Entry tags:
Thinly veiled catharsis
My life’s been very nightmare-centric lately - ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nepenthe’s asked me for examples of well-written nightmares in fiction (fan and original and if you can think of any, let me know, I’m stumped), there’s a sequence in a fic I’m betaing that needs to be completely rewritten (the author doesn’t know this yet), I’m putting together a creepycreepy music mix (working title. I really shouldn’t be listening to it right now), bookshop just put up a post about Japanese horror films.
Any/all/none of which led to my nightmare last night, the full package: people being snatched from their beds and hung, murderous ghosts stalking the hallways, my siblings going outside to look for something and never coming back, dog-like things loose with the horses. Set in my childhood home, of course. It ended as I huddled on the couch, curled protectively around a bleeding family dog as a ghost came around the corner and my roommate typed on next to me, oblivious. I woke up gasping all dramatic-like, my heart racing.
Good times, right? I don’t get nightmares very often, fortunately, but I do have frequent bad dreams. Sometimes I’m the leader of a group that just failed to save the world, sometimes I know something bad is coming and no one will believe me, sometimes my magic gives out at a crucial moment, sometimes it’s creepy/warped intimacy, sometimes I’m lost. My issues, let me show you, etc. The difference is that these don’t scare me, they just curdle my gut and ruin my day.
I called my mom on my way to work, because some things you just don’t outgrow. And I wanted to check on Connor (the dog) and the horses. We ended up having a conversation about the nightmares she’s had lately, which were significantly gory-er than mine. Locked in a room and forced to reassemble babies ripped apart by vampires gory (look, I put the warning on the cut for a reason).
Which. Thank you, Mom.
It got me thinking (and finally we arrive at the point), though, about the different genres (for lack of a better word) of nightmares/bad dreams. Mine are very psychological - all about the terrible thing in the corner of your eye, the dark shape at the door, the overwhelming sense that something’s Wrong. There’s little gore. I’m never hurt and very rarely in danger. Mom’s are apparently more bloody (she’s a veterinarian, this makes some sense). Popular media tells me other people dream of falling, or showing up to school naked, or creepy crawlies.
I know it’s not a topic some people want to talk about, but if anyone wants to tell me about their nightmares and/or how they affect their waking life, I’d be, uh. Not grateful...interested? Happy to listen? Something.
Wow, I’m tired. Fucking nightmare.
nepenthe’s asked me for examples of well-written nightmares in fiction (fan and original and if you can think of any, let me know, I’m stumped), there’s a sequence in a fic I’m betaing that needs to be completely rewritten (the author doesn’t know this yet), I’m putting together a creepycreepy music mix (working title. I really shouldn’t be listening to it right now), bookshop just put up a post about Japanese horror films.Any/all/none of which led to my nightmare last night, the full package: people being snatched from their beds and hung, murderous ghosts stalking the hallways, my siblings going outside to look for something and never coming back, dog-like things loose with the horses. Set in my childhood home, of course. It ended as I huddled on the couch, curled protectively around a bleeding family dog as a ghost came around the corner and my roommate typed on next to me, oblivious. I woke up gasping all dramatic-like, my heart racing.
Good times, right? I don’t get nightmares very often, fortunately, but I do have frequent bad dreams. Sometimes I’m the leader of a group that just failed to save the world, sometimes I know something bad is coming and no one will believe me, sometimes my magic gives out at a crucial moment, sometimes it’s creepy/warped intimacy, sometimes I’m lost. My issues, let me show you, etc. The difference is that these don’t scare me, they just curdle my gut and ruin my day.
I called my mom on my way to work, because some things you just don’t outgrow. And I wanted to check on Connor (the dog) and the horses. We ended up having a conversation about the nightmares she’s had lately, which were significantly gory-er than mine. Locked in a room and forced to reassemble babies ripped apart by vampires gory (look, I put the warning on the cut for a reason).
Which. Thank you, Mom.
It got me thinking (and finally we arrive at the point), though, about the different genres (for lack of a better word) of nightmares/bad dreams. Mine are very psychological - all about the terrible thing in the corner of your eye, the dark shape at the door, the overwhelming sense that something’s Wrong. There’s little gore. I’m never hurt and very rarely in danger. Mom’s are apparently more bloody (she’s a veterinarian, this makes some sense). Popular media tells me other people dream of falling, or showing up to school naked, or creepy crawlies.
I know it’s not a topic some people want to talk about, but if anyone wants to tell me about their nightmares and/or how they affect their waking life, I’d be, uh. Not grateful...interested? Happy to listen? Something.
Wow, I’m tired. Fucking nightmare.
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Then in highschool they were... ramped up a notch, I guess? Mostly the effect, even if I can't remember the dream too well, is just a sense of impending doomness, an unease, a sense of dread right in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes it leaves me feeling ill for hours, especially if it involves people I know.
From my dream diaries ::
- and the second... was that I was in some weird game (ie, kill everything that moves) and I killed an "easy" enemy, and then this "hard" enemy came in... and then I was on my knees, and the guy had an axe just above my head, about to slice through my head. So I asked him if he'd decapitate me instead, and he said no... and the axe came down... and then the game skipped or something and I was running down a hallway away from him.
- [dream started out as meeting with a bunch of friends for DnD]
And then, and then something happened. Impending Doom, I guess. Someone (I have the feeling it was Reaps) called up a 'buddy' from a hellish like dimension (it may have been Hell). And then the POV switched to the buddy, who was a demony type chick. She was complaining, or laughing, or something. So she came to our house and talked to me and handed me a trenchcoat and a rather short chain-whip. Turned out The Big Bad was showing up and I had to fight it. I had to protect the house, I think.
So, I was trying to prepare and then - and then the one I had to fight was at the door. I had to protect my friends and the house so I got into the trenchcoat and went through the second lot of doors (into a waiting chamber?). I could see someone at the front door. I turned, going to lock the second doors, but they were already being locked from the inside. Thanks guys, I love you too.
The front door was being knocked on, or being bashed in. Strangely, Cicero never crossed my mind. I hit the door with my chain-whip (which turned straight, like Ivy's), and the person there backed away. I left the house, and the person was... a demon, I guess. She had wings, she was rather sexy, she was stylish, and she had a really big sword.
She was a bit dismayed that I was the person she had to fight, and she goaded me. Apparently I had wings, and this was an aerial fight (it had stopped raining). I asked her to wait for me to get used to flying, or to at least get some altitude (whenever I dream of flying, I can never get altitude). She agreed, and she talked me through flying upwards - it was a great struggle for me. And all this time, she was telling me how easy it was going to be to kill me, and she was laughing at my trenchcoat, and she couldn't believe that I was all she had to get through, and I was struggling to climb up through the air, and I had people to protect, and I didn't know how to use my weapon (I suck at Ivy), and I was going to die and -
My alarm woke me up.
The dread, the horror, the sense of death, it's still clutching my chest.
- I remember another one that had me locked up in a dungeon, and next door I could hear the torturer/executioner sharpening all his blades, and all I could do was just sit there and wait.
- Sometimes I have nightmares about my friends hating me. Just. We're at a party, and it's obvious they don't care about me at all. They can make me feel as uneasy as any of the above ones.
After my mother died, I had frequent dreams involving not-mothers or my parents dying, and while some of them just made me sad, some of them made me feel sick to my stomach:
- I'm reading K.J. Parker's The Company at the moment. One of the characters has nightmares, and is told that when he has a nightmare, he needs to look for a door to escape it, and if there isn't a door there will be a door, he just has to look for it.
Last night I dreamed that -- well, I can't remember exactly. There was a car, I think I was in the back seat, and in the front seat was... something... pretending... to be my mother. And I went: no, this is wrong, I have to find a door, a door will get me out, but there was no door, not even a car door.
I don't recall what happened in the dream after that.
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The other nightmares I've had tend to revolve around me failing somehow; failing at a quest, failing at a job, failing people I care about. I think I know where that particular motif comes from, though.
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