The first nightmare I ever had (approx. 1995)

I was an innocent little 5-yr-old, walking down the hallway of our humble home, and there happened to be one of my mom's dresses hanging on a hanger on the door frame; she must have put it there to dry. As I approached the dress I felt a sense of fear.

Suddenly as I got cloesr to the dress, it started to rapidly twitch and move, as if controlled by a ghost, and emit an ugly sound -- "wauwauwauwauw" -- that quickly oscillated up and down.

I probably woke up crying. I had never seen any horror movies prior to this experience, so my mind is probably like Stephen King's.

Scary nightmare: "Leg in bed" -- Do not read if easily scared

So I'm having sex with some random girl in my bed when all of a sudden my suitemate Chris returns to the apartment. He announces "Hi Max!" so I quickly jump out of bed and close/lock the door before he sees us.

At this point I look at my bed and notice that there is some protrusion, that looks somewhat like someone's leg, dangling out from under the covers with the foot just touching the floor.

I get closer to it and verify that it is indeed the girl's leg.

Wait a minute... the girl had already gotten out of bed and was standing next to the bed, not IN my bed... WTF WHOSE LEG IS THAT THEN? And how did he/she get into my bed without either of us noticing?

I walk towards the protruding leg... and BOOM I am thrown across the room with great force and my body slams into the opposite wall. The covers fly everywhere and I can't really get a good look at the evil leg, or whatever owns that leg. But I know it's a bad thing.

I get that ticklish feeling in my left armpit like someone is poking me in the ribs (very characteristic of my nightmares ever since I was 3). Waking up is very uncomfortable.

The Shrieker

At a department store

Girl cries out

We go see what's wrong

She said she saw/heard something resembling a Shrieker.

"Yeah, Shriekers are the worst..." someone remarks.

But everyone is convinced that nothing is wrong, including myself. She was just seeing things. We reassure her. Plus, with all these nice people around me I feel very safe. I never expected any evil creature to appear at this moment...

All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I see a HEADLESS, NAKED MAN sprinting towards us from behind the aisles, at 70 miles per hour! The Shrieker unleashes a blood-curdling scream. We're all fucked.

I don't even have time to dodge. He runs into me first. At the instant of contact I feel my body turn cold, and the nightmare-spasms begin. Sleep paralysis lasts about 20 seconds before I wake up with a deep breath.

face book nightmare

The following is not a nightmare about facebook, but a nightmare involving a face and a book.

Setting: Library/laboratory/hospital. There are bookshelves and study desks, but also flasks, test tubes, and sinks.

I'm sitting at a table with four people just chatting. Nearby, a woman is standing near a bookshelf and flipping through its books, looking for something.

Suddenly the woman at the bookshelf becomes motionless. Her back is turned towards us and she is still facing the bookshelf, but she is frozen.

"Hey, are you okay?" I yell. Upon further inspection I discover that she is leaning forward slightly, her face turned to the side and stuck to one of the books. Her right cheek had literally been glued to the cover of one of the books on the shelf. She does not respond. She needs immediate medical attention. The first step would be to get that book off the shelf. But who is up for the task? Moving the book from its current position could potentially REVEAL SOME EXTREMELY GROSS THINGS. The girls who were sitting at my table take notice of the situation and gather around the bookshelf in curiosity. Alas, I realize that I am the only man nearby; gender stereotypes kick in and I know I have to be the one that moves the book from the bookshelf.

But the situation is really scary. "Don't look at the book," I tell myself. So instead of using my hand to move the book like a real man would, I display a great feat of flexibility as I lean back, lift my foot up high, and poke that book with my toe. As the book falls off the shelf, it rips free from the woman's melted face. her body drops onto the floor, lifeless, the entire right side of her face nothing but black charred flesh. Unfortunately, I cannot avoid looking at the book. On it, the gelatinous goopy remains of her melted face stare back at me.

"Nightmare climax" having been achieved, I now experience the familiar (and extremely unpleasant) symptoms of coming out of a nightmare. The muscle spasms. The ticklish feeling. The overwhelming fear. And, to top it off, a hallucination of a crossbreed between a skull and a fat guy's face, which is laughing at me.

Finally, I gain control of my snoring muscles and let out the loudest snore I have ever made, thereby waking myself up.

another nightmare

I come downstairs and my dad asks me where my sister went.

I look around the whole room but I can't find her.

I peer over the top of a coffee mug to see if she is inside that, but she is not inside the coffee mug. Anyway, I have no idea why I looked inside a coffee mug for a girl about 1,000 times its size; perhaps it was because I was high in the dream (in the dream, not in real life! lol)

But then oh, suddenly Christine is right there, sitting in her usual dinner table seat. I point that out to my father, "Christine's right there."

He looks in her general direction, laughs and shakes his head, and CONTINUES TO LOOK FOR CHRISTINE.

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! i scream and wake up uncomfortably.

Shower dream

I'm taking a shower in my apartment when I notice a mirror.

"Wait a minute I don't remember our shower room having a mirror," I think to myself. Oh well, must be bad memory, says my dream logic. "Wait a minute I don't see myself in the mirror," I think to myself, suddenly alarmed. Oh well, must be because I am hidden behind the curtains, says my dream logic (even though I have a clear line of sight to the mirror).

So I go on with showering and stuff, squeezing some gelatinous wine from a glass wine bottle into my hands and lathering up my hair with the red substance... the usual, you know.

I am still kind of worried about the whole mirror thing. So I look at the mirror again and I can't see myself. I step out from behind the curtains and I see myself. Alright, nothing wrong there. I step back behind the curtains and then back out again -- again, I see myself, no probl-- wait what OH MY GOD, WHY ARE THERE TWO OF ME IN THE MIRROR, ONE OF THEM IS MY OWN REFLECTION BUT THE OTHER IS OPENING THE SHOWER DOOR TO EXIT THE SHOWER ROOM, I KNEW THIS WAS A NIGHTMARE AHHHHHH

So then I get the usual nightmare spasms, strange heart patterns etc, in an extremely difficult and prolonged process of waking up.

Thriller Dream (with turret guns)

Many of you who have thriller dreams probably call them "nightmares." Personally, I love thriller dreams; they are fun. Nightmares are not happy; they scare you, make you wake up, make you spasm, make you "sleep terror" when you open your eyes but can't move any other muscle... but thriller dreams? Ultimate action/horror movie!

Which is why I thought it was really funny when I remembered the last (actually the first in my dream's chronological order) detail of my dream: That I rejoined AiR (artists in resonance, acapella group I dropped out of) and was singing "Thriller" by Michael Jackson.

I was inside a crowd of people, dancing along with them to the choreography of Thriller (which I never quite got down). I quickly realized that the people in this crowd were not AiR members.

Looking in front of me, I saw all the actual AiR members across from us, dancing the correct choreography in front of us so that we -- the ignorant crowd -- could learn the moves. I also noticed that there weren't just AiR members teaching us the moves: even the little brothers and sisters of AiR members were dancing to Thriller (though they kept looking backwards to check if they were doing the right moves).

...Somehow, one of the people in my crowd went all crazy and sparked some series of events that led to the following series of events...



We are inside a huge skyscraper on a rather high floor. Some evil woman has managed to gather everyone up inside a dark room -- my friend David is pretty much the only guy I can recognize beside me (the AiR members have disappeared from this scene). The evil woman is going to kill us.

She activates motion sensor laser beams that slowly sweep the room, scanning for any signs of motion. These are accompanied, of course, by machine gun turrets that suddenly pop out of the walls. Everyone cowers in fear and remains still. I am shaking as the laser beam glides across my body in search of movement.

Finally, the gun turrets begin to retract. However, the lasers are still out. Having played too many computer games, I know intuitively that as long as the motion sensor is still out, the gun turrets will magically pop out and shoot at us when any motion is detected. Others do not share my belief, and before I can yell "stay still!" they begin to shuffle restlessly.

Having only seconds to react, I think only for myself (as I always do in my dreams) and RUN THE FUCK OUT OF THE ROOM, which is probably what ACTUALLY triggers the gun turrets. I discover that there are more turrets outside of the room, placed strategically and at regular intervals on the ceiling and walls. Again, having played too many computer games, I intuitively know that gun turrets can take up to 5 seconds to lock on to a target before actually firing. This is probably why I am able to traverse the hall and set off the alarm beeps of several machine guns without actually being shot at even once.

I make my way to the elevator and stairs, but I am met by a closed gate -- similar to the gates one sees in small shops at the mall when they close. Fortunately, the door to my right leads to a side-room that bypasses the gate. I enter this room and exit through the other door, finding myself on the opposite side of the gate. "What an easy puzzle," I think to myself.

The stairs and elevator are right in front of me and I happily run towards -- whoa, what? There's a random hottie running from the OPPOSITE end of the hallway that I came from! She must have escaped, just like me, but from an entirely different room. The elevator reads "G" so we're like "fuck dat shit" and take the stairs.

There are gun turrets on the stairs, too, but we are adept at leaping down stairs quickly, so the guns do not have time to lock on. As we leap down the stairs, I ask, "What's your name?" She says, "Max." "OH REALLY ME TOO!!!!!"

We reach the bottom edge of the stairs and exit the building through a door nearby. It is nighttime. My car is parked in the parking lot. I take out my BMW keys, expecting her to get in the car with me so we can escape (and then have sex), but I am disappointed when she gets out her own key, hops into her Corvette, and zooms away.

I get inside my BMW. Somehow, people are already outside. David calls me a "hjomo," as he often does in real life. One zombie-looking guy lumbers along, sees me through the windshield of my car, and yells "FUCK YOU!" slamming my windshield. Apparently, these people are very mad at me for having ditched them in the dark room scene. Perhaps some people died to the gun turrets after all. I hastily drive away.

While driving, I experience "dream driving" (having to press down the brakes super hard just to stop quickly enough at a red light, overshooting the pedestrian line by almost 10 feet, etc.), and I wonder if I am somehow drunk.

Some very, very interesting shit happens here that I cannot remember. I think it involves people trying to kill me.



Now I am walkin' along, walkin' along Santa Rita Road on the sidewalk adjacent to Amador Valley High School. It is broad daylight, but no time seems to have passed. I ask a passing jogger if he knows anything about my situation, or if he knows why everyone is trying to kill me. He tells me to fuck myself.

Now I am walkin' along, tight walkin' along the top edge of the chain-link black fence that runs across the sidwalk adjacent to Amador Valley High School. I spot my friend in a small group of people hanging out on the sidewalk. He has grungy long white hair, seems stoner-ish, and does not exist in real life. But he is my friend, who shall henceforth by known as "David" (in further interpretation I have concluded that this is the white stoner version of David). I walk along the fence, up to this group of people. Most people hurl insults at me.

I begin to ask David why everyone wants to kill me. As I do this, I lose my balance on the fence and fall towards the ground, but David stabilizes me with a helping hand. This moves me, because he is the only person that would ever do that; everyone else just wants to kill me. I forget my burning question, and simply tell him, "You are my only friend."

Then, freakishly and randomly, David points his finger at the sand on the ground (yes, pretend there is sand on the ground on the sidewalk) and lifts it using telekinetic powers. He draws two large footprints in the sand without ever touching it, and says, "I can curse people like this."

I express my confusion, so he continues, "I am cursing your age, meaning that everyone who is about as old as you will die off. It's already happening; it's making people insane and they're killing each other."

One boy in the group randomly shoots his girlfriend.

"See?" says David. "The only way to stop the effect is by killing yourself. These people want you dead, and my curse is helping them achieve that goal."

I become frightened. The only reason I can think of for all of this madness is that people must be extremely angry that I set off the turret alarms back in that dark room and ditched them. Something tells me the evil woman is also involved in this plot to have me kill myself.

But before I can even react or respond to this, Mr. Hanson (my high school math teacher) walks back to the group with a pistol. He intends to kill everyone in this group to stop the madness and the dying, to stop the effects of David's "cursing someone's age," to stop things from spreading beyond the group -- such as the random boy shooting his girlfriend.

Everyone freaks out and wrestles for the gun, but Mr. Hanson maintains hold of it. He skillfully and quickly begins firing, shooting one person at a time, putting one bullet into each person's body. Everyone runs radially outward, including myself, but most are already dead.

When he aims at me, I hit the deck at a superhuman speed (not as fast as a bullet, but faster than Mr. Hanson's reaction time) and perform the most astonishing dodge ever known to mankind, and Mr. Hanson misses his shot for the first time.

Then he shoots me in the head.

Everything goes dark dark. But at least I can visualize the words "25 degrees Celsius" in my head. I thought: as long as I am thinking, I am not dead. I wake up.