Nightmare
I had a bad dream this morning, and as with all my nightmares, it was on a screen. I can’t remember ever having a nightmare that wasn’t on a screen. For whatever reason, my brain copes with the REALLY scary dreams as a movie or a TV show, but the show always eventually escapes the screen and becomes reality. The first one I remember clearly was me watching something a little too scary on TV. I tried to change the channel, but the scary show was on EVERY channel. I turned the TV off, but the scary show was STILL on the screen. I unplugged the TV, but the scary show remained.

So then I tossed the TV out the window. When the TV shattered, it released the scary show and then it was real. Then I was really fucked.

I’ve been having versions of this dream for the last 20 years. In the dream last night, I was watching a movie in which a crowd of people at an outdoor ballet fell into a crack in the earth that resulted from a volcanic eruption. Then Andreas–who had not been in the dream before this point–turns to me and says “Maybe you don’t want to watch this next part–it’s kind of scary.”

“Good idea,” I nod. “What happens?”
“Well, all the people who died at the ballet come back–I know how you are about dead people.”
“Right,” I say, and decide to go to a cafe to have some hot chocolate. I’m hurrying, because I REALLY don’t want to see the scene where are the dead people come back, but I slow to a walk by reminding myself “It’s just a movie, silly. It’s not like it ACTUALLY happens here, just on the screen!”

Naturally, on the way to the cafe, I’m suddenly surreounded by a classroom’s worth of dead children. The movie had been an 1800s period piece, so it’s sort of burlesque: the children have white faces and black lips. Nothing super scary about them. But, remember that I’m a serious Necrophobic–dead things terrify me even if they’re not decomposing or very scary looking.

I start trying to run, thinking “oh NO! The movie has escaped! The dead people are EVERYWHERE!” Of course my running isn’t getting me anywhere: the slowly marching dead children (who are singing a sad durge by this point) are walking faster than I am.

Then I woke up.