Taken

It's been a long two weeks, and I've had nightmares that I haven't posted due to lack of time. Friday night was my first good, solid night's sleep during that time, because I was changing jobs, working my last two week's notice on the night shift at one, and my training hours on the day shift at the other. Boys and girls, can we say exhausted?

I'm really little, like maybe four years old, maybe even younger. There are adults all around me, rushing around in some kind of a panic. A dark-haired lady takes me by the hand, rushes me out of my room past a vanity with a big round mirror on it. In the mirror, I can see that I'm slim, with long, dark hair like I have now,  and wearing some kind of a sleeveless summer dress with sandals. I have on a lot of ribbons and things. Everything I'm wearing seems to be green, yellow, or golden orange.

The lady picks me up and runs with me to another room, where a man with hair like mine, and a beautiful woman with bright red hair are rushing around. The man is wearing armor that has been painted green. He's carrying a sword on his back, a short mace at his hip, and a bow at his shoulder. His face looks deadly serious. The red-haired woman has put on a dark leotard, and she's holding a maternity dress, even though she's not pregnant.

The dark-haired woman hands me to the red-haired woman. As she takes me in her arms, I realize that this is my mother. She tells me to hold on around her belly, and the dark-haired woman ties scarves around me to help me stay put. Then, my mother puts on the maternity dress. I hear her tell the man, my father, that it's a good thing I'm still small. Over the maternity dress, the ladies place what feels like an apron, but if I turn my head just right, I can still see through a button hole.

I watch the dark-haired lady put on my mother's armor. It's too long, but she doesn't seem to notice that. While she's doing that, my mother's hands pick up a dagger and a little tube with some needles. They move down below my vision, and I see the dark-haired lady strap a belt around her own waist. On the belt, a sword in a scabbard hangs down past her knees. She grabs a shield, turns and runs her hand along my head through the fabric, kisses my mother on the cheek, and then runs out of the room. My father moves the bed, opens a trap door beneath it, and sends my mother and me down inside before putting the bed back in place. I hear him walk across the floor and open a window. There are more footsteps around the room, then he heads out the door. My mother sticks the tube in a hole in the trap door, and places a needle in it. She stands waiting. It's dark where we are. I can hear sounds of running throughout the house, and some shouting.

We are like that for several moments, and then I hear my father's boots again, stomping on the floor outside the door. There is the sound of metal clinking against metal, and then there is the sound of splintering wood, and a massive thump right in front of our vantage point.

We can hear fighting in front of us. My mother's breathing is fast and shallow, and I know she is scared. I know to be quiet, that we're in here because we're hiding. I press my face into her belly and hold on tightly. One soft hand runs across the back of my head. It's all the comfort she can offer.

The fighting escalates, and one of the participants bumps the bed, sliding it just a little to the side. I hear a choking sound, and another loud thump, but it's hard to tell who is down. It's quiet for a moment, then boots that are not my fathers begin walking around the room. Ever few steps, we hear someone knocking on the floor. Knock-knock... knock-knock... not our code. This person is looking for a different tone to the knocking sound, indicating empty space under the floor.

Someone speaks quietly, and a different walk approaches the bed. We hear it pushed aside, and the footsteps walk right up to the trap door. Someone drops down in front of it, knocks, and says, "This is the spot."

My mother takes a deep breath and blows into the tube. There is another choking sound from outside the hole we're in, and then there is shouting. More footsteps approach the trap door. I hear my mother blow out another needle, and another. Two more men fall, and then I hear the door open, and the blade at her hip sliding out of its sheath.

I hold my breath as I feel my mother struggle with the man above her, stabbing and slashing at him. Wetness lands on the fabric around me, and I hear a man's gurgling moan. Suddenly, we're moving up, really fast, and my mother screams. I hold on tight, trying to stay quiet. Tears roll down my face. I'm sure whoever is left alive up here is going to kill us both.

I hear footsteps, and a female voice confronts my mother, asking where the child is. That's me. I stiffen up to keep from shaking. My mother says that she sent the handmaid out the window with me, but couldn't follow, in her condition. I hear a slap, and the female stranger asks if my mother thinks she's stupid. Over my mother's horrified protests, the apron is ripped away, and then the dress. I see that we are surrounded by large men, all in robes and wearing armor. Several of them are holding onto her, with her arms pinned behind her back, and her head held still by their hands in her hair. In front of us is one petite, dark-haired woman, black-robed, with a strange shimmery look to it. 

The scary little woman steps forward and puts her hands on me, and pulls me away from my mother. I scream and hold on, but she's stronger than I am. I'm overpowered, and find myself dragged away from her, and then the men close in on her. The last thing I hear from her is the sound of her voice, screaming my name, as the woman carries me toward the door. I'm struggling and kicking, trying to get away. I feel the woman raise one hand up behind my head.

I woke from this, feeling something hit me in the back of the head, and jumped so hard I nearly fell out of bed. I was terrified beyond reason, seriously still feeling like a scared little girl for several minutes before I finally settled down.

Most mundane zombie nightmare I've ever had

We've walled off an entire neighborhood on the street of a friend's house. All of the other houses on that street were abandoned for various reasons, but the basic reason behind everything is a zombie outbreak. The only family of "original" residents which remained on that street is my friend's family. Several of us have moved into the walled-off area with them, and we've built a compound to protect ourselves. All of the houses are connected one way or another, except some at one end, which were in less stable shape than the other houses. We've dismantled them for parts, and are using the land for farming.

People have arrived recently, and I am sort of giving them a quick "orientation" tour with a rundown on how we are handling our new circumstances.

At the other end, our compound is divided by a high, chain-link fence that was there prior to the outbreak. We've altered it so that there is now a gate big enough to drive through when it is open.
On the other side if it is a what used to be a church and a parochial school. We included that property in our wall because we felt that the buildings may prove useful to us eventually, but at the moment the only thing we are using is the lot. In the lot, there are two buses. We plan to do something with them, but haven't started yet because we are working on other projects. However, we are using the lot space.

On one side of the lot, we have built a huge still, where we are brewing not beverages, but vehicle fuel. On the other side, we have a huge cistern which catches rain water. There are smaller cisterns around the compound, which also hold water, but this one is taller and more broad, and is attached to our makeshift water filtering and purification system. The final step currently uses a commercially sold reverse-osmosis filter, but members of our group are figuring out how to make our own so that when we run out of our supply of those, we'll still have a way to purify our water.

We have vehicles we would not normally have, as well. Parked on the street are a fire truck, an armored cash-delivery truck, and a semi with a tanker-trailer from a gas company, in addition to several cars. My husband and a few of the guys have been working on these to expand the range of fuels we can use to run them. Right now, the fire truck and and the armored truck can both run on just about any liquid that burns. We're working on the semi next. We plan to use it to take gas from neighborhood fueling stations until the alteration of our vehicles is finished, and we no longer have to use that for the cars.

The guys have set up the fire truck so that water can be pumped from a pooled source like a lake or stream, in through the hose to the tank, and then back out when we reach the cistern. The fuel we make in the still is used in the fire truck when we don't get enough rain, so that we can get water from other sources. We use it in the armored truck when we need to make a run for other supplies.

We've established a food and water supply sufficient to serve the complex if every house were populated. We've established food and water preservation methods to ensure a supply through the cold months, and to last us a few months if unforeseen issues arise. We have transportation and have located a few department stores, pharmacies, and hardware stores which, though not totally safe, we can safely enter and exit with tools and non-food supplies, and have "raided" them several times to get things we need.

We have built wind turbines on several houses to power refrigerators and freezers, and have stored a good supply of a refrigerant used in automotive air systems that one of the guys says he can use to restore the units as they go down. We don't plan on depending on those units forever, but we want to keep them going until we don't need them any more. Once we have non-refrigerated food preservation down better, we'll power those down and reserve our electricity for other uses. One of the new arrivals tells me she had a hobby of growing and preserving herbs for later use, and would like to help with that. I make a note. It would be great to be able to add our combined knowledge in that area.

In addition, we've created attachments for several houses to passively use solar heating, so that we don't have to use electricity for much heat. We have obtained a large supply of rolled plastic to help seal off windows and unused rooms in winter, as well. Since winter is coming, we're working on that project right now. I let the new people know that this is probably what they'll be helping with at first, until that project is completed, because it's vital to our winter survival.

Among our number is one chemist. I explain that she has a medical lab up and running and is working on establishing treatments for the most common life-threatening ailments. I don't tell them everything: She has established the manufacture of a couple of different antibiotic substances, a substance to use to treat flare-ups of asthma, two substances to aid in controlling blood sugar fluctuations, a substance that works like epinephrine in case of heart and breathing emergency (but we are told would hurt "pretty effin' bad" if used in a non-emergency), a substance to control blood pressure, two anti-histamines, and a still-in-the-testing phase narcotic pain killer. We don't want anyone but the core group to know about those yet, because of the possibility of abuse.

We have plans to set up an infirmary in a portion of the school, but have not started yet. Along with that, there are plans to set up a radio broadcast from inside the church steeple to try to connect with more people. A teen in the group kind of hesitantly tries to speak up, but keeps himself in check as if he's not permitted to speak. An adult next to him reminds him that he's not in school any more, and he is allowed to talk. He tells me he was in his school's broadcasting class, and that he learned how to set up the equipment. Broadcasting equipment is an interest of his, and he's built radio sets and CBs during the last few years. He can help set up our radio tower, get it up and running, and operate it.

He says he just needs us to let him know what we want him to do. I realize we could put this kid in charge of the project. As long as he knows what we intend to achieve, he has the capability to make it happen. We just need to make sure he has the confidence in himself to take charge, because it looks like he's still in the mindset that anyone older than him has authority over him. I resolve to discuss this with the people in our group who were school teachers prior to the outbreak, and tell the kid we're definitely going to need his help. We have people with sound system knowledge, but no one with broadcasting experience. His chest puffs out, and he seems about two inches taller than before.

Finally, I show them one house we have almost totally boarded up. It's not connected to the other houses at the ground level. Entry is possible from the ground, but it's designed to be sealed once people are inside. There is roof access from the roof of one neighboring house, also designed to be sealed from the inside. That is our safe house. In case of a breach of our complex by zombies, we've designed this as a protected area from which we can fight back. Inside are a host of projectile weapons and a supply of dried rations and water. We don't want to have to use the safe house, but we've set it up as a means of protecting ourselves and fighting off a horde or internal outbreak.

As I finish leading the group through the area, I tell them there are still enough empty houses that they can pick one instead of being assigned. I tell them which ones have more bedrooms, because there are a couple of families who seem to want to stay in the same house. I think they may all be related and have been traveling together through some harrowing experiences. They begin discussing possibilities. At that moment, we hear a commotion at the other end of the complex.

There is shouting, and I hear gunfire. We run that way, and several kids accompanied by three elderly women pass us heading toward the safe house. They tell me that a mass of zombies has attacked the outer wall, and they were told to go into the safe house. Residents are holding off the zombies pretty well, but as a precaution the children and those unable to run fast are sent ahead to prepare the safe house. That will mean setting up the weapons and preparing to seal off  the house. The teen asks which way I want him to go. I ask if he can fire a gun, and he says yes. I hand him one of mine. It's hard for me to send him that direction, but he's older than my son, and my son is fighting there right now. The teen gets it. He looks proud, but very serious and properly scared.

I break into a run toward the commotion. The group follows me, everyone yelling. I see where the wall is starting to split under the assault, and shout orders to my group. Three people split off into a house, where they can fire from upstairs, down over the wall and into the mass of zombies. Through the cracks, it looks like there are about 50 of them (enough to fill two elementary classrooms, basically) but they are pounding the crap out of our wall, so there could be more. I get find my husband and kids, and we form kind of a family wall. We're ready to shoot whatever comes through as two men work on shoring up the wall, and others work on firing over it. In my head, I'm praying hard that no one gets bitten.

There is a loud crack, and part of the wall splits open. Zombies come in, kind of single-file, but rather quickly, considering. They don't care if they tear their flesh on the wall. We start shooting. I hear guns going off around me. I can see through the wall that there maybe are more like 70 or 80 of them, but several are falling outside the wall, and I think we can handle this with what we've got. The fight is going to be just a bit more than a two zombie to one human ratio, and that ratio is getting tighter with every shot. I'm still scared, but not as badly as before the wall broke. Now, I'm more determined than anything.
I'm not letting these mindless, flesh-eating monsters tear apart my friends and family. I move forward and begin firing into the oncoming mass of decaying bodies.

First in a long time

I used to have this one when I was a kid, during the ages between when I broke my tailbone, and when I had experimental laser therapy to remove the scar tissue from where it healed. The therapy worked. Prior to the therapy, I used to have regular pain in the area similar to arthritis pain. It hasn't hurt like that since.

The significance is that when the pain went away, I went from frequently dreaming about this little guy to rarely seeing him at all. Last night, my shoulders got sore, and I got my first visit in about five years. Not having photos to combine to make what I saw in my dream, I drew a picture and enhanced it in G.I.M.P. This is just about the angle from which I saw the creature, which was chewing on my right shoulder (which hurt more than the left) and my neck.. It hissed at me. The startle factor woke me right up.

I used to "wake" with those teeth locked around the top of my butt, right where it was hurting. When I was still growing really fast in elementary school, and I used to get cramps in my calf muscles, I used to dream it was biting those, too. I'd wake up with my toes pointed down, unable to straighten my foot without using my hands.

I ended up having to get up and take aspirin. I usually don't take meds in the middle of the night because they're rough on the tummy, but my shoulder was really sore.

When I went back to sleep, I had this really insane dream about human waste oozing up out of the sewers all over the place, then eventually out of every pipeline in the area, including those for clean water. Finally, it started coming out of cracks in the ground, too. I was not where I live now. I was back in college, and at college age (still a teen) but not at the college where I went to school. We were in this big, flat, open rural area with no bigger towns nearby. I don't remember much of the dream except that I felt responsible for helping to clean it up because I hadn't been able to make people listen to me when I told them it was going to happen. I felt like if I'd been able to make people listen to me, they would have done things differently and avoided this. Despite my objections, my friends wanted to get me out of town, because they were sure I'd get blamed for the mess on the basis of my having predicted it.

I am pretty sure that the monster dream was a result of the pain in my shoulder, but the sewer dream is more likely a manifestation of stress, combined with certain realizations. I guess that figuratively, I'm seeing everything around me turn to crap; my work, my neighborhood, the circumstances with which pretty much everyone I know is dealing right now... and I did predict everything that is happening locally, but not as any kind of psychic.

This is all stuff I said would happen based on bills being passed by the state government between eight and four years ago, and the federal government during the last few years. Now, I'm almost afraid to join in when there's a political discussion, because everything I say sounds like "I told you so." On top of that, I'm worried that being right about the predictions that have come true, I may have also been right about some really scary possibilities. If I am, things here will go to hell at a frighteningly fast pace. It'll probably be that way in most cities, even the ones that aren't so big. I don't think smaller towns will be hit as hard because people there are used to having to work together to overcome hardships without the aid of highly organized, extensive networks of emergency services.

It's my extended family that wants me (and my household) out of here. Both sides want us to come live with them. We're actually working on just that - going north across the state to live in or near the same town as my in-laws, away from the city where we are now. It'll be months before it happens, though, and in the meantime, I do feel like I'm watching things fall apart. Who knows, maybe that is why I've had so many earthquake dreams lately, too.

Faces in the night

Sometimes my sleep is just restless for no apparent reason, and I have a kind of nightmare that doesn't go anywhere. Instead, I briefly see huge, still images in the dark, experience short, scary scenes, and am awakened by loud phantom noises. 

The noises are often loud banging noises, as if someone is rapidly knocking on the side of my dresser really hard. Other times, I hear a panicked voice screaming something over and over, usually a protest of some kind but sometimes my name. Sometimes, instead, it's some kind of hysterical rambling in which the speech is too fast for me to understand most of the words. Once in a while, I hear a loud boom, like a bomb has gone off, or it'll be the sound of metal crashing into metal and glass breaking. That one I can identify as a remnant of a past trauma - as a child, I was in a car accident with my Mom. She was severely injured, and almost died in the car while we were waiting for the EMS to arrive.


The still images can be anything from a scary face or monster to strange landscapes. They are only there for a few seconds before I am on to the next thing, or awake, depending on how startling the image is. One recurring image is a huge reddish monster face with horrible, pointy teeth. It often appears closer to my feet, and if I wake from seeing it, I usually also jerk my knees up to my chest as I wake.
Another is the face of a long-dead relative (who I never met - this is a face from a photo) seen just by itself, as tall as a person, right next to my bed, and looking horribly angry. From the stories I've heard, she was psychotic and extremely abusive of others.


The short scenes are worse. Those usually involve something coming after me, something trying to bite and/or eat me, or something doing something terrible to someone I know. These are always over from start to finish before I get a chance to respond. 

Usually, they wake me up, and most of the time, they're accompanied by one of those loud noises. There are a few that are recurring scenes or themes. One, I've come to think of as looming faces. 

These are usually scary human or monster faces that come at me out of the dark. Sometimes that wakes me. If not, I usually get bitten. Often, the faces are making noises, ranging from an odd whine or growl to nonsense syllables. 

One that happens a lot is a rapid, repeating "Na-na-na" that gets louder as the face gets closer to me. It's spoken in a sharp tone, as an adult would do with "no-no-no" to a little kid about to hurt herself on something she's not supposed to touch.


Another is faces that change after they appear, seeming to melt, or go through rapid color changes. Sometimes they turn into other faces, from human to monster, or from monster to nastier monster. 

The weirdest short scene dream, a rare one that really messes up the rest of my night, is the blasting dream. It starts with this huge booming sound like thunder, close by but not right next to me. Immediately following the boom, everything in my sight is ripped apart and starts flying toward me. That includes people if the scene includes any. As everything gets close to me, I see smoke and sometimes flames behind the flying debris. 

I wake when the blast hits me. It always feel like when you accidentally belly-flop into a pool, and all of your skin smacks at once, except this is a hundred times worse. When I wake up, my skin where the nerves went off in response to the dream always feels tight and sore, like after a sunburn, for several minutes, as if I really did smack into a pool of water.


I think these dreams are a product of high levels of stress, and sometimes of other normal causes of sleep disturbances (like noises outside, illness, or pain from fibromyalgia) because the pattern of them happening seems to follow times when those factors are in play.

Wreck

This was one of those really short ones that gets to me when I have it. I've had it before, and every time, I feel creeped out all day afterward. It makes me nervous about being in the car at all.

I'm riding with a colleague to a meeting. We both work for the same department of the same company. We're heading across the state for this meeting, which is about something we did that the company wants to expand to things other people are doing. The meeting is really important, and we're dressed in suits. Mine has a skirt, and I'm wearing a moderately frilly blouse with it.

The driver is one of those medium-height, (around 5'7" to 5'9") energetic, positive attitude guys. If he was a woman, I'd say perky. He's fun to work with, and I'm really glad I'm riding with him. We're enjoying the trip. We had a good lunch at a place we both like, and now we're laughing and joking as we drive.

Suddenly there is a huge, unavoidable accident in the road ahead of us. I can't tell what started it, but there is now a several car pile-up around a tanker semi. I can't see what the semi says it's carrying, but I'm worried. The driver hits his breaks and turns the wheel to avoid hitting the cars in front of us, but we still end up crunching into a little sporty two-door that is just off the right side of our lane. We aren't badly damaged, but the two-door is really crunched up. The people inside are moving, and I don't see blood, but that doesn't mean they aren't badly injured.

We are ok. We decide we should get out and see if we can help anyone. Before we can, another vehicle slams into the middle of the mass of cars all ready crashed. This vehicle is larger, but I can't see it well enough to identify what it is because I'm not looking in that direction.

The tanker truck explodes, sending cars flying. The little two-door lifts up off of the pavement, taking the front end of our car with it, then forces us backward. We're flying back, then falling as we go off the edge of the road and into what looks like a quarry. It feels like we flip over twice. We land kind of on our side, with the driver's side down. All of the glass in the car is broken, and dirt comes pouring in. I hear a sick, wet crunching sound and a scream from beside me.

Then, it's quiet except for the pattering sound of dirt falling into the car, now more slowly. I have dirt up to my knees. I look over, and my colleague is covered up past his chest. He is very pale, and his eyes are red-rimmed with anguish. On his face is an expression of grim determination. He looks at me, and his face bears an intensity I can't fathom.

I'm terrified.

He struggles to speak.. "I'm dead. See if you're buried."

Somehow, I know that he means for me to see if I can get out of the car. Before I can look, I see his eyes kind of glaze over and lose focus, his face loses all expression, and he starts quietly repeating that line over, and over. "I'm dead. See if you're buried. I'm dead. See if you're buried. I'm dead. See if you're buried." He speaks rapidly, and with no emotion, as if trying to remember a list instead of to communicate, or as if he's stuck on that one line and can't move on to the next thought. He is extremely pale.

For a moment, I am confused, and a little afraid of him, and then I realize he's dying. The crunch I heard was something under the dirt damaging his body. The pattering noise I'm hearing is not the only sound in the car. There is a trickle of liquid somewhere that I can't see. He's bleeding to death. He's repeating that line because he is stuck on it. His brain isn't getting oxygen, and he's losing consciousness. His last words were his way of telling me to get out of the car before the dirt traps me in here with him. I want to escape the sinking car, but I don't want to leave him. It's an awful feeling.


He is still repeating that line when I wake up. It's the last thing I hear before finding myself in the darkness of my room.

Every time I've had that dream, I've always awakened with a feeling of sheer terror, sure I'm trapped in that car, horrified at what has happened to my colleague, and filled with dread over the fact that I cannot do anything to help him.


The parts of the dream that I experience are so vivid and feel so real that I can't seem to shake it off when I wake up. I still feel that sense of dread and horror, and kind of a sense of guilt over having to save myself and leave my dying colleague behind. 


One of the weirdest things about how real this dream is, is the fact that the "colleague" and the job are completely nonexistent. The person in the dream is not anyone I've met in real life. He's not anyone famous, or anyone I remember seeing on TV or in movies, either. I've never worked for a department of a company in a capacity like in the dream, either.


The closest thing I have to relate to this is that I was in a terrible accident as a child. My mother, grandmother and I were traveling across the state to see family. I was sleeping in the back of the car when the accident occurred. My mother was severely injured, and nearly died of her injuries. I wasn't hurt, but it was only by chance that I wasn't killed. The only reason I survived is because of the way I was laying. Had I been facing the other direction, the car that hit us would have smashed my head.

The memory is traumatic, but not in the same way as this dream. No one actually died in that accident, and I was young enough to not understand a lot of what happened. There were only two cars involved, ours and the car that hit us. There was no semi, no explosion. It was just a really bad two car accident. They did have to use the jaws of life to get my Mom out of the car.
Some of my memory of that accident is distorted (like the way the car looked after the accident; I remember it looking much worse than I'm told it actually did) but I grew up with Mom & Grandma both very much alive afterward, so I'm pretty sure the death in this nightmare didn't come from that experience.

Earthquake

I'm jolted awake because the bed is shaking like someone is bouncing on it. Right after I wake up, it stops shaking. My husband sits up and asks if I'm ok. Still groggy, I ask what's wrong, and he tells me he thinks I've had a seizure, that I was moving so violently that I shook the whole bed. I tell him that I didn't have a seizure. Nothing hurts, and I don't feel as though I've exerted myself in any way. I was asleep. I woke because I felt the bed shaking.

I look at him, and he looks at me. We simultaneously become worried that someone is in the room with us and has awakened us by shaking the bed. I grab my cell phone and open it, lighting up enough for us to see. He gets up and checks out the closet while I turn on the lamp. No one is there, and the door is still closed. It's too noisy to not wake us if it opens. The building is old, and door doesn't hang right, so it actually is hard to open and close.

Right when we realize no one is there but us, the whole room shakes, harder than the bed had shaken before. The shaking only lasts for a few seconds, but it's hard enough that downstairs, we hear something fall. Our son's shout comes from his room, asking what's going on. We fight with the door to get out. Normally, the trick is to push down and then pull it open, but that's really hard to do when you're being tossed around by a floor that's bucking like an angry bull.

A second or two after my husband grabs the handle, the shaking stops. Now, I feel like I've got whiplash, but in my lower back, from trying to move around while the building was shaking so hard. My husband opens the door and we run down the hall to my son's room, where he is sitting up in bed. All of the stuff has fallen off of his dresser onto the floor. He looks confused and a little scared. I tell him it's ok but that we need to get downstairs. I look out the window, and see people gathering in the parking lot outside. Someone's car alarm is going off. I feel like it's really, really important that we get out of the building. It's kind of old. I'll feel better if we can just get downstairs.

My son stands up and we turn to go down the stairs. There is a loud boom, like thunder, but without lightning and without the initial high-pitched cracking noise. Everything begins to pitch and shake again, even harder than before. Trying to keep myself steady hurts as though I'm trying to bend over backwards. My son is holding on to the bedpost for dear life. My husband has fallen, but he landed on the spare mattress that my son uses for sleepovers. The odd thought goes through my head that the mattress should have been put away, like that's really important right now.
I try to hold onto the wall, but instead, it smacks into me like I've fallen on it.

This is where I woke up for real, with back pain so bad that at first I couldn't move. I had rolled over onto my back in the night, an absolute no-no that always causes the muscles in my lower back to stiffen up and get sore. Though it was only about 5:00 A.M., there was no way I was getting any more sleep tonight. I got up, went down the stairs, and had breakfast, coffee, and Ibuprofen. Once that started working, I did some work in the kitchen, because moving around would help loosen up those sore muscles. I got a lot done before it was time to take my second dose. I'm still hurting, but it's not nearly as bad. 

It wasn't until after 11:00 A.M. that I read about the 7.1 quake that hit Alaska early this morning. It occurred to me that maybe I felt it in the night, but there's no way. I'm in Ohio, for crying out loud! For me to feel the shaking from anywhere in Alaska, that would have to be one hell of a quake! Even if I had felt it, I think there was at least an hour difference between the time of the quake and the time of the dream.

Funny coincidence, though... and I do believe it was a coincidence, even if you believe in psychic stuff, because I don't even know anyone in Alaska and have no connection whatsoever to the area. I'm sure the back pain mostly caused the nightmare. I'm more afraid of earthquakes than any other natural phenomenon, and when I have fibromyalgia related muscle pain, I usually dream that something scary is happening that's making my body hurt. This is the worst I've felt from sleeping on my back in years. It was probably also partly caused by how many quakes have been making the news lately, and probably partly because I've had this irrational, anxious feeling that my area is going to be hit with an bad earthquake soon, even though I live in an area that almost never has them. In my lifetime, we've had all of two short, low-scale quakes that didn't even do any serious structural damage, and the logical side of me says that - duh! - I have nothing to worry about. 
Still, I've been unable to shake (pun intended) that feeling ever since the Japan quake a few months ago. It's like I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I guess that's part of the fun of being me. I guess that's better than having an irrational fear of something mundane that I have to deal with every day. That would really suck.

I'll probably still have nightmares about it, regardless, especially if I keep reading headlines about earthquakes in the news. I suppose if that happens, I can treat those dreams like practice runs. They've got to be good for something, or they'll drive me nuts. (Yeah, I know... short trip!)

Without a paddle

This one is from last night.

Its early morning. I have to get up for work. A noise has woken me up, a few minutes before my alarm should go off, and I am annoyed. I hate that. It always makes me feel sleep-deprived, even though I've only lost a few minutes.

I grab my phone, and start heading down the stairs. About the middle of the stairway, the carpet is sopping wet. Water squishes up through my socks and between my toes when I step on it.

What the heck? Why are the stairs wet? I reach to step down one more, thinking I'll turn on the light, but I actually step in water, clear up past my ankle. I run back up the stairs and use the light switch at the top. The lights come on, but they're flickering. I can see that there is a body of water in the living room of our apartment. It has risen to about halfway up the stairs. Now that I see it, I realize that I can hear it, too. The sound of water lapping up against the walls is what woke me.

I shut off the light before an electrical fire starts (wondering at the miracle that it is still working at all,) immediately wake my son, whose room is closest to me, and run with him back to my room. I wake my husband, and tell him that there is a flood, and say how high it has reached. We look out the window. The water is even higher there than inside. Somehow, the windows have not broken, and the water is only coming inside slowly.

I want to panic, but if I do, my son will, too, so I fight it and cling to the calming influences of logic and problem-solving.

I start trying to figure out how we can get to the roof. The building is just basically flat, with no roof access from inside. We could got to the attic, but we'd be trapped in there. We're going to have to climb up from the window, though there is really nothing to hold onto but bricks.

I am a good climber, so I think that I'll try. We can tie a bedsheet "rope" to me, and I will take it up and find something to fasten it to at the top. Then, I can help my family up. I outline my plan to my husband.

He tells me we don't have to do that, and reaches into the closet. I figure he is going to get a rope or something, but he pulls out a huge box. Out of that, he pulls a big vinyl object that looks a lot like the old air mattress we used to take camping with us, except that the vinyl looks much thicker and tougher. Looking at the picture on the box, I realize it is an inflatable life-boat.

He begins inflating the boat. Once it starts to take shape, he ties a makeshift sheet-rope to it and hangs it out the window. I am holding the sheet, in case he drops the boat, but he doesn't.

By the time the boat is finished inflating, the water is at the top of the stairs, and the boat is resting on water outside the window. I look around the room for something to take with us to paddle the boat, but I don't find anything flat enough to be effective at all, except for a few things that have sharp edges. The picture in the box shows paddles, but there aren't any inside it.
We can't risk puncturing the boat, so we don't take anything. We tie the sheet to the dresser, climb into the boat, and then yank the sheet loose. We'll take it with us.

The boat floats past the other buildings in the apartment complex. We can't control where it is going very well. There are handles on the sides, and we figure out that if we all lean slightly to one side or the other, we can steer around debris, but we can't get the boat to speed up or slow down. I realize that even if we had taken a paddle, the water is so choppy and moving so fast that it wouldn't have been very effective.

I start to get seasick from the motion of the boat on the water, but I am at least glad we got out safely. I can see that the water is rising above the second story windows of the buildings as we are propelled toward the church across the street. Behind the church, the trees are bending and swaying in the water. I think we will use the sheet to latch onto that building if we can, to keep from running into those. Its roof is still above the water. We may even be able to climb up there and wait. We can use my phone to call for help. Until we can get to that stability, however, both of my hands are occupied with helping to control the boat, and my phone sits useless in my pocket.

Unfortunately, the water has currents I don't know about, and we are propelled "up" the street to the east. There is a lot of debris where the current coming out of our lot meets the current moving along the street, and we barely manage to avoid most of it. I try to grab at what looks like a floating piece of a kid's toy desk, a red plastic flat item that is wide enough to actually work as a paddle, even in this mess. It is too smooth, and I can't get a grip on it. It slips from my fingers, and we float away.

We float east for a short time. I can see bits of buildings sticking up. Now the water is higher than the trees. My stomach is doing flip-flops, and I am using measured breathing and hard swallowing to keep from throwing up.

We come across another change in current. This one takes us in a big half-circle, then spits us out. I almost lose the nausea battle, but don't.
Now, I can't tell what direction we are moving, because there aren't a lot of  landmarks, and I don't recognize anything I can see.

The sun is coming up, and upon seeing the edge of it, I am able to determine that we are heading in a northern direction. The sky is not excessively cloudy, and it's not raining. I begin to wonder where all of this water came from.

Seasickness has made me dizzy. I continue to fight to keep from throwing up, because I am needed to help encourage (we aren't really steering) the boat to avoid floating debris. I feel like if we just keep going, eventually we'll reach higher ground, which is on all sides of where we live. From there, we can find our way to family.

When I woke from this, I still felt seasick . I was laying on my back again. My stomach was sick, and I was dizzy. I rolled over on my side and went back to sleep. Later, when I got up, I felt fine.
I wonder if this dream is my subconscious reaction to the economic turmoil in my area. There have been major job losses, and I am off of work right now with an injury I suffered there. My husband is working, but his income is not enough to totally support our family, and we're going to have to do some careful financial maneuvering to avoid eviction while my employer gives me the runaround about coming back to work, and about my worker's compensation case. I am worried, but I have faith in my hubby, who always seems to come up with the most unexpected solutions when there is a problem. Just as in the dream, what he is doing doesn't seem like the best thing at the time, but in the end, things turn out better for it.