Nightmare in Room 3410
“Myron, wake up,” my roommate, Edgar, called above the incessant beeping of my alarm.
I opened my eyes but said nothing.
“Dude, get up. Your alarm’s going off.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Edgar standing about a foot from my bed, but I still refused to say a word.
Probably noticing the angry expression on my face, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
I looked at him for the first time, offended that he didn’t know what was wrong. “You just made me lose a whole bunch of money!”
Edgar was confused. “What? What did I do?”
“I bought four cell phones for forty dollars each by accident, and you lost them just when I was getting ready to return them!”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t –”
“Plus, you ate my arms!” I jumped out of my bed, still fuming, and viciously hit the alarm’s snooze button. Pulling myself into bed once more, I tossed Edgar an angry glare. “Why would you eat my arms?!”
Instead of waiting for an answer, I pulled my blanket over my head and went to back to sleep. Edgar later relayed to me the event that I could only faintly remember.
In case you haven’t already guessed, I talk in my sleep. Instead of mumbling unrecognizable words like my roommate, however, I interact with anyone within my proximity while in a half-dreaming, half-awake state. After an initial period of confusion, anyone who hears it finds it quite amusing.
Barely able to control his laughter, Edgar told me about the time I woke up seeking counsel on whether or not I should try to bribe a judge with a donut to get out of jail. He told me of another time that I had demanded that he stop throwing bombs at me. A few days ago, I fell asleep in one of my friend’s room, and when I awoke, he told me that I had asked him if he had released the bat that my sister caught from the net.
While I do enjoy the fact that my dreams can be a method of producing laughter, as of late, the sleep talking has become more frequent and the dreams more vivid.
On a particularly exhausting day this week, I decided to take a quick nap to replenish my energy. Upon closing my eyes, I became a rabbit running through mountain terrain, hoping to escape the hunters who wanted a small device that I was carrying. As I was looking behind me to see if any of the hunters were on my tail (literally), I tripped and fell halfway down a cliff that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Refusing to die by falling into the water below, I quickly grabbed a jutted rock and tried unsuccessfully to hoist myself up.
Just when it seemed like all hope was lost, a creature with an apple-shaped head and a face that resembled the cat from Alice in Wonderland looked over the side of cliff. I asked him to help me, but he insisted that rabbits were never harmed when they fell into the ocean. Seeing that I had no other option, I let go of the rock and watched in horror as the creature flashed me a devilish grin and informed me that he was lying.
After a few seconds of falling, I found myself engulfed in water and sinking fast. All of a sudden, I felt someone grab me and turn me around. Instead of my rescuer, I found myself face to face with a burly hunter who wrestled the device from my hand and tied me to a rock on the ocean’s floor. Unable to untie the knot or find some alternate method of escape, I panicked as my supply of oxygen ran out. I thrashed around for a few moments, knocking over the books on my desk, before I realized that I was awake and could breathe freely. Gasping for air, I wondered if anyone had ever died by drowning in their dreams.
In an effort to get the traumatizing effect of the dream out of my head, I decided to ride my bike around the greenway. Despite the distraction, I couldn’t help but think about all the dreams I had been having recently. It took me a few minutes to put together the pieces, but I finally found the source. The intensity of my dreams strengthened when I started getting more sleep. I started getting more sleep when I started getting more work done during the day. I started getting more work done during the day when I started making schedules.
Everything led back to my decision to start budgeting my time. It did have some negative effects – like the sudden decrease in time I spent with my friends – but it also had some positive effects – like an increase in efficiency and amount of time I got to sleep. When the number of hours I slept a night jumped from five to eight, it became easier to remember my dreams and become more involved in them.
At first, I saw this new ability to remember dreams as a curse, but I soon started to see the benefits. Mary Shelley, best known for her novel Frankenstein, first conceived the idea for the monster that many would soon come to love in a dream. After seeing the creation of Frankenstein's monster as she slept, she woke up and scribbled down what she saw in a dream journal that sat on a nightstand next to her bed. Her novel has survived the turbulence of time and is still popular today.
As an aspiring writer, does this mean that I am going to start keeping a dream journal? Of course it does. Maybe the next big hit will be a product of my dreams. Be on the lookout for an epic tale of a brave rabbit that holds the key to the survival of his people, a shocking analysis of the use of powdered pastries as bribery in the court system, and a spine-chilling horror story about the roommate who devours arms.