I’ve had nightmares for the last two nights.
That’s actually rather unusual for me–I have lots of dreams where violent and weird things happen, many of which would be quite alarming, but my dreaming self is generally pretty unflappable and doesn’t panic until, for example, avalanche, dismemberment, and tying to the train tracks have all failed to stop the foe.* But the last two nights were definitely nightmares. One was a complicated, Jacob’s-Ladder-esque montage about flying out to see my parents, and being unable to remember anything about the flight, only to learn that was because I was still at the airport, it had been caught in a series of tornadoes, and I had to go hide in a bomb shelter with a bunch of strangers. I spent a lot of that dream crying, which is REALLY unusual for me. I generally don’t do that until the brake lines have been cut and I’m careening towards a field of bunnies or something.
Last night, I got caught in a drive-by shooting. THREE TIMES. (Sheesh!) The first time I hid behind a couch someone had left out by a dumpster, but the second time, after I hit the dirt, I couldn’t do anything but lay there and hope I didn’t get hit. (Note to self: After first drive-by shooting, consider taking a different street.) What I recall most vividly is one of the people being shot at, a large Hispanic gentleman who apparently didn’t speak English, who had hit the deck next to me, reached over and took my hand. I caught a couple of bullets in the other hand and arm–and it hurt, too!–and I was moaning in pain and horror, and he kept squeezing my hand. (Obviously my Faith in Humanity was allowed some production work on this dream…) It was very touching, if horrible.
The third time, the shooter just walked into a mall and started killing people, and I hid behind a faux-marble planter and thought “Okay, once, fine, twice maybe, but I got off the street! What are the odds he’d pick THIS building!? NOT COOL!”
Well, it all worked out and I wound up trying to tell a story about a wallaby in a room full of posters of the extinct Snouted Whale, then woke up. But it’s weird that I keep having nightmares (or that I respond to these AS nightmares, instead of with my usual “OH YEAH!?” and pulling out of machine guns, swords, etc.)
We’ll see what tonight brings…
*Yes, I’ve actually dreamed that.
