A dream
/dream/ noun 1. 1. a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep.
I have relived this dream since I was a small child, over and over again.
My dreams are like movies, and I am the only viewer, sitting alone in a dark, cavernous theater, aged and abandoned, with a ginormous screen.
Ext. Forrest – Night
POV of small, pale feet, the tiniest of toes sinking deep into the muddy path of a dark forest. Obviously a child.
She is running as fast as her small legs will carry her.
We hear heaving guttural sobs she tries to hold back as it takes away the little breath she has.
She is struggling.
Her stomach cramps sending her crumbling to the ground.
Her hands sink into the mud and she dry heaves, each intake of breath she screeches for air.
She looks back, panning the preverbal dark forest, menacing tall trees, blocking out the sliver of moon light offered.
Someone is chasing her and is close behind. We can hear the panting of her pursuer.
Childs POV:
We now see that chaser is a nun, her large cross swaying violently across her shocking white tunic, the only light in this darkness.
Its echo’s ricocheting in my mind as I watch the film play out.
Swish, Swishhhhh, Swishhhhhh…
The sound echos through the empty theater.
Penetrating my soul.
The child hobbles to her feet and tries to run.
In my mind I am begging for her to get away, making my own deals with the devil for her survival. My breath as weighted and sporadic as this small child’s.
POV of the Child
She comes upon a house with a large arched wooden door.
She is so small she barely crests the middle, the door looming over her.
She is banging on it.
Knock… Banggggg. Her knuckles pleading with the pine. Save Me….
I offer my own plea “Someone save her!”
And no one comes.
No one ever comes.
The child turns to face the camera, tears streaming down her mud covered face and I recognize her immediately.
It’s me.
And I wake up.
In a pool of sweat, alone.
Wow. So scary. My dad was raised Catholic but wasn’t practicing by the time he got married. I was saved the daily dosing of guilt my Catholic friends seemed to experience. I created my own relationship with God as a child. He was a helpmate when I lost something, like my skate key found tucked under couch cushions or my arrow hiding in the thicket of the backyard prickly lemon bush. Now it’s good parking spaces and the $300 dress for a summer white party found on Macy’s last chance rack for $19.96. I always express gratitude when things magically show up that I think about wanting. Your evil nuns dream would gut me. As I feel life can be challenging enough without your subconscious mind making horror movies out of your childhood traumas to haunt you into adulthood. I hope that writing them down in daylight hours as an adult will dilute them into oblivion. ❤️
I had a bout of night terrors for years in my 20’s and 30’s. Would dream the air was being sucked out of the house or the ceiling was falling in. Started in my 20’s while going thru a divorce. I twice broke out plate glass windows with my bare hands when the dream manifested as a night terror in the real world. Once I woke up screaming in the hallway having run to save my sleeping child after having just had an arthroscopic knee surgery. Night terrors have gone away thank goodness. I guess I too was working out control issues. Just without the nuns.