I had a horrible dream last night. Before going to bed I’d watched The Birdcage for something light and fluffy before sleep. In the dream, I wasn’t myself but someone similar to the Robin Williams character, an older gay man. I was travelling with a younger companion and had checked into a very plush hotel room for the night. Strange, but ok so far.
I opened the door to the bathroom and stepped through. Something very different from the gold taps and posh baskets of soap and lotion that I’d expected awaited me – I was suddenly in a filthy public restroom with rows of stalls, most with doors hanging sideways or missing, graffittied over and absolutely encrusted with filth. The toilets were full to overflowing with material that made my throat close up, even in a dream state, crusted down the sides and pooling on the floors. And then there were the dead girls.
Some of them were sitting on the floor of their stall like dropped rag dolls, heads lolling to one side with empty eyesockets. They’d all died horribly, and some of them were still moving.
I stepped into one of the stalls that still had a working door, locked it, and through the cracks I could see figures moving and hear them scratching at the door with jagged nails. They whispered.
After I finally woke I stayed awake for ages, snuggled into Phil’s back for safety and comfort. Besides, I really, really had to go to the bathroom and there was no damned way that I was going to get up in the dark, walk through the dark hallway with the stairs going up and down into the blackness, and walk into a bathroom. Hey, I’m an adult…I know that the dead girls probably wouldn’t be there. Probably.
I finally went and I did survive the experience. And I refrained from waking Phil up and asking him to accompany me and sit outside the bathroom door while I was in there. As a result, I am still married. Dreams about dead girls are the worst.
It always amazes me how we can “know” it’s a dream, or a movie, or a passage in a book, but it still scares the b’jezus out of us. Dreams like that are the absolute worst. I can remember having one wherein I half-woke terrified with just enough awareness to realize I was dreaming but not fully enough to shrug it off. I couldn’t move I was so scared. I lay there mentally screaming at myself to move! Twitch! Turn! Do something! Eventually I broke from the dream time by violently sitting up in bed. It was very disturbing, but for the life of me, I cannot remember what I dreamed.
Exactly! A counterpart to that is dreaming that your partner has done something unforgivable to you. Rationally I know that Phil is lying there, sleeping innocently, and certainly hasn’t done what I dreamed that he did. It doesn’t prevent me from being really, really pissed off at him though. :)