Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Rational Nightmares

There are these things called "rational dreams." I have a long history of experiencing them.

A rational dream, through both research and self-conclusion is when the body is in a lighter stage of sleep, or more like half asleep, but is still oppertuned to experience dreams; if, by an off-chance, you DO have a dream durring this lighter stage of slumber, some channels of your brain are still alert and active, one of these channels being the part of the brain that concludes what's rational.

Most of the time, this channel of the brain IS turned off, however, and heretofore there is nothing to tell us what's right from wrong and what we should and shouldn't worry about. I once read a blog where the author explained he had a terrible nightmare of being chased down an alley by a giant potato, adding that if he had any common sense (aka, if his rational-ness was active) he would have been able to stop and say, "Wait, why am I being chased by a giant potato?" But because he didn't, he was unable to make any actual analysis, therefore running from a huge vegetable was of impulse.

However.

I have had many rational dreams, and the funny thing is, most of them have happened when I was very young--somehwere between ages three and six--and most of them were nightmares.

I had one reoccuring nightmare where a monster, or a theif, or some kind of threatning thing or person barged into the house and was getting ready to eat or kill me, and I remember being fully aware that it was, in fact, a dream. I remember not being afraid of the threat at hand, but rather being afraid of not knowing how to wake myself up. The first time I had a dream like this, I simply closed my eyes and mentally commanded myself to wake up, and wouldn't you know, it worked.

The second time, however, it wasn't so easy. I closed my eyes and kept telling myself to wake up, and nothing seemed to work efficeintly. Eventually, durring the climax when push came to shove, I woke up from anxiety, and the stress, as I have said, was not from the dream itself, but from the disablitity to get out of it.

I had one dream where a masked criminal with a gun bursted into the house, and I seemed to be the only one that cared, nobody else in the house, not my mom or my dad or either of my older brothers was planning on doing anything about it. I fled to the bathroom with the evil guy on my tail, and just before I closed the do0r, he grabbed my arm and somehow managed to have all four of my limbs, tugging on them through the door. (What the h---?!)

I remember him saying, "No! You don't understand! I want to eat you!" Please don't question this, I was merely six at the time.

In response I said to nobody but myself, "And I want to get out of this dream." There you go, ladies and gentlemen. I was being rational. I squeezed my eyes shut, demanded I wake up, and once I did I was darn proud of myself for conquering that feat.

The most recent rational dream I can recall is maybe one or two years ago, I was in a huge factory building helping move boxes or something, and out of nowhere erupted this huge Frankenstien who started tearing through the place.

I mean huge. He had to be at least twenty feet tall, no exaggeration.

At first, I WAS scared, and fled to a room with some other various cartoon characters, like people from Jimmy Neutron or whatever, and as soon as I closed the door behind us, I calmed down and thought, "Wait a minute, how is there just a random giant Frankenstein waltzing all over the place? And how am I here with computer graphic animated cartoon characters?"

Immediately I recognized I was in a dream and I also observed that Frankenstein had a fancy for throwing people. I didn't want to carry on with all this hooey, so in attempt to get out of this vision, I gathered Frankenstien's attention once he ripped off the roof to the room we were in, and like I planned, he picked me up and through me as fast as a bullet out of the building. On the way, I remember screaming,

"YEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS...!"

And I woke up.

I have to say, for all the rational nightmares I've had, I don't believe it was perhaps the visuals that scared me, it was not sure of how to get myself out. I knew that I wasn't going to get hurt or anything, but nobody wants to be in the midst of scary sights and monsters and the notation he's trying to kill you. It's like watching a really scary movie. You know everything's fake, but it scares you anyway.

In any event, for all of the irrational nightmares I have, I always look at it this way; it feels REALLY good when you wake up.

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