The SCAREDEST

One thing that's frustrating about our modern urban adult everything-is-nice lives is that things are seldom the best or the worst of anything. I suppose it's not fair for me to expect life to be one big x*sin(x) curve, but whatever. I rarely get a chance to experience anything The Most.

Last night I had the scariest dream of my life.

I mean, it was on a whole 'nother level from most nightmares. And I've been mildly frightened before, you know, scary movies or roller coasters or the dark or bugs and needles, but I've never been just unstoppably terrified. Wow. I am glad that I got to experience that dream. I am WAY MORE GLAD that it's not reality.

But I am still glad I got to experience that dream. So in the interest of posterity, here's an outline. In real life, I had just had a bout of insomnia, I probably woke up around 4:30, checked the clock at 5:40 and it was probably 6:30 by the time I drifted off (I think). Maybe it was later, because I woke up at 7:50. I had a little of that pre-sleep time where things don't make sense but it's okay because you're going to sleep.

I thought up some painting ideas. The one I could remember was like a lady flying across the sky, except her face and upper body was a lady but then she sort of morphed into one of those Persistence of Memory shapes. I thought I would write a quote on it: "We don't want to lose ourselves in time." I thought this was a brilliant thing to do. Those sort of ideas cross your mind when you're drifting off to sleep.

Next thing I know, I'm in a classroom. It was some kind of computery class, and I was in the back, working on a project with someone I knew. Two people shared a computer. I thought I was making up really great ideas, and I thought, man, if I could improv like this, I'd be on fire. I have to remember how to do this!

I soon found myself towards the front of another classroom. I was talking about my great ideas, but I knew class was about to start, and I was in the wrong room. It must have been high school, because I was thinking "I have to get to my 1st period class." Then I realized I didn't know where that was, and I didn't know how to find out. I wandered outside.

Once I got out there, I started to realize I was not in control of... things. I couldn't remember stuff very well. I thought I was going crazy. (In real life, I read an article yesterday that mentioned how schizophrenia only onsets in the 20's.) I thought, well, I'll call my mom. She's someone real who can tell me what's going on. But I kinda knew it wouldn't work. Sure enough, my contacts list had 6 names, none of which were my mom. So I tried to dial her number, thinking "aha! even if I'm crazy, there's no way this can't work!" but then the numbers started disappearing about halfway through. Damn.

It seemed no big deal, though. I was still all right. But then, I remembered someone in my class had said my nose was bleeding. I looked in a mirror and realized it sure was, and I had stitches on my nose, and they were bleeding too. When did I get stitches on my nose? And then my ear was bleeding, and I don't remember when or why, but I was kinda not all right anymore. I started panicking; I didn't know anyone, or anything. So I started realizing, oh shit, I'm not just take-some-pills-and-manage-it crazy, I'm like crazy-guy-on-the-street crazy; no, I'm stretcher-and-padded-cell crazy. But I had to get help anyway. Maybe I was still just pills crazy. It was nighttime, there were some people around, I walked up to them and yelled "help!", but they couldn't talk to me. Their faces were half deformed and half kinda sewn-up, like stitched, and leathery, not quite like shrunken heads, but like some kind of orc-ey thing.

So I ran away from them and I saw a clear window leading into a spiral staircase, and there were people wearing colorful clothes and carnival masks, walking up the stairs in rows of three, zombielike. I knew they couldn't help me, so I think I ran past them up the stairs. I then was almost at the top and a girl was behind me; she was someone I knew, or had seen before. She looked like Saffron from Firefly. I said, "you can help me!" And she seemed to agree. I said "who are you?" and she said "I'm a bumper." "What?" and then she took a big bite of me! (in retrospect, this is hilarious. It was not at all funny at the time.)

I got to the top of the stairs and walked out the door. I was by the same corner I was at back when I walked outside the first time. Sarah was there, and I thought, thank god, I know you, you can help! But she wasn't her either. She had a forked tongue.

This is when I woke up. Oh my god it was the scariest. And I'm going to work now.