Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25155808-20140901213758

I've written a creepypasta based around dreams that I've had, and their effect on me. I want an opinion on if it has that scary element to it, or if I should add something in. These dreams are scary to me because i've witnessed them and they're personal to me, but I don't know if they come off the wame way to other people. I just want an opinion.

Thanks, Kayla.







My sleeping habits are very important to me.

First of all, I always sleep with a fan on. It’s white noise. If a fan isn’t available, a T.V or music will suffice for a night, but it’s mostly just noise, and with a T.V comes the flashing glow of something I’m not watching. I always turn T.Vs off. It’s the droning sound of a fan that I prefer. Even in winter nights when I’m shivering under a number of blankets and hoodies, I still have the fan on its medium setting.

Perversely, I always use blankets. Even in the most sweltering summer nights when my restless body struggles to fight off the heat, I have at least a sheet on my legs.

As if I become 100% more vulnerable when I’m sleeping, blankets make me feel safe. And lately, I need to have the blanket covering my head. It provides the same naïve feeling of safeness as when an ostrich sticks its head in the sand to hide. Covering my head is difficult most nights, as if I don’t do it the correct way, I suffocate. I usually pull the edge of the blanket over and underneath my head and tuck it tight between my legs while I’m in a fetal position, so that it creates a pocket for fresh air to enter and for my hot breath to exit.

It also has to be incredibly dark when I sleep. Preferably, so dark that I can’t visually tell the difference between having my eyes open or closed. Most people might prefer some sort of light source to filter in, but it just seems like a bother.

I always sleep on my side. I always have. Any other way seems uncomfortable and awkward.

These habits probably don’t seem very spectacular to most people, as I share these habits with many people. But they’re important to me. I love to sleep, and I love to dream more. My dreams are my favorite place and state to be. It seems as if every dream has its own nostalgic feeling, like remembering an event from your childhood or going back to a place you went many years ago. I relish in them for a day, and usually forget most of them, but there have been a handful that have stuck out, and they’ve stuck out for a reason.

These dreams have evoked in me extreme emotion, sometimes more extreme than I have experienced in my waking life. I’m not sure how it’s possible to experience such potent emotion in a somewhat imaginary mind state. It’s almost as if my mind is filling in the gaps of my human experience. It’s often alarming to be suddenly thrown from such strong emotion and into the throes of normality so quickly, expected to move on as if nothing happened.

I had my first dream like this when I was a child.

'''HELPLESSNESS '''

When I was probably six, I had this nightmare which I refer to as “The paddling ghost dream.” My friends laugh at me when I talk about it and say ‘paddling ghost,’ but it wasn’t funny to me. My sister and I were in a hotel room together, alone, and my parents were in a separate room across the hallway. I lay beside my younger sister clenching the covers and listening to the absolute silence. I hear a smacking noise. It’s the sounds of one of the ghosts holding a bat and smacking it in their hand, hovering through the hallway.

<p class="MsoNormal">There is a noise.

<p class="MsoNormal">I hear them enter my parent’s room and after some loud crashing noises, I hear a disgusting dragging sound just outside my door. I knew that if I were to make any noise at all, they’d be coming for me next, and I lay paralyzed, inhaling and exhaling with absolute caution, in the slowest, most careful breaths I can stand, staring at the ceiling above me.

<p class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t seeing my parents when I woke up that gave me closure, it was drawing pictures of the ghosts and throwing them off the balcony of our apartment. I wouldn’t see them again.

<p class="MsoNormal">'''NOSTALGIA '''

<p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps the first dream I can remember was in my grandparent’s backyard (we used to live with them). I was standing with my grandmother in the yard, looking up on the roof. There were four or five punk teenagers sitting up there, waving around bottles of beer and packs of cigarettes, teasing us. E.T accompanied them, taking part in their underage drinking and smoking and petty rebellion, holding his glowing red finger up in bewilderment among the youth.

<p class="MsoNormal">My grandma shook her finger at them, and my 3 year old self joined her, hands on hips, yelling “Get down from there you dumb teenagers!” hoping to intimidate them. They just laughed and carried on. It was an incredibly sunny day. Big clouds floated around, daring to block out the shine.

<p class="MsoNormal">The special thing about this dream was that it was all in different shades of pink, the color of love and reassurance.

<p class="MsoNormal">'''SICKNESS '''

<p class="MsoNormal">Anybody who lives in the Waterford-Pontiac-Clarkston-Detroit area is probably familiar with Summit Place Mall. What was once a thriving mall, now lies as a sad carcass of a building, sacrificed to the residents to spray their stinking tags about and lay their ruin on the decaying structure.

<p class="MsoNormal">I actually remember being in there when it was busy. I was in one of those kiddie shopping carts, waiting in the Taco Bell line, and running around on the ramps. I think there was a fountain. After a while, stores began to close, and we would still visit, but there were less and less stores open every time we went. Sears was the saving grace, or else it probably would have been shut down much sooner.

<p class="MsoNormal">A couple years before their decline, Summit installed the most magnificent children’s play structure in one of the lobbies. It was a several levels high, had flat screens inside, a huge ball pit, soccer, slides, punching bags, go karts, and much more, I can’t possibly remember it all correctly. I got so excited to go there every time, I could have spent hours in there. My only problem with it was that there was only one entrance, (which was also the exit) and it was very hard to get to. Once you thought you were almost there, there would be a wall blocking your way, or you had to go up some stairs and get down, it seems. It wasn’t easy to get to. This made me anxious when my dad was shouting at me to come out so we could leave. I had to have my parents direct me back to the exit on occasion.

<p class="MsoNormal">When I was probably 8 or 9 I had a dream about the play structure. My parents sat down to eat and told me I could go inside. I crawled inside, looking ahead. When I looked behind me at the door, I was 100 feet up in the air. I climbed some stairs and got to the other side and looked down to see my parents at the table, eating lunch and forgetting about me temporarily. There was nothing I could do. I found my sister, and she was terrified. We both stayed close, at the bottom of a set of stairs, trying to think of a plan. The other kids didn’t seem to notice or care. They continued to romp around the obstacles.

<p class="MsoNormal">We sat there for a long while, and then, a man approached us. His hair was slicked up in some crazy pompadour, and he behaved like a T.V salesman. He asked us, “Do you want to see where we make them?”

<p class="MsoNormal">We didn’t know what he was talking about when he said ‘them,’ but we looked around, and there were things walking around that had the sort of appearance about them like that of Matryoshka dolls, but as if they were plastic inflatables. Reluctantly, we said yes. It was a distraction, and I was curious.

<p class="MsoNormal">He led us up the blue and yellow stairs with a lively “This way!” I stayed close to my sister. Suddenly, we were in an icy cave with two black circles in the ground, soaking up all the light into dark pits. The skinny man, with a cheery smile on his face told us to watch, and things started stirring around the black circles. They started growing upward, into figures. For a while, dolls started forming and swiftly waddling away. But for one time, it took longer for the black circles to form the figures. But this time they didn’t look like the dolls, they looked more like Yetis, and were twice the size. For a few long minutes, they stayed completely still, and the man looked at us with his obligatory smile and asked us what we thought. We didn’t say anything.

<p class="MsoNormal">Abruptly, the yetis started to walk forward and an alarm went off. The man went stoic and told us we couldn’t get out now. I yanked my sisters arm and bolted out the slowly closing doors and kept running without looking back, and when I did look back, the man was running at us with an angry but regretful face, and so were the yetis, but there were much more of them now. Somehow, I found my way to where the exit was supposed to be, but it wasn’t there. It just closed up. It was a wall now.

<p class="MsoNormal">I looked around and it made sense to me that one of the other spots was the exit. But it was a very small hole we had to squeeze through. The monsters were getting closer and I ran to that spot, and pushed my sister through. I didn’t care if we’d fall. It was better than having to deal with whatever the monsters had in store for us. I started my way through the red foam. It crushed my head. I withdrew and looked back. They had another kid by the ankles, looking at me. I moved as quickly as I could forward into the hole, and I was back on the ground. I told my parents I wanted to go.

<p class="MsoNormal">I woke up that morning with a fever that would last at least a week and a half. I didn’t have any symptoms the night before.

<p class="MsoNormal">'''BEWILDERMENT '''

<p class="MsoNormal">It’s alarming sometimes, how willing we are to believe what happens in our dreams. Sometimes, it’s disappointing to wake up, if your dream was about being able to fly, or gaining a new ability or meeting someone new. Sometimes, it’s a relief.

<p class="MsoNormal">When I was younger I dreamt that I was in a big red barn, and there was a dentist hanging over my head, face mask and uniform in order. He stared at me for a while with confused expressions, and began cursing at me. I had done something, and he was mad about it. After some condescending remarks and loud swears and finger wags, he gave me a pocket mirror to show me what he’d done. The order of my teeth was reversed. My molars were where my front teeth should be, and my front teeth stuck in the back of my mouth.

<p class="MsoNormal">I fussed and writhed in the reclined dentist chair and demanded he put it back, and then I screamed at the top of my lungs and I was awake. I sat up from my pillow as quick as I could and started shoving my fingers in my mouth to make sure my teeth were all where they were supposed to be, while I waited for my heart rate to go down. I’ve been de-sensitized to dentists.

<p class="MsoNormal">'''DEFEAT '''

<p class="MsoNormal">In a dream that happened almost exactly two years ago now, my dream began from waking up from shock. I had been shot in the side. Looking around, I was in a store in the mall. There were dead families all around me, enshrouded in blood and loose body matter. There were infants that had been shot in the head. I couldn’t find words to say. Only some fast, choked panting made it out of my mouth before the perpetrators of this repulsive mess made it to my surviving body. They casually remarked to themselves what a gory mess they had made as they looked around.

<p class="MsoNormal">One of the women looked down into my eyes, with an un-deterred countenance. She extended her arm further and further until she reached my stomach, and tore my organs from my sick body with her bare hands, and my vision faded almost completely before I was awake.

<p class="MsoNormal">At 3 A.M I lay awake for an hour trying to text my friends to distract myself before I went back to sleep. More (but comparatively forgettable) nightmares followed.

<p class="MsoNormal">'''FEAR '''

<p class="MsoNormal">My memory of how this dream began is blurred. My step mother, my boyfriend Jacob and I were walking out of a museum. We were quietly intending to steal something, but it turns out that they either didn’t have what we were looking for, or it simply didn’t exist, so we left.

<p class="MsoNormal">We walked out of the building in disappointment, back to our car, making small talk with each other.

<p class="MsoNormal">I turned my head over my shoulder, and saw a man in jeans and a flannel shirt and messy black hair coming toward us at a respectable speed. He had a gun.

<p class="MsoNormal">In one of those blockbuster slow-motion scenes, he pulls the gun from his pocket, and clamps the shiny black instrument with both hands, pointing it at our collective group with a flustered and anxious face, showing his teeth, and advancing in speed. He wasn’t going to let up.

<p class="MsoNormal">Animal instincts took over me, and I booked it to a car, any car I could get into. Jacob was tailing right alongside of me and I trusted that my step mother was following behind, but I was wrong. She had been shot. I couldn’t go back for her.

<p class="MsoNormal">Jacob let me into the car first, and I scrambled with shaking limbs, not going fast enough. He looked behind the car, and must have seen him coming. He made a movement that shut the door. I screamed his name from the top of my lungs, like I never screamed before and begged in those short three or four seconds to get into the car, trying to open up the door. I didn’t want him to try to fight the man off. I saw his face one more time. He looked at me from outside the window and screamed my name, put his hand up, and I saw him fall to the ground. I screamed for him one last time, trying to leer around the window to see if he was alive. Before I could get a glance of him, the gun man appeared at the window.

<p class="MsoNormal">I retreated to the middle seat farther from the window, when I couldn’t will myself to move any more.

<p class="MsoNormal">The man looked at me through the window with a dead, crazy stare with the gun pointed at me.

<p class="MsoNormal">I tried to stay still, but I couldn’t stop shaking. I was breathing as fast as I ever did. I quietly sobbed. I knew he was going to hurt me. I didn’t do anything. I was innocent, and so were my step mom and my boyfriend. I covered my face and wish he wouldn’t do it. I was helpless, and even if he didn’t kill me, I knew that my life wouldn’t ever be the same. I mourned and sobbed for what seemed like entire minutes, before I heard a blunt gunshot.

<p class="MsoNormal">I woke up, lying on my back, with the covers off of me, light from the open window flooding in, fan muted. My eyes opened gently. I stared, and started to cry.

<p class="MsoNormal">It felt so real, as if I’d actually just experienced the gruesome loss of two important people in my life. Like I had been targeted. Even though it was imaginary, this dream was one of the most visceral experiences I ever had.

<p class="MsoNormal">The entire day, I was scared to do anything. I didn’t want to go outside. I couldn’t stop remembering it. It haunted. It teased. It hovered. It lingered in my mind. I was on edge until the very moment I fell asleep the next night.

<p class="MsoNormal">I have to wonder how dreams can feel so real, when we’re in them. How easily the feelings we undergo can be tucked away with our memories of actual events. How when we sleep, we go to a completely different place, where an infinite number of new things could happen to us, things that our waking mind would think impossible.

<p class="MsoNormal">My dreams give me peace, joy, contentment and new experiences and new ideas to think about in the morning. They’ve inspired me to create new artwork and to think differently.

<p class="MsoNormal">My dreams give me terror, discomfort, fear, and skepticism. They make me cry. They make me paranoid for hours. They put me in terrible moods. They make me feel sick.

<p class="MsoNormal">For a long time, I’ve viewed my dreams as separate entities, like they’re disembodied from me. They aren’t.

<p class="MsoNormal">My mind is the one who scares me, the one who makes me feel sick, the one who provides peace and new thoughts. It isn’t different from me. I’m the one who has these thoughts. The only difference is that I can’t pick up on them with my conscious mind.

<p class="MsoNormal">I have twisted thoughts. I have terrible scenarios waiting to be played out in there. And I’ll never know what they’ll be, or when they’ll come to visit me in my sleep. <ac_metadata title="HELPLESSNESS, NOSTALGIA, SICKNESS, BEWILDERMENT, DEFEAT, FEAR"> </ac_metadata>