I was still a kid when I had this one. It happened during the time my parents were building a room onto our house. I remember that it was built around the time I five, before I started kindergarten, but we also used to call the daycare I occasionally attended "school." That is probably what I was thinking of in the beginning.
This dream upset me enough back then that it has stuck with me for over thirty years, and I remember a lot of details. I can still see a lot of it in my mind's eye when I think about it.
It's the middle of the night, and I'm in my bed. I'm supposed to be sleeping, but I suddenly realize that I haven't laid out school clothes for tomorrow. I get up and quickly grab a few things and lay them out on the chair by my desk . Everything is really quiet, but now I can't sleep. I think I will get a drink of water.
I head to the kitchen, get a stool, climb up and get a glass out of the cupboard. Then, I'm standing at the sink running water when I hear soft footsteps behind me. I think that maybe my mother has heard me and has gotten up to tell me to go back to bed, but when I turn around, no one is there.
Maybe my brother is sleepwalking again. I go into the living room to make sure he's not in there. When he does that, I can usually get him to go back to bed by taking his hand and just guiding him there.
He's not in the living room, though, so I decide that while I'm finishing my water, I'll check the doors to make sure he hasn't opened the door and gone outside. He's never done that, but he's done other complicated stuff, like putting his toys on the kitchen table, so I figure it could happen.
The porch door is closed, but then when I go into the kitchen, the sliding doors are open. I go over to the door to look outside, and a tall man jumps out from behind the curtain. It's the doctor my mom took me to for an allergy shot when my doctor was out on vacation. I remember that unlike at my doctor's office, when he gave me the shot, he stuck the needle in a different part of my arm and it hurt really bad.
He has a huge syringe with a long needle on it, and he is grinning at me. It's not a normal grin. He doesn't look happy, he looks kind of confused and angry and over-excited all at the same time. His eyes are opened too wide, and his smile is, too. The stuff in the syringe is really nasty, thick gray sludge. I'm pretty sure it's poison, and if he catches me, he's going to give me a shot of it and it'll kill me. As I back away from him and he advances, it occurs to me that maybe he's come here to kill my whole family. I don't just have to get away from him. I have to wake everyone up and get them all out of the house. If we can just get out, we'll be safe.
I run down the hall back toward the bedrooms, but it doesn't go where it's supposed to, and I end up in a different set of rooms. After a moment of wandering, simultaneously trying to find my way out and hide from the killer doctor who is following me, I recognize the layout of my friend's house, except no one is there. Every room is empty. I remember then that she moved, and doesn't live in that house any more. I head out the door, turn, shut and lock it behind me. I look around, and I'm back in the kitchen.
I head down the hall to my brother's room again. This time, I keep my hand on the wall so I don't get lost, and I end up in the right place. I notice my his door is open, which is kind of unusual. Normally, he keeps his door closed. I look to see if he's in bed. He's there, but something is wrong. It takes me a minute to figure it out, then I realize his skin looks funny. He's kind of gray, and there's no movement at all. His eyes aren't moving, and his chest isn't moving. I touch him, and he's cold.
This is very bad. I slam open the door and run to Mom and Dad's room, yelling that something's wrong with my brother. Standing beside the bed, I reach out to touch Mom's hand to wake her. Her fingers are cold, and her skin is the same gray as my brother's skin. She is not breathing, either. I notice a tiny red mark on her arm. There is a drop of dried blood. The light in the room dims until I can only just see her silhouette, but I know I'm too late, and she's dead.
I run around the bed to wake my dad, and slam into something solid but soft. I yell for Dad, but he doesn't answer. A hand grabs at my arm, and something sharp grazes my skin. I pull out of the grip and back up. In the darkness, I can make out a tall shape that is not my Dad. It's the doctor. He's gotten out through the door that I locked. I don't know how, but he got to my entire family before I could wake them. They are all dead, and I'm next.
I panic and run. I can hear a high pitched whining noise, and it takes me a second before I realize it's coming from me. I'm so terrified that when I run out of the room, I run face first into the hallway wall right across from the door. At the same time, the understanding that my whole family is gone and they're never going to come back hits me, too. I turn my back to that wall and sink to the floor, horrified and filled with grief. I feel something touching me, and I know it's him. I'm not afraid any more. I don't try to get away. As I feel the needle poke into my arm, all I can think is that in a few minutes I'll be in heaven with my family instead of here with my heart breaking over their deaths. The needle poking me is really painful, and whatever he's shooting into my arm burns like acid.
That dream ended there. I don't remember if I woke up, or lapsed into another dream, but I do remember that when I got up for the day, I had to hug everyone in my family because I was so glad they were alive.
I remember that when I got my shot at that doctor's office, I had a worse than normal reaction to it. My arm swelled up like I had half an apple up my sleeve, and had to be iced down. I was given a shot in my butt that made me shaky and hungry. It could have been an epi shot, but I think it was more likely cortisone to counteract the giant "hive" that had broken out on my arm. I remember making Mom promise that she'd never take me to him for another shot again. It didn't take much effort.
Shots have never really bothered me, aside from at that one doctor's office. I began receiving them as a toddler, and continued to receive weekly injections until I was in college. I got very sick once in elementary school, and was given a spinal tap to test for meningitis, and had no problem handling that needle.
I am not really sure what caused the nightmare, but a little online research tells me that the term "lethal injection" may have been uttered in the news several times that year, because there was discussion about instituting the use of it, and there was controversy. I may have heard the term on the news and associated it with my allergy shots because I know I had heard my doctor use the term "injection" when speaking of them, too.
This is the first nightmare I ever remember having in which I feared for someone other than myself.
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