Nightmare
I had one of those dreams the other night that start with you thinking that you've just woken up, but you really haven't.
I laid there in bed, not yet wanting to move, and hoping that I might drift back into slumber when I heard a noise - a shuffled step across my carpet. At that moment I knew that there was someone else in the room with me. I froze, trying not to change my breathing, trying not to move or do anything that might alert the person to my sudden awakedness*. I tried to angle my head to see who the person was...
I remember the rest of the dream from two alternating perspectives: my own point of view, and from a third person perspective, almost looking down on the room - as if someone had installed a security camera in the North-West corner by my ceiling, tucked out of the way. My bedroom was well lit (which it never is - I work third shift, so I keep a blanket thumb-tacked in place over the window, but this is a dream, so we'll roll with it) and had almost a rosy glow to it as if the sun were just rising or setting. The air felt warm and dry (as a child I had an attic bedroom and the insulation up there wasn't super great. I remember how the air tasted on warm summer days, as if the warmed wood under the shingles was contributing not to the air's scent, but to its flavor. This was the same).
It was from the third person perspective that I was able to see the figure of Donald J. Trump** standing at one of my book shelves (my bed room has three, most of which contain as many odd items and piles of lose papers as they do books). He wore his familiar neck tie, tied so long that it hangs down to his crotch, and his wide cuffed pants that make his shoes look comically small (I read an article at one point about his style of dress, and since then I've been unable to ignore the elements that this article had pointed out). Mr. Trump was going through the items on my shelves, never getting them out of order, but just handling them, looking them over, and returning them to what had roughly been their place.
But then he stopped - abruptly. I was sure that he had realized that I was awake, so I closed my eyes and tried my best to feign a state of unconsciousness. He crept over to me, that same familiar shuffle of shoes on carpet, and knelt down next to me, his face inches from mine. Though my eyes were closed, I could see him there, taking up the whole of my field of vision as he examined me. And then - and this was the part that still makes me shiver just remembering it - he smelled me. It was like a cat, always wanting to smell your fingers before they allow you to pet them. He sniffed at me two or three times, and then, convinced, returned to my book shelves.
I watched him from the third person perspective, touching and handling my possessions. The spines of my books, previously flush with one another, were being left uneven and messy. Piles of papers would end up lop-sided and disheveled. Every thing he touched, I could FEEL his finger prints left behind, as if I was the item in question, and seeing the way he handled them left me feeling dirty and sticky and in need of a shower.
He returned twice more to my bedside to look me over, to sniff at me. And on his third visit, his closeness made me sneeze. There was a moment where we stared at each other in silence, and then he opened his mouth and screamed. Looking back at the dream, I recognize the sound that he made as "The most angry yell in history" from Anthony Scodary and Nico Benitez's "How to kill a Mocking Bird***", but in the dream I just remember being terrified. I screamed as well, and it was my own scream that woke me up.
* I chose "awakedness" over "wakefulness" here (even though I'm not convinced that it's an actual word) because it sounds similar to "nakedness", and I like the sense of vulnerability that that conveys.
** I have been having a series of bad dreams since roughly mid-December featuring our nation's president elect. I want them to stop.
*** https://youtu.be/fo45o69HaKI?t=228
I laid there in bed, not yet wanting to move, and hoping that I might drift back into slumber when I heard a noise - a shuffled step across my carpet. At that moment I knew that there was someone else in the room with me. I froze, trying not to change my breathing, trying not to move or do anything that might alert the person to my sudden awakedness*. I tried to angle my head to see who the person was...
I remember the rest of the dream from two alternating perspectives: my own point of view, and from a third person perspective, almost looking down on the room - as if someone had installed a security camera in the North-West corner by my ceiling, tucked out of the way. My bedroom was well lit (which it never is - I work third shift, so I keep a blanket thumb-tacked in place over the window, but this is a dream, so we'll roll with it) and had almost a rosy glow to it as if the sun were just rising or setting. The air felt warm and dry (as a child I had an attic bedroom and the insulation up there wasn't super great. I remember how the air tasted on warm summer days, as if the warmed wood under the shingles was contributing not to the air's scent, but to its flavor. This was the same).
It was from the third person perspective that I was able to see the figure of Donald J. Trump** standing at one of my book shelves (my bed room has three, most of which contain as many odd items and piles of lose papers as they do books). He wore his familiar neck tie, tied so long that it hangs down to his crotch, and his wide cuffed pants that make his shoes look comically small (I read an article at one point about his style of dress, and since then I've been unable to ignore the elements that this article had pointed out). Mr. Trump was going through the items on my shelves, never getting them out of order, but just handling them, looking them over, and returning them to what had roughly been their place.
But then he stopped - abruptly. I was sure that he had realized that I was awake, so I closed my eyes and tried my best to feign a state of unconsciousness. He crept over to me, that same familiar shuffle of shoes on carpet, and knelt down next to me, his face inches from mine. Though my eyes were closed, I could see him there, taking up the whole of my field of vision as he examined me. And then - and this was the part that still makes me shiver just remembering it - he smelled me. It was like a cat, always wanting to smell your fingers before they allow you to pet them. He sniffed at me two or three times, and then, convinced, returned to my book shelves.
I watched him from the third person perspective, touching and handling my possessions. The spines of my books, previously flush with one another, were being left uneven and messy. Piles of papers would end up lop-sided and disheveled. Every thing he touched, I could FEEL his finger prints left behind, as if I was the item in question, and seeing the way he handled them left me feeling dirty and sticky and in need of a shower.
He returned twice more to my bedside to look me over, to sniff at me. And on his third visit, his closeness made me sneeze. There was a moment where we stared at each other in silence, and then he opened his mouth and screamed. Looking back at the dream, I recognize the sound that he made as "The most angry yell in history" from Anthony Scodary and Nico Benitez's "How to kill a Mocking Bird***", but in the dream I just remember being terrified. I screamed as well, and it was my own scream that woke me up.
* I chose "awakedness" over "wakefulness" here (even though I'm not convinced that it's an actual word) because it sounds similar to "nakedness", and I like the sense of vulnerability that that conveys.
** I have been having a series of bad dreams since roughly mid-December featuring our nation's president elect. I want them to stop.
*** https://youtu.be/fo45o69HaKI?t=228