The Hunted

"They promised that dreams can come true-but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams too." ~Oscar Wilde

I bolted awake, a scream lodged in my throat as I searched wildly in the dark room. My eyes caught the clock glowing, daybreak was close. I sat up, doing another, slower sweep of the room, letting my mind anchor to familiar, comfortable things. My heart was still pounding as I repeated in my head over and over, "You're safe. You're safe. Just a dream." Panting as if I'd been running a long, long time, I forced myself to breathe slower, steady. "You're safe, you're safe."  I snuggled back into the covers, surrounding myself with pillows and taking one to hold tightly in my arms, my hands clenched in the pillowcase fabric. I knew the dream wouldn't return, but it still took me a very long time to close my eyes again and slip back into the black state of sleep.

Since I was a child, my nightmares have always had a common theme at their core...I am being hunted and I know two things with utmost certainty: 1.) If I can keep my wits about me, not be caught off guard, I will fight whatever is hunting me like a feral wild thing; 2.) If I am caught unaware, if whatever "it" is finds me vulnerable, it will rip me to shreds, usually in graphic, bloody brutality. I still carry old images of some of those outcomes in my mind. Always after a nightmare, when I wake from the battle, those images and feelings of terror stay with me for hours, sometimes days...and some never go completely away, stuck in corners of my mind like haunting shadows. This is why I don't watch horror flicks or movies with a lot of violence. It's not that I'm afraid of whatever I'll see on screen...but because I am terrified of the much worse things my own mind will come up with to torment me later.

The sun is now shining brightly off the pretty snow that fell yesterday. I'm awake and safe, and yet my hands are shaking as I put pen to paper and write this. The urge to curl up in the corner of a room in my house and cry is strong, but instead I make the bed in my decadent, luxurious sanctuary that I've created to help arm me for combat with the dark things. I check under the bed just to be sure no monsters are lurking there before going down to make breakfast. By the time I finished my "eggs in a frame" (...that's what my mama always called what I made this morning), I could feel the teeth of my nightmare releasing my flesh and backing away. Now, however, I'm left with the feeling of being wounded. I suppose after this I'll go up and find my first aid kit, see what I can do about these abrasions!