A Time For Nightmares

When I was younger I often had recurring nightmares that I could not seem to overcome. They came almost every night filling me with feelings of terror and helplessness. So I decided that I would learn to try and fight back and learn how to overcome the dreams. I did that by reading books, and not books about dreams but about heroes. I was about five years old back then, how could I have gotten books about dreams back then?

At any rate I picked up every book I could get my hands on; fantasy, mystery, science fiction, just about all types and devoured them. I spent every night thinking about how I could try and do something different in my dreams to stop them from becoming nightmares. Through sheer willpower alone I was able to become more than just an observer to the terrors that haunted me. It was only later in life after I learned to control my dreams on my own, and read more books, that I became a fully lucid dreamer at age seven. But I am getting ahead of myself, what I am here today is to tell you about my nightmares as I remember them.

The first nightmare is one that filled me with nothing but stark naked terror. I would always jolt up out of my bed when I had this dream covered in sweat and adrenalin running through my veins. It would start out simple enough, I would be sitting in the passenger side of a jeep or something like it as we wound down a pleasant path. The path would then start to go into hairpin turns with a cliff side view of a canyon. The jeep would speed up and soon I would be thrown from the jeep and into the canyon unharmed. I would feel rumbling behind me and I would turn to see a hoard of animals of all shapes and sizes barreling down at me. I was being hunted, I was their prey, I need to run, escape escape escape! The dream would always end as I trip and become over run by the white colored hoard behind me.

What I did to try and over come this nightmare was try and change things about it. I started to gain control over my dreams slowly at first. I went from being a passenger to the driver of the jeep, no longer was it gliding out of control with me along for the ride. I kept falling at the turns and into the canyon at the end, but it was a start. Things started becoming easier to influence in my dream and soon I would either keep running to the end of the canyon where it opened up so I escaped or hid in a nook until the hoard passed. The Jeep was easier to drive, and I no longer speed out of control as soon as i reached the cliff face road. The last time I ever had the nightmare, I stopped the jeep and sat at the top of the canyon and watch the hunt pass under me, snapping and chasing a different prey.

That is it for the first of three of my nightmares, Travelers. Come back next time and learn about the pool of no clear exit.