Some of Suzi's Nightmares
I awoke in a fever
The bedclothes were all soaked in sweat
She said "You've been having a nightmare
And it's not over yet"
—Roger Waters, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking
It is an axiom, among those who know about such things, that very creative people suffer through more nightmares than the rest of us. My best friend and platonic life partner, Suzi, must be some kind of living proof of that; she's had some doozies, four of which I present below.
Sometime before her third birthday, Suzi had the first bad dream she can remember. Starring in this nightmare was a scary skeleton—he had a normal skull, skeletal legs and arms, but, in place of a spine, ribs and a pelvis, he had a fluorescent tube. The skeleton came into the little girl's room in jerky, fast-motion, and he grabbed her foot. He began to fit a shoe onto her foot as she watched helplessly.
The shoe was a white Mary Jane, she remembers this very clearly.
The zombie dreams came later, when she was in high school and college.
In one of them, Suzi wandered through a shopping mall. There was some sort of outbreak going on and some of the people were infected and turning into zombies. It was not clear to her if everyone knew that it was happening.
Ahead of her, a woman held a baby. The baby looked at Suzi over the woman's shoulder. An unearthly malice filled the infant's dead, clouded eyes, and it opened its mouth, displaying a set of tiny, peg-like teeth. Before Suzi could react, the ghastly tyke bit into the woman's throat.
A torturous series of false awakenings came one night, a few years after college. She awoke in her room, sometimes in her bed, sometimes in other places, as though she had fallen asleep sitting at the desk or on the floor.
In one of the episodes, she knew that she wanted out; she needed to get to someone, to call out for help. The gap between her bed and her night table seemed a huge gulf. Her arm moved slowly, her limbs like lead.
She picked up her phone, but there was no dial tone. Instead, there was a low chuckling on the line.
She awoke with a start, thinking that the torture had finally ended. She looked down at her feet. A toe tag, like they put on cadavers at the morgue, hung from her big toe.
Recently, the wizards who are in charge of the advertising for Burger King have decided that a creepy, plastic-masked cartoon king would be a good mascot for their hamburgers and fries. A lot of people really wonder what these people were smoking.
Again, Suzi had a false awakening in her bedroom. This time the Burger King was standing at the foot of her bed. In his hand was a short dowel, tipped with a needle.
With deliberate, robotic movements, he began to try to stab Suzi in the foot with this poker. She scrambled to get her feet out of his way. Realizing his failure, he began to make his way toward the head of her bed. She awoke before it could get any uglier.
I suppose creativity is a sort of mixed blessing. On one hand, I envy the ability to free associate the way my dear friend can do. On the other hand, I don't envy the terrors that creep into her room by night.
DreamQuest 2007