User blog comment:ShawnCognitionCP/Dreams/@comment-26112985-20161116044410

Exactly one pasta that I have written was explicitly inspired by dreams. That being Shared Blood Runs Thick. Most stories I've written contain elements from dreams, Crucifix being the best example of this, but "Blood" was the only one which was strongly birthed from dream content. The dream itself, I remember, entailed me being in a boat. I was alone, for some reason, and extremely paranoid. Something about the situation was horribly wrong, but I didn't know what. Then, I saw a drop of blood hit the deck. I looked up, and I noticed, with a shock, that the clouds were red. Then I woke up.

I must admit, however, that Tom Araya was the one who fully cemented in my mind what I was going to do.

I've found that I can typically put my nightmares into three categories for the most part. The first category is animals, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, usually end up attacking me. This I can't explain, as I don't have any sort of irrational fear of animals or nature at all. The second category includes something larger or scarier than me chasing me. Not an animal, but rather, a goliath, a god, or another person. The third kind of nightmare I typically have, I've found, is by far the scariest. With the first two, animals and gods chasing after me, while both are terrifying, are very straightforward. The threats are well defined and clear from the beginning.

That's where the third and worst category kicks in. The dreams of the unknown. Sometimes, I don't even realize what the threat is until I've woken up and had a cup of coffee and a scrambled egg. Then I realize... "Hey.... wait a minute! Why were those tentacles coming in through the window?" Or, "Why were the walls covered in human flesh?" Because I was in a state of warped reality, I didn't even realize anything was wrong. Of course, that feeling of constant unease is there, in the dream. And that is perhaps the worst possible feeling you can have while asleep. At least when something is chasing you, you know what the threat is. With this, anything could be the threat and you won't even realize it. Nothing is safe. Think of the dream with involving the bull and the matador making love that I referenced in my last blog.

With this in mind, three nightmares I've had in the past come to light, each fitting into it's own of the three categories. These are, indeed, the three scariest and most frightening nightmares I've ever had.

The first category is animals. When I had this dream, I was no more than six years old. My family and I had just gotten back from Peru in South America, and we were staying in my Grandfather's mountain house. I remember I hated my room because when the lights were out, the lamp on my nightstand looked suspiciously like a monkey (Yes, seriously). I used to stare at it every night before I went to bed, praying that it wouldn't come to life.

Unfortunately, one night, it did.

What made this so completely shit your pants terrifying was just how real this dream was. I was completely and utterly convinced for years that this actually happened, and it wasn't until I was around ten years old that I realized that it was, in fact, just a nightmare.

In my dream, I was lying down, in my bed. The lights were off and I was staring at that godawful lamp/monkey once again, praying for it not to come awake. Then, suddenly, it started raising it's arms and screaming at me with chimp noises through the darkness. I shot out of my bed, quite literally, no longer dreaming, but I could still hear the ape in my own mind. I convinced myself it was real as I ran down the stairs and jumped into my mother and father's bed.

The second dream was one of the only one's I've experienced where I literally screamed myself awake. There's no backstory to this one like there was on the first one. This one was very simple.

God was in the sky, and she (Yeah, she. When I was a little kid, I always imagined God as a She, don't ask me why,) was trying to kill me. I was running all about my town, breaking into people's houses to try and escape her wrath. God just laughed, striking down the houses with thunderbolts at her perch in the clouds. I just kept running, but eventually, ran out of energy and could only scream as loudly as I could as God's hand reached for me, hence waking myself.

Now for the third and worst dream I've ever had. This one, too, has a backstory. Again, when I was a kid, my mom and dad were watching a documentary on a family that has endured many assassinations. It might've been the Kennedys, but I'm not sure. Anyways, I happened to walk out of the bathroom and into their viewing zone just as the aftermath of an assassination was shown. What struck me most about the picture, and what sent me screaming, out of the room, was the pale texture of the skin, and the way the blood almost seemed to run out of the eyes of the victims.

That night, I dreamed I was in a city. Everyone there was like the assassination victims, except they were alive and walking. Their faces chalky white, blood running from their eyes. Once they saw me, they started to stalk me. I wouldn't use the word pursue, but they certainly followed me from a distance. Some of them grinned eerily at me. I began to break into a run through the city, looking for a place to escape the things, but they are everywhere.

I find a car, eventually, that I planned to escape in, where I can get way from all these people, with their strange faces and leering smiles.

I caught my reflection in the rearview mirror. I saw my own reflection, and my mouth dropped open in shock. My skin was chalk white, and blood was running down from my eyes.

I screamed. Loud. That's another one of the only times I've screamed myself awake.