[published a few days later but largely unedited for authentic post-nightmare vibes]
Don’t fall asleep with your hands behind your head (I can only assume I woke up, consciously shifted to this position, and then immediately nodded off again) or you’ll have a nightmare that:
- Starts with you visiting a friend’s house and accidentally taking a blurry photo of yourself looking off camera
- Sees you later return to that house to find they’ve developed and framed all the film, including the weird accident.
- When something startles you and you quickly look around (I know, this bullet point doesn’t continue the list, sorry, it’s 4am and I’ve just had a nightmare, I can’t think straight), your face will pass through the pose in the framed photo and get stuck like that.
- You’ll wake up from one level of nightmare into another where you’re unable to shout (for a combination of your partner and mum, I’m not ashamed to admit (because I was still dreaming so it doesn’t count anyway)).
- This layer of nightmare is a realistic one—I was in the room I was actually sleeping in etc—but with key altered details (my bedroom door hinged at the other side of the doorway) that will just add to the horror (the door, closer to me in this dream than it is in real life, started to close, prompting me to frantically try to scream in two other languages (this was somehow important to get people’s attention and/or free my stuck face).
- In this dream level, you’ll also need a drink (real-life me was a bit dehydrated, having had a couple drinks the night before) but when you try to fill your wattle bottle up, the tap terrifyingly spews out the same milky light-blue liquid that somehow featured in another layer of the dream.
- Terror and chaos ensue until you finally actually wake up to realise that thirst, having both hands behind your head, and very warm feet (went to sleep with socks on and they were now roasting) have all led to your considerable distress, and you have to find some way to calm yourself (like popping onto FB to reply to a comment, and then drafting a blog post (albeit one about the nightmare which kinda forces you to relive it again)) before you can try to go back to sleep.
Hope you got all that. Sleep tight out there!
- (4:15 add on) I’ve just remembered one of the drinks I had was a delicious Guinness cold brew coffee beer, and as someone who never drinks coffee, it’s safe to assume this could’ve played a part in my unusual terror (definitely one of my scarier nightmares, as impossible as its horror is to actually describe)
My name is Skylance 