Nightmare turned Scene
Nightmares are the necessary evils in life. As a writer, everything that happens to me and others around me has the potential to become a scene in one of my stories. It doesn’t have to be the current story I’m writing.
I’m one of those people who can remember my dreams so clearly that I have a hard time deciding whether it truly was a dream or a distant memory resurfacing. If the dream was so good that it could potentially become a scene or even the main plot of a new story, I’ll immediately write it down and archive it for later.
So who in their right mind hates to love their nightmares? This girl. I cannot stand the confused emotions I feel when I wake up, especially if I’m still trying to catch my breath from a brutal death that played out during REM. Tonight, for instance, I woke up at 2am out of breath.
I remember the details of my dream as if it really happened. While I wont share details to protect the identity and friendship of those I know who were in the dream, the reality of said dream had me scrambling out of bed. I grabbed one of the two dark pocket knives on the bookshelf next to my bed, placed their for protection and a sense of safety when I’m spooked at night, and did a walk-through.
There was nothing out of place in the house but the first place I padded silently toward was the front door. My heart was racing out of control, threatening to steal the oxygen right out of my lungs. I glanced at the outline of the door handle and cursed the last person to go to bed, for they hadn’t locked the door. Hands shaking, I made sure the door was locked, key still in the slot, and froze, listening for anything out of place.
Once I ensured that the house was in order, I went back to my computer and began to write the realistic details of my dream. If I forget the exact content, I’ll at least know that the antagonist did get caught in the end, but the protagonist still had a bad feeling that the crisis was all but averted.
So what do you do when you wake up from a nightmare?