The wind blows or a mouse stirs, and the shutter that bangs against
the house or the Jello package that teeters from a shelf in the pantry
becomes the monster in the closet. You turn over in your sleep and
the bedding becomes the spider’s web across your face, the pillow
is the wall that blocks your escape from the nightmare. And you are
trapped as the wind gusts or the mouse skitters around, or that silky
jacket that was haphazardly tossed on the arm of a chair succumbs
to gravity’s pull and slides to the floor making a sound similar to a
knife slipping from a sheath or a sword being loosed for carnage.
It is the dreams that cause you to spring from your sleep, with heart
pounding and sweat upon the flesh, your mind still racing from the
chase of unimagined demons through a landscape that you fail to
recognize. They are seed of the next great horror, chair-gripping
terror from the latest creator of mind-boggling, imagined panic, and
yet, they seemed so real, and you resolve to stay awake until all is
normal again in the safe little world in which you live, awake.
You sit and wonder where came that dream and why you chanced
to dream it. On the surface, it makes no sense to your well ordered
life and doesn’t fit in the strictly structured schedule of daily events.
And so, you reject it as complete nonsense, and yet, the pounding
within your chest still has not abated. Puzzlement soon turns into
curiosity, and examination is urgently applied, generally, at first,
and then in more detail, in search of that which would connect the
dream to you. To have caused such a reaction, surely there must
have been a connection. If not obviously, then one minute detail.
When you entered the dream, you might have been sitting next to a
relative, sharing some popcorn, watching a show. Came a sound,
the clap of thunder, perhaps, startling, unnervingly close. You both
rise to look out the window. You separate, you go to get a flashlight,
your relative to get a candle, and as you come back to the room, the
mouse scampers across the floor, his toenails gripping the hard wood
flooring in a sound similar to a bolt of lightning burning its way to
the rooftop. The shutter bangs again, the thunder cracks, the mouse
turns the corner, the electricity fails and the TV goes off with a sizzle.
All in darkness, you grip the flashlight for security as a movement
across the room catches your attention.
You call out to your relative, expecting the calming assurance of their
response, but the dream does not play to your pleasure. You turn on
the flashlight and shine it at the person across the room, only to find
yourself face to face with someone you do not know, someone you
have never known, someone you believe is the monster from the
closet. You turn and run, perhaps dropping the flashlight, because
there is no use for it, anymore. Somewhere along your flight path,
you are joined by a sibling or a friend, but in your panic, you don’t
question from whence they came, registering only that you both
must escape, together. The monster nears and you spring ahead,
but hesitate to leave your slower companion behind. Pleading with
them to hurry, you turn and reach back to help them along the way,
but your companion has mysteriously disappeared, and the monster
is in their place.
You shriek and the sound carries from your dream to the real world
and awakens you to a state of panic you could not have imagined.
With the storm still raging outside, you dare to check every dark and
shadowy corner of your room. The monster, there was a monster,
where is the monster, now? Even better, yet, who was the monster?
Could it have been the relative who sat watching the show, sharing
the popcorn with you? Could it have been a relative who betrayed
your trust, and so, is symbolized as a monster in your dreams? And
did your companion join in your flight because they, too, had been
a victim? Or had your companion become the monster, too, because
you felt they, also, had betrayed you in the end?
Of all the mysteries in the world, perhaps the dreams are the most
perplexing, due in part that they are ever present and inescapable,
and that the nature of the message is in the form of rhyme and riddle.
For who can close their eyes and enter the land of sleep without risk
of dreaming, nightmares notwithstanding, then voice reason to the
unfamiliar puzzles that we are shown? And who can say that dreams
are just the creative side of the mind turned loose in the maze of
sleepland or stress reflections of life as it affects us, or perhaps the
explanation of events what reasons eluded us at the moments they
happened? For all their bother, dreams and nightmares exist, as do
all other things, for a reason, though possibly unknown to us. But
the bumps in the night and the monster in the closet are real, if not
disguised, the things or people from which no one is safe, and are
the constant reminders that evil exists and we need be ever vigilant.
Then again, there are those who make a very good living on all that
sends goose bumps over the arms and chills up the spine. Perhaps, I
should keep a diary and cash in on my sleeping terrors, write it all
down upon waking, before the plot evaporates with the sweat on my
flesh, while the pounding of my heart is still keeping pace with the
hurried footsteps in the dark. And those who pay to read or see that
which I dread to dream would be most welcome to pay me.
