it in time! The thing! So I ran into the adjoining bedroom and frantically searched for this item whatever it was, this thing that could save me.
Just at the last second I found it, I was saved! And as I did I woke up with my hand on the off-button of my alarm clock one minute before it was time to wake up for work.
Not very subtle of my subconscious tbh.
+6
MachwingIt looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it?Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered Userregular
edited September 2014
I kept a dream journal back in 2012 for a couple months! I will now post some unedited entries from that journal.
4-26-12
I live with my family in the Oakland hills. On the T.V. is a report on the signs of an impending pulmonary embolism, one of which is white fingertips. My dad has white fingertips, so I call 911, but they tell me I have the wrong number. I call again, but they say I need to go to the Emeryville hospital, as the Oakland hospital is not prepared to handle us.
4 -28-12
Two dreams: first, I was chasing someone in a city. It was made up of two streets, reflected symmetrically like so: {a picture of an ouroburos, basically}. Second, I was made to solve a complex math problem in my 10th grade english classroom, even though I was out of highschool. The answer was either 12*10^54 or 10^57. People were talking about how our school was pronounced "s'cool" on Reddit, but I didn't know about it.
5-2-12
I dreamt of scenes (real and imagined) from 2010: Odyssey Two. Mostly from the perspective of HAL, except he was on the Leonov.
5-3-12
Helped an old cowboy find his son. Only, his son was a bandit, so we had to shoot him Old-Yeller style.
5-4-12
I was walking down a road in Alabama, close to midnight. Trees crowd overhead, but the road itself is wide and paved. A large group of people-hundreds-dressed for church are walking down the road towards me. As we pass, they all give me a look of supreme condescension. One of them shouts, "How can you go to church dressed like that?" I look down; I'm wearing a blue sweater and jeans. I tell them I'm not going to church. A black girl, about 16 and dressed in a prep school uniform, looks back at me and says, "Thank God." I look back at her; she's horrified at what she just said. I keep walking and eventually reach the church. It's a massive brutalist building, glowing from the inside, in an open clearing next to the road.
5-5-12
Dreamt that the date formatting in [my dream log] was incorrect. It kept shifting when I look at it, so I couldn't fix it.
5-8-12
Was on a team sent to re-ignite the sun. One of our teammates was incapacitated before launch and replaced with an AI. Ominous!
5-11-12
Nightmare of playing Go to the tune of Kronos Quartet playing Sigur Ros {I actually really like this song, 2012 me is horseshit}. Very little sleep.
5-12-12
Atlantis had finally been dredged from the depths, and it looked like a cross between an ocean liner and Le Corbusier's plan for Algeria. No artifacts, just buildings and spaces to occupy. After people settled it (turning it into a resort city), the lower city was infested with hostile snakemen. "Helpful" demons that look like enemies from Kirby or buff, red versions of Reginald (from Nedroid) appear to maintain the city. People accept this stuff, but every so often a resident or visitor to the city becomes depressed. Their face turns skeletal or amphibian-like and they stay in their homes until they die. I'm visiting a friend when this happens to her father. Simultaneously, the snake people emerge from the slums to terrorize the city. Her father disappears and we go to look for him. We mee the snake god, who claims that the "helpful" demons are chasing his people out of the city. Later, Serverus Snape tries to sacrifice her father {dick move, snape}. Snape succeeds, and her father turns into a white spectral genie. The genie claims that, since the fall of Atlantis, he'd been reincarnated multiple times. When Atlantis was dredged, the reincarnations began to break apart (as he yearned to be free), explaining the skeleton/amphibian disease. The helpful demons were remnants of the force that sunk atlantis, while the snakemen were atlantean pets. Before disppearing, the genie told Snape to "lighten up"
man reading about these after the fact kinda weirds me out
I used to have a recurring dream where my eyeball would fall out and whenever I tried putting it back in it would somehow end up in my mouth and I'd accidentally bite down on it (it was similar to biting a super-bouncy ball) and it would keep repeating until the eye was just completely destroyed mush
Definitely have had the teeth dreams, definitely have had a ton of "the dream where you need to run for some reason, but you're going at a snail's pace".
When I was quite young--age 6 through 8 or so--I had a recurring nightmare. It was always exactly the same. I'd be sitting upright in my bed, but my bed was in a dark room with no walls and a checkered, black-and-white tile floor that receded into the unseeable distance. And nothing was happening, except that I knew I was waiting for something, and while I didn't know what the something was, I somehow knew it would be unspeakably, indescribably horrible.
I had the dream maybe a dozen times over that stretch of about three years. The awful thing that I was always waiting for in the dream never happened, and I'd invariably wake up in sweat-soaked terror.
I used to have a recurring dream where my eyeball would fall out and whenever I tried putting it back in it would somehow end up in my mouth and I'd accidentally bite down on it (it was similar to biting a super-bouncy ball) and it would keep repeating until the eye was just completely destroyed mush
Talk about watching what you eat!
I refuse to awesome this on the grounds that this isn't the Bad Joke thread.
for most of my life I had dreams I could remember every once in a while, but at some point I just stopped having them, or at least being able to remember having them. I have had dreamless sleep for many years now for some reason.
For awhile I had that dream where you were back in high school for some reason and it's the last day and you realize you didn't go to any of your classes, it was horrifying
For almost thirty years now, I've had the same recurring nightmare.
The thing is, I can't really do it justice, but I'm going to try and describe what I feel is unadulterated chaos.
It usually starts with me swimming *up* to the surface of an ocean, except the ocean is made out of black fire and lightning; I don't really feel pain, but I know that I'm being burned and electrocuted, I'm twitching so much that getting to the surface is a matter of luck rather than effort.
My lungs start crystalizing because the air is frozen and I'm being pelted by frozen acid from the puke-green clouds overhead.
My feet are cut up by the volcanic glass of the beach, shards bigger than my palm and somehow they don't break, they just shift and make a sort of meat grinder that reaches up to my knees.
There are bricks in my hand, I've made them crudely from shards of glass and molten ocean, my hands don't have skin anymore, just burned meat and blackened bones.
I stack them in a wall or sometimes as a platform; I know that if I can make a stable surface, I can wake up from what's happening.
The bricks crumble, left and right, front and back, top and bottom, no pattern, no rhythm, no sense.
It all just falls apart in seconds, all this work that took hours.
The bricks turn to fire, lightning, acid, ice, or simply disintegrate into dust and then nothing.
And then I wake up.
I've had that dream so many times that I've lost count; when I wake up from it, I can't remember my name, my face in the bathroom mirror, where I am or why I'm there.
I can't put words together, I can only make long howl-like sounds comprised solely of vowels, consonants are completely impossible, there's just a hunk of dead meat in my mouth where a tongue would normally be. I've choked on my own saliva a few times because I can't remember how to swallow.
I can't walk properly, my equilibrium is shot for several minutes and I have to hold onto the wall to keep from melting into the ground or the ceiling.
I'm sure if anyone saw these circumstances in person, they would just assume I was drunk off my ass, just drooling and howling and falling all over everything.
But no one has ever seen me wake from the chaos-nightmare, my subconscious won't allow it.
My lizard brain wants me to deal with something by myself but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is.
One time I had a dream that I was in my high school art class and we were watching a movie or something for some reason and I decided that the dimmed lights were the perfect opportunity to sneak in a wank
For about two years I had a recurring precursor dream to other dreams.
I would be standing in a library with old wooden shelves, candles creating stark lighting contrasts, and completely filled with books. There were no signs, and no markings, but I would sometimes be able to move to a section to find the kind of dream I wanted. I didn't walk there, just kind of floated to where I knew the kind of story would be.
I wasn't always in control of this though. A lot of times I would be in the library and trying to find my way to the dream I wanted when something I couldn't see would grab me by the front of my shirt and drag me faster and faster into a part of the library that wasn't lit by candles. It'd stop me just in front of a shelf. I don't think it was ever the same shelf, but I knew what was on there. Then a book would open and I'd have a nightmare.
I could barely remember the dreams a lot of times, but I remember that they were vivid even when I'd forget them quickly. However I always remembered the library afterwards (at least I think so).
There was one dream I remember quite well. I'd walked through a hole in the wall of the library, only as soon as I entered the hole it changed so that I had walked through a hole in the wall next to my bed. After I entered the hole there was nothing. Just complete darkness, and I remember being at peace, and much happier than I remember being at that time while awake. I realized it'd probably be a good idea to have some light and suddenly I was watching what could reasonably be described as an animation from Nova. First there was a huge spherical explosion that kept exploding, and debris expanded out from there, then it started to coalesce into planets, growing more and more until it became the solar system.
I always thought that last one was super cool. I had a lot of shitty dreams as a kid and a lot of weird ones, but I try to remember the unique ones that made me happiest.
I only have like a handful of dreams in my life that I remember, but they are fucking weird.
There's one that kind of stands out, and I think I've told it on the boards before, but fuck it.
So, in my dream I'm a detective working with another detective and we have to go arrest James Franco because he is apparently this super criminal. (I think at the time, he was playing a criminal on General Hospital and I caught bits and pieces of that) So we go into this apartment and it's just this really trippy place, because for one, it's huge, but every room is weird and different.
The first room we went through was the kitchen which was basically counters lining the walls with the fridge and oven and such built in, which is kind of normal, except there was maybe a foot and a half between the counters and the island in the incredibly small room, so we had to kind of shimmy around it.
We get into a hallway and hear Franco start taunting us from everywhere because he, uh, has supernatural powers for some reason. My partner goes in one room, I go in another. It's a stark white room with shelves that have all these little toys on it, which all suddenly come to life and start running around while Franco laughs, and his face starts like melting through the wall like Freddy Kreuger. Dream me didn't give a shit for some reason.
Went back out into the hallway and my partner is ready to kick down the door at the end of it, and I go "Wait!" but he does it anyway, and the door leads just straight outside, but we're like ten stories up or something. And then all the walls fall away, the world just kind of blends into nothing but sky and suddenly there is a sixty foot tall James Franco in front of us. In a Spider-Man costume.
That's when I woke up.
I think I just stared at my ceiling in utter confusion for about five minutes and then went "Why was he Spider-Man?"
I usually don't remember my dreams, for which I am grateful, as they tend to be more frustrating then anything.
A typical example.
We (husband and I) are going to in-law's dinner an hour and a half drive away. A family member has requested that I bring something critical to the crafting of the dinner. Husband wants to be there early so we get up early and he is rushing us out the door even though I'm sure there's something we're missing, but when I ask if there's anything we forgot I get pushed out the door and into the car. Half way there I remember what we needed to bring, and try to convince husband to turn around so we can go back to get it, we have plenty of time. I get brushed off as "it's not really important" and "family member always exaggerates everything". We arrive at the in-laws well before noon when we were supposed to be there around five. After a while the small talk is getting dreary and family member discovers that I have not brought the thing she requested we bring. Promptly starts freaking out. Husband insists he can just go to store and get it. Family member insists there isn't any way to get it and everything is ruined. I point out that I have enough time to drive back home and get said item, with a few hours to spare. Both husband and family member tell me to not be silly and start arguing. Blame is implicitly with me for forgetting the thing.
None of these people are remotely like this, they are all super wonderful people and I love them.
Also, my flying dreams tend to be everyone being able to fly, and I can at first, but then the mechanism that lets everyone fly stops working for me, and at most I can kind of jump/glide for a while, then even that goes away.
I dreamed my family and I were sitting in an outdoor cafe in Italy. The salad course had just been served. I picked up my fork, and suddenly ice cream truck music started playing.
My mom tapped me on the shoulder and pointed, "Look! It's the Pope in his Pope-mobile!"
In my dream, the Pope-mobile was a black nondescript car with tinted windows that was playing ice cream truck music. My mom kept trying to get my siblings' attention so they could see the Pope-mobile. Apparently this annoyed my younger sister, because she grabbed her butter knife and growled.
Then, without warning, my sister launches herself at the Pope-mobile, uses the butt of her knife to bash in the glass at the back of the car, crawls into the Pope-mobile, and starts stabbing the Pope to death. I didn't see her actually doing it, because of the tinted windows. But there were lots of cartoon stabbing and "Euagh!" noises.
I looked at my parents, mouth agape. They were staring at the car, saying "No. Stop. Don't. If you keep stabbing that Pope you won't get dessert!" in a monotone.
Then I woke up.
Apparently I think my parent's don't discipline my sister enough. Also, that my sister is a Pope-murdering antiChrist.
A few months ago I had a dream which turned into a nightmare. My girlfriend and I were walking down a highway. Inland to be exact because the ocean was to our backs. A long winding highway, but with a definite end because we could see a city with tall buildings. I think it was Las Vegas. So... this walk we were on is pretty much from California to Vegas.
And then... WOOOOSH! A big tidal wave! Massive! People appear out of nowhere around us and run for there lives. I hold on to my girlfriend's hand and we start running like hell too. And then I somehow make it to a parking structure in the city. I have no time to think as I run up to the top floor looking for something... ANYTHING I can use to save myself! I end up hiding behind a main pillar that holds up the parking structure. The pillar holds as the entire force of a tidal wave hits everything in its path.
I end up alive... But alone. My girlfriend was not with me.
I end up at a hotel with a bunch of refugees. My entire family seems to be there too, safe and sound. My dream ends with me trying to find my girlfriend.
The dream/nightmare really shook me up. It brought about a terrible feeling that I've never felt before. Had the urge to call my girlfriend up to see if she was OK, but I knew she was asleep. I didn't want to bother her so late at night.
Posts
The only other recurring thing is a stress dream where I need to keep a group of people from doing stupid things during the apocalypse
The only two dreams that have made me do the close wake up in a fright are one where I was riding my bike and then for some reason I couldn't move the handles anymore and I was riding straight at my mailbox (at the time a large brick chimney looking affair) and I woke up just before I hit.
The second time I was riding in a helicopter with Will Smith because we had to attack Jurassic Park (a movie that gave me PTSD as a young child) and as we were flying over the island some dinosaur grabbed the helicopter's skid and yanked us out of the air and I fell out and woke up just before I hit the ground
Like last night: @Metalbourne and I were actually in Saints Row smacking people around with tentacle bats
There's a common theme to my dreams I've noticed though. The world tends to be fucked for various reasons and things are going haywire. Maybe it's a war between gods, maybe vampires decided to exterminate humanity, and one time it was the sun going nova to kill 9/10 of the population until the whole planet and remaining people were teleported to a new location. However, each dream begins with the world going pear-shaped but the story progresses towards things getting better. The gods are pushed back by an alliance between their former forces, a group of people discover the powers of a Paladin, and mortals-turned-divine guide civilization over hundreds of thousands of years back to its former glory.
And everyone cheered.
Sass are you sure you dreamed that?
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Also you know those dreams where you're naked or in your underwear and it's all embarrassing? I have those dreams a lot, but in every single one I remember to pretend that everything is perfectly normal and fine and act as if I know exactly what I'm doing but still not make a big scene about it and manage to get away with it. One time I had to cross a busy restaurant while naked and I figured that everyone would either be too engrossed in their own concerns to notice (like that video of the people playing basketball and a guy in a gorilla suit walks through the middle of it, stops and waves at the camera, and keeps walking out, and people who are watching the game don't even notice the gorilla suit man - and yes that was the example I thought of in dream) or too polite to mention anything. So I just walked straight through at a regular pace without a fuss.
Tangentially related: getting a mouthguard for when I sleep was legit one of the best things I have ever done for myself, I've almost completely stopped waking up with stress headaches
There is no sign of light bleeding on my knuckles that a very attractive lady was fawning over and cleaning up for me...
So I think it was a dream. Or maybe she did a really amazing job with that cleanup.
I once dreamed that I had been recalled despite my medical discharge (knee) but I had been out for over a decade so I had to go through boot camp again.
But then the realization hit me that I could still prevent this from happening. I just had to find it in time! The thing! So I ran into the adjoining bedroom and frantically searched for this item whatever it was, this thing that could save me.
Just at the last second I found it, I was saved! And as I did I woke up with my hand on the off-button of my alarm clock one minute before it was time to wake up for work.
Not very subtle of my subconscious tbh.
4-26-12
I live with my family in the Oakland hills. On the T.V. is a report on the signs of an impending pulmonary embolism, one of which is white fingertips. My dad has white fingertips, so I call 911, but they tell me I have the wrong number. I call again, but they say I need to go to the Emeryville hospital, as the Oakland hospital is not prepared to handle us.
4 -28-12
Two dreams: first, I was chasing someone in a city. It was made up of two streets, reflected symmetrically like so: {a picture of an ouroburos, basically}. Second, I was made to solve a complex math problem in my 10th grade english classroom, even though I was out of highschool. The answer was either 12*10^54 or 10^57. People were talking about how our school was pronounced "s'cool" on Reddit, but I didn't know about it.
5-2-12
I dreamt of scenes (real and imagined) from 2010: Odyssey Two. Mostly from the perspective of HAL, except he was on the Leonov.
5-3-12
Helped an old cowboy find his son. Only, his son was a bandit, so we had to shoot him Old-Yeller style.
5-4-12
I was walking down a road in Alabama, close to midnight. Trees crowd overhead, but the road itself is wide and paved. A large group of people-hundreds-dressed for church are walking down the road towards me. As we pass, they all give me a look of supreme condescension. One of them shouts, "How can you go to church dressed like that?" I look down; I'm wearing a blue sweater and jeans. I tell them I'm not going to church. A black girl, about 16 and dressed in a prep school uniform, looks back at me and says, "Thank God." I look back at her; she's horrified at what she just said. I keep walking and eventually reach the church. It's a massive brutalist building, glowing from the inside, in an open clearing next to the road.
5-5-12
Dreamt that the date formatting in [my dream log] was incorrect. It kept shifting when I look at it, so I couldn't fix it.
5-8-12
Was on a team sent to re-ignite the sun. One of our teammates was incapacitated before launch and replaced with an AI. Ominous!
5-11-12
Nightmare of playing Go to the tune of Kronos Quartet playing Sigur Ros {I actually really like this song, 2012 me is horseshit}. Very little sleep.
5-12-12
Atlantis had finally been dredged from the depths, and it looked like a cross between an ocean liner and Le Corbusier's plan for Algeria. No artifacts, just buildings and spaces to occupy. After people settled it (turning it into a resort city), the lower city was infested with hostile snakemen. "Helpful" demons that look like enemies from Kirby or buff, red versions of Reginald (from Nedroid) appear to maintain the city. People accept this stuff, but every so often a resident or visitor to the city becomes depressed. Their face turns skeletal or amphibian-like and they stay in their homes until they die. I'm visiting a friend when this happens to her father. Simultaneously, the snake people emerge from the slums to terrorize the city. Her father disappears and we go to look for him. We mee the snake god, who claims that the "helpful" demons are chasing his people out of the city. Later, Serverus Snape tries to sacrifice her father {dick move, snape}. Snape succeeds, and her father turns into a white spectral genie. The genie claims that, since the fall of Atlantis, he'd been reincarnated multiple times. When Atlantis was dredged, the reincarnations began to break apart (as he yearned to be free), explaining the skeleton/amphibian disease. The helpful demons were remnants of the force that sunk atlantis, while the snakemen were atlantean pets. Before disppearing, the genie told Snape to "lighten up"
man reading about these after the fact kinda weirds me out
My brother can talk to turkeys. Unfortunately everything he says just makes them angry.
I think he uses fowl language.
Talk about watching what you eat!
When I was quite young--age 6 through 8 or so--I had a recurring nightmare. It was always exactly the same. I'd be sitting upright in my bed, but my bed was in a dark room with no walls and a checkered, black-and-white tile floor that receded into the unseeable distance. And nothing was happening, except that I knew I was waiting for something, and while I didn't know what the something was, I somehow knew it would be unspeakably, indescribably horrible.
I had the dream maybe a dozen times over that stretch of about three years. The awful thing that I was always waiting for in the dream never happened, and I'd invariably wake up in sweat-soaked terror.
I refuse to awesome this on the grounds that this isn't the Bad Joke thread.
I was walking through my neighborhood when suddenly a guy walked out and shot me in the hip.
I fell over, all "OH GAWD HELP"
Then the guy came over and I shouted "HES GOT A GUN" and then he shot me in the side of the head.
Just as everything went dark, I woke up and thought "the fuck was that about"
The thing is, I can't really do it justice, but I'm going to try and describe what I feel is unadulterated chaos.
It usually starts with me swimming *up* to the surface of an ocean, except the ocean is made out of black fire and lightning; I don't really feel pain, but I know that I'm being burned and electrocuted, I'm twitching so much that getting to the surface is a matter of luck rather than effort.
My lungs start crystalizing because the air is frozen and I'm being pelted by frozen acid from the puke-green clouds overhead.
My feet are cut up by the volcanic glass of the beach, shards bigger than my palm and somehow they don't break, they just shift and make a sort of meat grinder that reaches up to my knees.
There are bricks in my hand, I've made them crudely from shards of glass and molten ocean, my hands don't have skin anymore, just burned meat and blackened bones.
I stack them in a wall or sometimes as a platform; I know that if I can make a stable surface, I can wake up from what's happening.
The bricks crumble, left and right, front and back, top and bottom, no pattern, no rhythm, no sense.
It all just falls apart in seconds, all this work that took hours.
The bricks turn to fire, lightning, acid, ice, or simply disintegrate into dust and then nothing.
And then I wake up.
I've had that dream so many times that I've lost count; when I wake up from it, I can't remember my name, my face in the bathroom mirror, where I am or why I'm there.
I can't put words together, I can only make long howl-like sounds comprised solely of vowels, consonants are completely impossible, there's just a hunk of dead meat in my mouth where a tongue would normally be. I've choked on my own saliva a few times because I can't remember how to swallow.
I can't walk properly, my equilibrium is shot for several minutes and I have to hold onto the wall to keep from melting into the ground or the ceiling.
I'm sure if anyone saw these circumstances in person, they would just assume I was drunk off my ass, just drooling and howling and falling all over everything.
But no one has ever seen me wake from the chaos-nightmare, my subconscious won't allow it.
My lizard brain wants me to deal with something by myself but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is.
it didn't end well
I would be standing in a library with old wooden shelves, candles creating stark lighting contrasts, and completely filled with books. There were no signs, and no markings, but I would sometimes be able to move to a section to find the kind of dream I wanted. I didn't walk there, just kind of floated to where I knew the kind of story would be.
I wasn't always in control of this though. A lot of times I would be in the library and trying to find my way to the dream I wanted when something I couldn't see would grab me by the front of my shirt and drag me faster and faster into a part of the library that wasn't lit by candles. It'd stop me just in front of a shelf. I don't think it was ever the same shelf, but I knew what was on there. Then a book would open and I'd have a nightmare.
I could barely remember the dreams a lot of times, but I remember that they were vivid even when I'd forget them quickly. However I always remembered the library afterwards (at least I think so).
There was one dream I remember quite well. I'd walked through a hole in the wall of the library, only as soon as I entered the hole it changed so that I had walked through a hole in the wall next to my bed. After I entered the hole there was nothing. Just complete darkness, and I remember being at peace, and much happier than I remember being at that time while awake. I realized it'd probably be a good idea to have some light and suddenly I was watching what could reasonably be described as an animation from Nova. First there was a huge spherical explosion that kept exploding, and debris expanded out from there, then it started to coalesce into planets, growing more and more until it became the solar system.
I always thought that last one was super cool. I had a lot of shitty dreams as a kid and a lot of weird ones, but I try to remember the unique ones that made me happiest.
There's one that kind of stands out, and I think I've told it on the boards before, but fuck it.
So, in my dream I'm a detective working with another detective and we have to go arrest James Franco because he is apparently this super criminal. (I think at the time, he was playing a criminal on General Hospital and I caught bits and pieces of that) So we go into this apartment and it's just this really trippy place, because for one, it's huge, but every room is weird and different.
The first room we went through was the kitchen which was basically counters lining the walls with the fridge and oven and such built in, which is kind of normal, except there was maybe a foot and a half between the counters and the island in the incredibly small room, so we had to kind of shimmy around it.
We get into a hallway and hear Franco start taunting us from everywhere because he, uh, has supernatural powers for some reason. My partner goes in one room, I go in another. It's a stark white room with shelves that have all these little toys on it, which all suddenly come to life and start running around while Franco laughs, and his face starts like melting through the wall like Freddy Kreuger. Dream me didn't give a shit for some reason.
Went back out into the hallway and my partner is ready to kick down the door at the end of it, and I go "Wait!" but he does it anyway, and the door leads just straight outside, but we're like ten stories up or something. And then all the walls fall away, the world just kind of blends into nothing but sky and suddenly there is a sixty foot tall James Franco in front of us. In a Spider-Man costume.
That's when I woke up.
I think I just stared at my ceiling in utter confusion for about five minutes and then went "Why was he Spider-Man?"
A typical example.
We (husband and I) are going to in-law's dinner an hour and a half drive away. A family member has requested that I bring something critical to the crafting of the dinner. Husband wants to be there early so we get up early and he is rushing us out the door even though I'm sure there's something we're missing, but when I ask if there's anything we forgot I get pushed out the door and into the car. Half way there I remember what we needed to bring, and try to convince husband to turn around so we can go back to get it, we have plenty of time. I get brushed off as "it's not really important" and "family member always exaggerates everything". We arrive at the in-laws well before noon when we were supposed to be there around five. After a while the small talk is getting dreary and family member discovers that I have not brought the thing she requested we bring. Promptly starts freaking out. Husband insists he can just go to store and get it. Family member insists there isn't any way to get it and everything is ruined. I point out that I have enough time to drive back home and get said item, with a few hours to spare. Both husband and family member tell me to not be silly and start arguing. Blame is implicitly with me for forgetting the thing.
None of these people are remotely like this, they are all super wonderful people and I love them.
Also, my flying dreams tend to be everyone being able to fly, and I can at first, but then the mechanism that lets everyone fly stops working for me, and at most I can kind of jump/glide for a while, then even that goes away.
Why, brain, why?
She tried to shoot me but I bullet-time dodged it and then I shot her in the face 20-30 times with a nailgun.
Then I strangled her until her neck was nothing but this thin bag of skin. Then I woke up.
My mom tapped me on the shoulder and pointed, "Look! It's the Pope in his Pope-mobile!"
In my dream, the Pope-mobile was a black nondescript car with tinted windows that was playing ice cream truck music. My mom kept trying to get my siblings' attention so they could see the Pope-mobile. Apparently this annoyed my younger sister, because she grabbed her butter knife and growled.
Then, without warning, my sister launches herself at the Pope-mobile, uses the butt of her knife to bash in the glass at the back of the car, crawls into the Pope-mobile, and starts stabbing the Pope to death. I didn't see her actually doing it, because of the tinted windows. But there were lots of cartoon stabbing and "Euagh!" noises.
I looked at my parents, mouth agape. They were staring at the car, saying "No. Stop. Don't. If you keep stabbing that Pope you won't get dessert!" in a monotone.
Then I woke up.
Apparently I think my parent's don't discipline my sister enough. Also, that my sister is a Pope-murdering antiChrist.
And then... WOOOOSH! A big tidal wave! Massive! People appear out of nowhere around us and run for there lives. I hold on to my girlfriend's hand and we start running like hell too. And then I somehow make it to a parking structure in the city. I have no time to think as I run up to the top floor looking for something... ANYTHING I can use to save myself! I end up hiding behind a main pillar that holds up the parking structure. The pillar holds as the entire force of a tidal wave hits everything in its path.
I end up alive... But alone. My girlfriend was not with me.
I end up at a hotel with a bunch of refugees. My entire family seems to be there too, safe and sound. My dream ends with me trying to find my girlfriend.
The dream/nightmare really shook me up. It brought about a terrible feeling that I've never felt before. Had the urge to call my girlfriend up to see if she was OK, but I knew she was asleep. I didn't want to bother her so late at night.