transemacabre | Bad Dreams

I was hesitant initially to do a post about my dreams, because they often just turn into "Oh, MY dream was way crackier than yours!" fests, and these dreams are not so much cracky as... frightening. To me. But they've been on my mind lately after a particularly bad one recently, so I felt like maybe getting them out would be good for my mind.

My nightmares tend to be in black and white. I suspect it's a way for my brain to "dull" the vividness of what I'm dreaming, an unconscious failsafe, perhaps. Some dreams that have horror elements, such as the dream with Hank Pym and his daughter Laurie from Watchmen fighting zombies, is in full color, which to me indicates that its something my subconscious finds entertaining rather than traumatic.

I dreamed the other night that I was in Korea (why Korea? Probably because one of my teammates is going to teach ESL there, and it's been on my mind lately) and trying to get into my car. A man grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms to my sides, and began to drag me away. I knew in that inherent way you know things in dreams that he was going to rape me. I fought him and raised a ruckus and the police came and stopped him. Then they told me that attempted rape wasn't a crime in Korea (???) and that I couldn't charge my assailant with that. Humiliated and furious, I began filling out paperwork to charge him with kidnapping and assault, when what I REALLY wanted was to charge him with attempted rape.

Another nightmare, perhaps among the most disturbing I've ever had, was one in which I was a park ranger of some kind, and there were monsters (probably somewhat inspired by the Pre-Cambrian lifeforms in the Tremors series) living underground, and I was 'feeding' them by encouraging tourists to camp in a certain section of the park where I knew the monsters would eat them while they slept in their tents. I think the most disturbing aspect of this nightmare is that here I was the antagonist, even villain, instead of the victim or bystander.

Another that left me chilled and trembling after waking was a dream in which I was drinking a glass of wine, then realized that the wine was poisoned. I tried frantically to induce vomiting to force the poison out of my body, but I could feel myself dying even as I did so.

I also have vague snatches of other dreams in which I'm choking or drowning, very vaguely remembered, probably a combination of Katrina-related anxiety (THE WATER IS RISING, THE WATER IS RISING) and the time my seat belt locked and almost choked me after I was rear-ended in 2008. Even my nightmares usually have some sort of plot, so I think these are so vague because my mind is deliberately trying to block them out.