First of all, you need to understand what my dreams are typically like. Imagine all your life experiences dumped into a blender, from childhood to now. Blend until it’s chunky and set it aside. Now take your favorite stories form books, tv, movies, theater, or otherwise and dice them before putting that into the blender mixture. Once that is all set, take some historical events and coarsely grind them over the mixture before running it a few more pulses until well blended. You can only stand the first few sips of it a night but that’s your dream so you’re stuck with it.
Nightmares though. On rare occasions, nightmares abandon the recipe or make the world of your mind unrecognizable.
My favorite nightmare I call “The Mummy-Head Nightmare”
It’s winter and I’m on a ski trip with a bunch of people I’ve never seen in real life, but somehow know casually. Everything is calm. The weather is bright and alive with snow falling and people going about their business and having fun. Everyone is in their winter clothes and, despite the amount of people milling in and out of the main room/kitchen area I’m in, it’s not loud, but instead a peaceful sort of noise.
Then I start feeling something rotting in my face. Right behind the space between my nose and upper lip I feel this stinging pain and there is the sense that my face is decaying. If I pressed down on that area it will burn from the rot spreading and destroying me. I somehow know this even though I never touch that part of my face.
I don’t remember starting the conversation, but as the last of the group is leaving, I’m talking to a woman who is older than me and ready to travel, not go out in the snow to play. She and everyone else is leaving while i’m standing there, explaining the pain that has now started to move into my cheeks and behind my nose.
The woman I am speaking to is blonde and has a motherly face but something about her tells me she doesn’t want to handle my problem when I explain it to her. She just smiles as me and shakes her head slightly, saying “I know what that is. Many people are getting it, but it’s incurable.”
I can’t remember if she said it would kill me or not but I felt like it would anyway. Somehow the world “terminal” entered my mind at that part of the dream. It was unspoken but there. Something just seemed hopeless about whatever disease I had.
Then I’m alone in front of a picture window. it’s still and quiet and I can see the snow falling outside in the sunny day.
When I say I am alone, It’s only me there, but I am two people. I’m me, holding a pill bottle and facing the window, and I am also me, facing the kitchen, standing silently and still. We wear the same clothes, breathe at the same time, and I feel sensations from both of my forms.
But as I stand in front of myself with a bottle of pills, I can’t figure out how I’m alive still. Because from the neck up, the other me’s head is completely rotted away on the inside. All that is left is my skin, black like a mummy’s, and dried to be paper thin. My teeth are somehow still in my mouth though my skull is missing when I walk closer and look inside my own head.
My eyes are open and empty, my mouth is open, even my nose can be looked into and all I see is this clump of black matter stuck to the back of my head on the inside. Somehow, I know it’s my brain.
My hair is gone and instead I have what looks like an army helmet, only a little longer in the back, growing on my head and almost covering my face. I pull it back and it tears in layers like a book. Almost as if you were ripping a dried mushroom cap apart. I can’t remove more than the first chuck I tear out, so I just stare at myself trying to figure out why I am not dead.
I know that somehow my only hope is the bottle of pills in my hand, but I can’t even figure out how I could eat them. All I know is I’m running out of time and need 12 pills to try and save my life. I run to the nearest counter and frantically count out twelve pills, messing up once and starting again.
I return to myself and almost debate how can I ever ingest them when I literally have nothing to chew them with or saliva to dissolve them. I just remember there is not a lot of time and dump the pills into my mouth. I feel them fall in and disappear. Then, I start to feel a new sensation before I wake up.
The insides of my head are growing back.
Jessy With a Pen 