The Dreams

I've been having bad dreams since returning home - horrible nightmares. It's been getting worse lately, especially since the break in.

They all seem incredibly real. All of them begin with waking up, and they'll go on for what feels like hours. For this whole section of the dream, it might as well be my real life. I'll start going to work, or doing something around the house before something odd happens. I guess "odd" is the right word for it. I'll come back into the kitchen and cockroaches and ants will have swarmed in the middle of my kitchen. Or someone on the street will start calling my name. Time will jump several hours. Something weird will happen, like some small part of the real world has broken. Some inconsistency with reality occurs.

At this point, it's like being in an elevator that suddenly stops. You can't see it, but you feel it through your whole body that your environment has changed.

A while after the break, the world will start to fill with water. If I'm outside, it seeps up from the grass and the sewers like there's a massive broken pipe somewhere. If I'm inside, it will pour from the cabinets and drawers and cracks in the ceiling. The attic door will drop open from the weight, and gush water into the hallway. My car will start to pump it out of the vents, filling the car. It starts off slowly, but soon it is unavoidable and I can feel how cold it is. I can feel my clothes start to stick to me with wetness. I see, hear, feel, and smell it happening as though it's real. My rational mind rails against it, but my senses tell it this is happening. It's impossible not to be terrified.

People start coming up from the water. They're not zombies, or dead. They're just people. My mother; my father; my uncle; Marissa; the librarian; Pastor Charles; old teachers... Anyone from that town in the past. The people come toward me, soaking wet like someone who has just come up from a baptism. When the dream takes place in my house, they walk out of the bedrooms and closets. At first, they slowly approach me, like maybe they hope that I won't run. Maybe I'll welcome them. When I'm outside, I try to run and they chase me.

Like I said, it's all very realistic; It's not like you'd expect in a dream like this. I can run, and a lot of times I'm faster than they are. I've even seemingly gotten away from them, but the water level keeps rising. It rises until I can't stand and touch the bottom any more. Until whole buildings are sunk under the flow of the water, and, like a flood survivor you see on the news, I end up huddled on a building or on some floating debris somewhere. The whole world around me is swept away and I'm stranded.

The dreams all end the same way. The people from my past always find me, like they're drawn to me. They come out of the water or around the corner. It's not always the same person, but the others are never far behind. They grab me and drag me down into the water and I experience drowning all over again. Only this time, it's not serene like when I drowned in that cursed lake. I'm fighting every minute of it. The bodies of people are holding me down, arms and legs and torsos and faces all holding me in an entangled web. Then, even though I should be getting deeper, the sound and turbulence increases. Bubbles start frothing around me and then like I'm being spewed out of a drainpipe, I awaken.

Like I said, I haven't slept for more than five minutes at a time, but somehow these full, detailed dreams occur when I close my eyes. I drink all the coffee and Monster Energy drinks I can to stay awake, and then Alcohol, Ambien, whatever just to try to sleep deep enough not to dream. Nothing works. Every time it's the same terrifying feeling of sinking, being closed-in on, and drowning.