Welcome to My Nightmare

This past Saturday the family and I spent a pleasant day down the shore visiting my father-in-law. He and my wife and girls went down to the beach while I stayed at his pad and read for like four hours, then napped. Heaven all around for all of us. They returned, we watched the horse race then left, got home a little on the late side to put the girls down. The wife and I watched some bland teevee, then both of us passed out by 11, 11:15.

Or so I thought.

Immediately I found myself on the deck in my backyard. It was cool, dead-of-night. A large fat moon in the sky illuminating fast-moving whispy clouds. I was surprised to see my buddy there. He had one of those red laser beam pointers. “Wanna see if we can reach the moon with this?” he asked. “Sure,” I replied. It was easy to hit the high treetops ringing my backyard, and I was a little puzzled realizing the house behind mine had been replaced by a thick, dark forest. Oh well.

Holy cow! We were able to see the red laser beam dancing along the lunar surface. I was truly amazed at that. Then my friend spotted something in the distance and called my attention to it. Something moving in the sky, moving closer … helicopters. Helicopters. What would helicopters be doing flying at night … and dark. No lights, not even those flashing red or white ones to avoid collisions.

Then, abruptly, bright searchlight beams erupted from the bellies of the helicopters, so close so quickly. They weren’t running silent, but their motors were kinda muffled. I could see the search light beams tracing frantic circles over roofs in the near distance, over backyards, the spaces between the houses, the spaces between the trees in the new forest behind my house.

A bad feeling spread outward from my gut. I had the feeling they had noticed us, perhaps the red laser beam pointer had given our location away. I told my misgivings to my friend, who tried to play it down, but I could tell even he was starting to get nervous. The helicopters were awfully close. Finally, I made a decision. “We gotta run. I’m going back into the house.” He said he was going to go back to his, and disappeared.

But instead of going in through the back door on the deck, I stepped off the deck and dove through a gap in the bushes into my neighbor’s yard. A helicopter was almost right on top of me. The circle of bright light was seeking me out, having detected motion. I ran around to the far side of my neighbor’s house, tried the side door, found it unlocked, and went in, seeking shelter.

The house was dark, but rooms within it were lit, creating a very ambient, twilight atmosphere. I heard talking somewhereabouts. I found a hallway, proceeded in very slowly. There were toys everywhere … stuffed animals, children’s books, worn out boxes of games. Something told me this was a children’s hospital. How sad …

Then I was in a room in the children’s hospital, muted, dark, carpeted. A nurse had her back to me. There was a child on the table, sleeping. The nurse was in the middle of talking to me. “We have your children,” she said with menace in her voice. “We have your children, and you have to play by the rules.” Then, she turned around and I knew exactly what she was going to look like. That bad feeling in my gut transformed into cold icy heart-palpitating fear. She turned around –

And she was one of those grey aliens! With the clammy grey skin, upside-down pear for a head, black wrap-around almond eyes. Ahhh!

I woke up in my bed in the darkness, yet I couldn’t wake up. I had sleep paralysis. Some part of my mind told me that if I made enough noise or movement my wife would wake up and then wake me up. It was so much effort to make a simple grunting noise, so much energy expended to move my head an inch to one side. Fear was exponentially building in me, and I couldn’t wake up. Finally I was able to turn my head to the right slightly, toward my beside table, and I saw a dark hand coming down slowly on my forehead.

Then in a blur I snapped out of it, reached over, turned on the lamp. My wife was not in bed with me. I was alone in the room. It was 12:30 at night.

Motion caught my eye … or did it? I looked across the room at my wife’s closet door … and it was slowly opening! Why is it slowly opening? How can that happen? Unless – unless something just ran in there and didn’t close the door all the way!

AHHHHH!

This was too much for forty-four-year-old me to handle. I literally leaped out of bed, thrust open the door to the hallway, bounded down the stairs two at a time to the living room.

My wife was there, laying on the couch, watching the Jim Carrey movie, The Mask. Apparently Patch got her up earlier in the night with a coughing fit and she couldn’t get back to sleep. She stared at me as if I had three friggin’ heads. What could I say? I collapsed next to her and told her my dream, leaving out the part about them having our children.

It was the scariest dream I’ve ever had in my adult life. I have no idea what brought it on that night.

Postscript. I was not able to get back to sleep that night. Indeed, in some bizarre self-destructive psychosis of masochism, I went back upstairs and watched a marathon of Paranormal Ghost Stories Caught on Tape. Freaked me out even more! What’s wrong with me? My wife came up at 6:30 to catch a little shut-eye before the little ones woke up. I went down to the basement, to the writing office, and surfed the web for two hours. Then I went upstairs to the smells of eggs and toast, kissed the girls good morning, had breakfast, and went upstairs, where I crashed for three hours.

Later that day me and my buddy, same buddy from the nightmare, went out and watched Prometheus …