Bad Dreams

Sometimes we all have nightmares. The common ones, in which, someone or something is chasing us and we just can't run fast enough or we're running in place, but just before the monster gets us, we wake up!

My nightmares go beyond the normal. In one that dream that reoccurred frequently, I was lying in my bed in my room. Everything seemed very real as if I wasn't even asleep. There is a perfect square of light on my closet door from the street light that shines through the bedroom window. 

The square of light begins to glow from inside, it is no longer just a flat plane of light, it is an opening. The light changes and seems to be mixed with mist or fog. I feel paralyzed. I am lying on my back with the sheet tucked firmly around my body. The sheet makes me feel protected.

As I watch the square of light. I see shadows moving within it. They become darker with more substance and I see many separate dark forms taking shape in the light that has somehow become a door or a portal. The forms begin to climb out of the light. 

I see them struggling to squeeze themselves through the opening one leg or arm at a time. The things coming through the portal are nothing like things that one would see in this world. They are monstrous, mean and evil. The air in the room is thick with their irreverent presence.

Soon there are so many in the throng that surrounds my bed that I can hardly see the patch of light on the closet door. I can actually feel the heat from their bodies and their fetid breath is making it hard to breathe. 

They laugh at and taunt me. Pointing the parts of their bodies that pass for fingers. I know if I move they will be able to grab me. My stillness and the protective sheet are all that is keeping me out of their grasp.

The taunts are meant to make me leave the safety of my cocoon, but I know better. I shut my eyes, but their laughter is a cacophony. I am trembling and sweating. Their presence is so heavy that they are pushing the air from the room. I breathe shallowly, gasping to get enough oxygen. 

Then as if of one mind, they begin to file back through the portal. I can turn my head up and back and see that the sky outside my window is beginning to lighten, daylight is breaking. The shadows in my room are receding and the light on the door grows dim as the last of the hideous beings begins to clamor through. 

This one resembles most closely a huge, lumbering bear with a great, gaping mouth and over-sized teeth that run with saliva. It slathers down his chin and pools in the dirty, tufts of hair that cover is misshapen body. He's been sitting in a small rocker near my bed throughout the ordeal, rocking like a madman.

He turns and looks at me one last time as he disappears through the portal. Suddenly, I am awake. I'm still soaking from the profuse sweating, but I am relieved to be awake. i look around the room and it is exactly as in my dream. The sky outside is growing lighter and in the corner, the rocker is beginning to slow it's maddening pace..