Dream
I woke up this afternoon from the most singularly terrifying dream I've had in a long time, and yet the whole thing sounds really ridiculous when I spell it out.
I was lying on a folded-out sleeper sofa, trying to wake up so I could go do stuff with friends. My friends, by the way, were all around. Some had slept in the same room, others elsewhere in the house. Most of them wandered out of the room, but two remained: Marc and John. For some reason, John started jumping on the bed up near the head (I was lying horizontally across the foot of the bed). That made the bed start to fold up a bit, so he and Marc decided to fold it up and put it away. With me in it.
Even in the dream, it seemed ridiculous and funny at first. The very foot of the bed flipped up and over the top of me and I kind of laughed and tried to climb out from under it. Only I couldn't move. At all. And even with just one part of the bed on top of me, I was already starting to have trouble breathing. So I called out to them to stop, but although I did have my voice, they didn't hear me and they just kept relentlessly moving bedclothes off the bed and folding it up. I started to yell and struggle, but they still didn't hear.
And that's when the panic set in. Suddenly it became a very real possibly that I was just going to be folded up inside a sleeper sofa by my oblivious friends and suffocate in there. Yes, it sounds silly, but it was absolutely terrifying, in no small part because it was so utterly mundane. It wasn't some big, dramatic thing. I was just going to die very quietly in a very stupid accident.
The interesting thing about the dream is that it's one of the very rare times I haven't realized something was a dream until I woke up. Normally, I get a vague sense that I'm dreaming and I willfully drag myself up out of the nightmare. I couldn't do that this time because I never realized I was dreaming, not until I awoke with a start.
Even thinking about the dream now, I can still feel echoes of that panic. Worse, because the dream involved being in bed, the thought of lying down again makes me sort of uncomfortable. But oh well. It's time to sleep.
I was lying on a folded-out sleeper sofa, trying to wake up so I could go do stuff with friends. My friends, by the way, were all around. Some had slept in the same room, others elsewhere in the house. Most of them wandered out of the room, but two remained: Marc and John. For some reason, John started jumping on the bed up near the head (I was lying horizontally across the foot of the bed). That made the bed start to fold up a bit, so he and Marc decided to fold it up and put it away. With me in it.
Even in the dream, it seemed ridiculous and funny at first. The very foot of the bed flipped up and over the top of me and I kind of laughed and tried to climb out from under it. Only I couldn't move. At all. And even with just one part of the bed on top of me, I was already starting to have trouble breathing. So I called out to them to stop, but although I did have my voice, they didn't hear me and they just kept relentlessly moving bedclothes off the bed and folding it up. I started to yell and struggle, but they still didn't hear.
And that's when the panic set in. Suddenly it became a very real possibly that I was just going to be folded up inside a sleeper sofa by my oblivious friends and suffocate in there. Yes, it sounds silly, but it was absolutely terrifying, in no small part because it was so utterly mundane. It wasn't some big, dramatic thing. I was just going to die very quietly in a very stupid accident.
The interesting thing about the dream is that it's one of the very rare times I haven't realized something was a dream until I woke up. Normally, I get a vague sense that I'm dreaming and I willfully drag myself up out of the nightmare. I couldn't do that this time because I never realized I was dreaming, not until I awoke with a start.
Even thinking about the dream now, I can still feel echoes of that panic. Worse, because the dream involved being in bed, the thought of lying down again makes me sort of uncomfortable. But oh well. It's time to sleep.