Nightmare

Alice through the mozy net.

Ooops, I must really have upset the gods with my little spiel last night. Had an horrific night’s sleep :o(

I was a bit het-up last night and, after a good long chat with Dad, fell to reading my book – Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. It’s utterly brilliant. It’s over a thousand pages, but I’m flying through it. Anyway, I got to a particularly good bit in a love story between two of the main characters, Jack and Aliena. They really are such good characters. I only meant to read a couple of chapters, but just couldn’t put it down. Eventually, I had to admit defeat somewhere nearing 2am because I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

The moment I put the book down, turned out the torch and tried to get some kip, I found myself incredibly restless. The room was zig-zagy swimming slightly, in the way it does when you’re over-tired and should have put the book down an hour ago. I was tossing and turning for ages, huffing and puffing about on my mattress, trying to get comfortable. They’re all made from Rwandan Foam TM, after a few nights they sag horribly in the middle. Oddly, even at that time of night, there was a congregation of people somewhere nearby singing African songs.

Eventually, I guess I must have dozed off.

The next thing I know, I’m awake, bolt-upright in my bed. Literally, I must have sat up and then woken – terrified because there’s someone in my room! I’m not sure what the hell’s going on. My eyes adjust to see a headless African woman in a red shirt standing at the end of my bed ‘looking’ at me. 

After a yelp of fright, I’m desperately fumbling for the torch whilst shouting ‘WHO ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU?’ For want of a weapon, I'm kicking my foot at it. But it didn’t move. Unbelievably, I had the presence of mind to glance behind to check I wasn't lucid dreaming/OBEing. How the hell that entered my mind in my panic is bizarre, maybe it was wishful thinking? I got the torch on and shone it straight ahead.

There was nothing there. 

My heart was ten to the dozen. I was absolutely swimming in fear. It was the kind of incident, as a kid, I might have been able to attribute to a chair, or a coat on the wall; turning it into an intruder in the dark. But there is nothing but a brick wall there. No shape to turn into anything, yet it was so vivid.

I sat for a moment looking around and reorienting. I half thought about getting up, but I knew I’d had so little sleep that I’d be a wreck in the morning, so I forced myself quite quickly to turn the torch off and lay back down. My mind was humming and I found it hard to relax, but managed to drift off again pretty fast.

I think it was the fact that I woke sitting up that scared the hell out of me. The thought that my body had done something without me. I never get nightmares. This is totally and completely out of character for me. I get gory dreams sometimes, but they fascinate me, I’m never scared. This was incredibly random. I thought my guard was bound to come knocking because I was shouting but, not very reassuringly, he didn’t :op

Today I went and stood where she had been last night, looking in through the mosquito net at where I was laying. It bothered me. I've been feeling hugely uncomfortable in the house since. Not looking forward to going to bed tonight.

If I had to put my ‘dream drugs’ hat on and be rational, I’d say that the fish we ate last night (fish here is ironically called Ifi) was packed full of tryptophan. Given the early dark here it was well utilised and the swimmy sensation was an indicator that my dream juices were flowing: melatonin, pinoline, endogenous DMT. The restlessness probably meant that I was in a strong dreamstate when I snapped awake, thus I was tripping vividly. Regular occurrence. But then, my sacred mantra: ‘chemicals are the springboard’ – they are the key that opens the door, they are not the room inside. Possibly just my psyche still swimming from the memorial centre. I think that’s had more of an affect than I consciously realise. We’ll see how we go. It was incredibly vivid, it was incredibly powerful, and I’m slightly unnerved by it.

Anyway, I planted peas today. I keep buying veg which keeps going off due to fruit fly-type things and general quality issues. I bought dried peas the other day and they’ve started sprouting in the bag, so I planted some. Why keep paying and throwing stuff away if, as the case seems, the ground here is so fertile and I have a garden? The avocado I planted seems happy enough at the moment. If these work out, I’ll throw in some beans and tomatoes. Growing things is a powerful antidote to bogymen ;)