Don't Go to Sleep

by Annabeth Leong

I can still hear the singsong chant in my head, in the dramatically deepened voice of a friend from school: "Don't go to sleep. Freddie Krueger's gonna get you." I can't remember if that's exactly the way it's said in the movie Nightmare on Elm Street, but the concept frightened me so much that I didn't actually watch the movie until at least ten years later.

I'm very aware of my helplessness while asleep—it's something I fear and fetishize in equal measure. The concept of a killer that attacks through dreams made deep instinctual sense.

I don't think I have any actual phobias. Not the sorts of wrenching tales Daddy and Spencer have told. But I won't get caught up in analyzing the clinical line between a phobia and a fear.

Sleep bothers me. I really wish I didn't have to do it. There are nights I try to fight it, sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket, playing games designed to present one mesmerizing pattern after another.

Ani DiFranco sang, "Sleep is like a fever. I'm glad when it ends." So many mornings, I sigh in relief as soon as the clock flips to what seems like a decent time to be awake and climb gratefully out of bed. Other mornings, I mutter, "Fuck it," and get up even though it's only 2 a.m.

***

It's the dreams that get to me. I have long stretches of nightmares, night after night, until it feels as if sand is ground into the backs of my eyeballs and it seems so fucking cruel that my body needs to do this thing that gives my mind a chance to torture me.

At this point in my life, I categorize my bad dreams—only the very worst rise to the level of what I would call nightmares. I have practiced various dream techniques so that in most cases I know I'm dreaming, and I've got some ability to change the nature of a dream or wake myself up if things are getting too terrible.

In one recent nightmare, I walked into a shed with my brother (I don't actually have a brother). As soon as we entered, I realized we were in horrible trouble. A man waited there beside a looming chair, a variety of sharp implements laid out on a table beside him. I flashed to a dream I'd had earlier that night, of myself in a wheelchair, and realized that this man planned to amputate my legs. I ran out of the shed and found myself in a green, daisy-covered field, something from the sunny childhood past. Outside the shed, I was young and safe, but my brother was no longer beside me. I realized I'd abandoned him to undergo the amputation without me. Feeling guilty, I returned to the shed. "You can run into the past," the man told me, "but I'll always be waiting here for you. For all the years it takes you to grow up again, you'll know what's here." I wanted to run away anyway, but I felt like a murderer leaving my brother, who was already strapped into the chair, legs bloody. I struggled to wake myself, but that felt like another type of running away, another abandonment that came with moral implications. I was trapped in the dream, spiraling through my own mind, stuck in that terrible shed watching the man cut off my brother's legs.

I could go on and on about the terrible dreams. There was the one where a doctor performed surgery on me over and over, cutting and recutting the same scarred spots along my abdomen, refusing to listen to my pleas that I needed to heal. There was the one where I found a strange movie theater in the middle of the woods only to encounter a blind projectionist who forced me to share his terrible visions and promised to follow me into my waking life. There was the one where my ex-husband committed suicide and I was the one who found the body.

There is the one where I am trapped in a broken-down car with my mother, and a gunman orders me to step outside. He promises that if I allow him to shoot me three times, he'll let us go, but otherwise he'll shoot her in the head. He promises he'll shoot me so it won't hurt too much. This has been a recurring nightmare throughout my life. Sometimes, he grazes my arm three times and it's okay. Other times, he shoots me in the heart, or in the gut.

***

My father was an insomniac. Typically for him, he took things to an even more intense level than I do. He slept two hours a night, from midnight to 2 a.m., and drank pot after pot of coffee the rest of the day. From 2 a.m. until sunrise, he worked out in his garage, doing hundreds of situps, hundreds of bench presses, anything to keep the sleep away.

When he was alive, I enjoyed the silent fellowship of this. Even hundreds of miles away from him, when I sat alone in my living room, too tortured by dreams to stomach a minute more in bed, I knew I wasn't alone. There was a warm place in the bottom of my belly, as if the early morning hours closed the distance between us. I used to be able to call him anytime, never worrying about time differences. He was always awake.

And I'll never forget the force of his dreams. Sometimes he fell asleep on the couch while watching Vietnam War movies. He ground his teeth like a demon, howled, and screamed. I could hear him from the backyard.

***

I had a roommate once who had a nightmare. She woke up in tears and cried most of the day. She asked me to pray with her. For hours, she refused to speak of what had happened in her sleep, and I was left to spin my own terrible imaginings.

When she finally confessed the dream, her story was simple. She had suffered a heart attack and been taken to a hospital in an ambulance, where she died. I tried my best to be compassionate, but within I was bemused. You've never died in your dreams before?

***

I mentioned that sleep isn't only a fear—it's also a fetish. In fact, it's a gold-standard fetish, one that works for me every time, one that never bores me no matter how repetitive the script.

I am sleeping, and someone comes in and touches me.

I recognize the many disturbing implications of this fetish, so it only appears in my work by accident—I've never had the courage to approach it head on. Still, it is in The Good Brother, and there's a hint of it in my story for Like a Chill Down Your Spine.

I ask my lover to do this as often as I dare. Strange that I spend so much of my life fearing the night, fearing the moment when I no longer have any choice but to lie down in bed, and yet I will lie down so eagerly to enact this particular game of pretend. I turn out the light and breathe slowly and deeply. Actual sleep fills me with tension, but in fake sleep, I find peace.

I don't always enjoy being touched when I'm awake. Sometimes I am like my character Celia, happy to touch myself but overwhelmed by the touch of another. When I pretend to be asleep, though, I can snatch pleasure in the darkness, uninhibited by the need to respond. I am so turned on my body buzzes.

I hate the labyrinths of my dreams, but when I fake being asleep, I relish the privacy. My body appears helpless. Perhaps it seems as if it's being used. In truth, it's more my own than when I'm awake.

In the strange in-between of the fetish, I am safe in the self-made darkness behind my eyelids, not subject to my brain's diabolical inventions, but also not tasked with the work of being aware and active. I come so easily, silently, drifting off into orgasm instead of sleep.

Talk to me softly ... and keep the nightmares at bay

Whisper softly to me as I sleep ...

My husband has dreams so vivid and real they seem true to him. He can wake up and describe in smell, sound, sight, taste and touch everything that happened. Then again, he is a very observant person, and completely clued in when awake.

He's also a tactile and visual learner, with a bit of audiotory thrown in for good measure.

Me, I am an auditory person. I don't learn by doing or by watching. But if you are patient and can talk me through a process, I just might get it.

I go to sleep with whispers in my ears, and I dream the same way. It's almost like all night long, someone is laying next to me, talking softly, telling me stories as I sleep. When I do dream, it's very jerky, almost like a disco ball and a strobe light are screwing, making everything have a flashing surreal look in black and white.

I hate those dreams. They all seem like nightmares, no matter what the content. But I don't dream like that normally. A standard night is the whispers ...

I often wake up from dreams with a good story running through my mind, and if I am careful and wake slowly enough, I can hold on to it, just long enough to finish the tale. I love that, most nights. Sometimes, if I am very good, I will get to the hear the story again, with some slight revisions. : )

My nightmares are different. I hear screams in my nightmares. That's the worst for me, far worse I think than if I was vividly having a nightmare. I wake up, heart pounding and holding myself silent. I just know my neighbor was murdered, or my daughter ...

Those are the worst.

My daughter is the one screaming. And I have to get out of bed, ready to charge into her room, ready to defent her to the death, fearing I am already too late. But at the same time, I have to be silent, and not alert the intruder to my presence.

The echo of her screams still ringing in my ears, I open my bedroom door and step into the hall.

Thankfully, I step into her room and find her fast asleep, her arm thrown over her head, her soft snores filling the room. Her birds awaken, and start chirping at me for disturbing their sleep, as the sliver of light from the hallway falls on them.

I stand there most nights, for several minutes, listening to pissed off sleep deprived parakeets, telling myself over and over it was just a nightmare.

Heart still racing, I have to go back to bed and try to fall back asleep, waiting for the whispers to start again, to sooth away the fear, to gently lull me back into sleep.

I love my dreams, the creativity they spark ... but I often wish for the bliss of true nightmares. Where I can wake up, heart-racing, and reach out for my husband and know it was only my imagination.

A Girl's Recurring Dream

Driving down a dark road at night. Unfamiliar road and car, and not driving, but riding in the passenger's seat. Just that alone is enough to render me uneasy from the start.

So far, there is darkness and loss of control. And nothing has happened yet.

A disembodied voice, that in my dream I know belongs to the driver, tells me to fasten my seatbelt. Reasonable request that sends shivers through me even as I comply, because I've been here before and I know what is to come. The prescience only heightens my dread.

I've had this dream dozens of times in my life, beginning around the age of ten.

And here comes the bridge. An old-fashioned bridge like you see in rural areas of the Midwest or New England, wooden with slats that don't seem suffcient to hold the weight of an automobile. Short railings along the side, and it's through these railings we crash, plummenting the thankfully short distance to the water below.

The water begins to fill the car, first slowly, then with a rush as the driver rolls down the window and frees him/herself, abandoning me to my fate. I frantically push at the old-fashioned push button release of the seatbelt, to no avail. It's stuck fast and the belt has tightened around me. Thrashing around, I try desperately to loosen the stricture. Nothing helps and the water inexorably rises as the car sinks.

Chest. Neck. Chin. Ears, as I tilt my head, still working at the belt, my fingers growing numb in the frigid matte black water. Temples, and now I'm submerged, thinking belatedly that I should have taken a deep breath before I lost the opportunity. My lungs are bursting with the need to breathe.

Just as I can hold my breath no longer...I snap awake. Sometimes bolt upright in bed. Sometimes in a random part of the house, always in motion as if I was running from my fate as I couldn't do in my subconscious. Always breathing as if to suck in every molecule of blessed oxygen within reach.

I don't know whether I've been holding my breath in actuality, as in my dream.

And I wonder sometimes what will happen the time I have this dream...and don't wake up in time. All I know is, I don't want to die in my sleep like many people say they do, because I fear this would be my last experience on earth.

Let me be aware and able to act, oh please, oh please.

NIghtmares

By Lisabet Sarai

They're coming. I've locked the windows and the doors, but I know that won't keep them out indefinitely. Now I'm on the second floor, with no way to escape. I hear the squeal of the wooden front door being torn apart. Where can I hide? In the bathroom there's a cupboard under the sink, with a louvered door. I squeeze myself into the cramped space, close the door, hold my breath. Footsteps on the stairs. Shadows cast against the barred light that enters my place of concealment. My chest hurts; I must release the air trapped in my lungs. I allow myself to exhale, as slowly and quietly as I can. They've left the bathroom now and they're checking the closets. Maybe I'll be safe after all. Then the cabinet is thrown open and I'm dragged out, screaming, to stand before their leader.

Who are they, these invaders? Sometimes they are vampires, sometimes aliens or zombies, sometimes a cult of evil witches and sorcerers—always creatures with power. They are often fiendishly attractive, hardly ever physical monsters. Yet I know that they'll kill me, though I'm never sure why.

Just like my other dreams, my nightmares have elaborate plots. The motivations, though, are hardly ever clear. The only certainty in these dreams is fear.

Sometimes I try to negotiate with the leader, to bargain for my life. Sometimes I wake up just as I am dying. The worst dreams, though, are the ones where I discover I'm holding a knife or a sword, and plunge it into the villain's body, again and again. Then I awaken, drenched with sweat, my heart racing, trying to wipe the images from my mind. The most awful nightmares are the ones where I find myself turning into the evil one.

I shudder when I think about the sensations, the yielding of the monster's flesh as my blade enters. How do I know what this feels like? I've never stabbed anyone, but in my dream I don't hesitate at all. I can't get the scene out of my thoughts. I get up, use the bathroom, drink some water, trying to banish the taint of violence. Sometimes I'm successful, but the doubts linger. Am I really capable of such acts? Could I mortally wound someone under the right circumstances? If not, then why do I dream it?

In the real world, I consider myself a peacemaker. I dislike confrontation. I'm willing to compromise for the sake of mutual harmony. I consider most if not all wars unjust. I demonstrated against the Vietnam war and the invasion of Iraq. I strongly believe that violence is counter-productive, that it merely breeds more violence in a vicious circle of retribution. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama are my heroes.

So what does it mean that I sometimes dream of wielding a knife against an enemy?

Unlike many romance authors, I've never created a warrior hero. A few of my books, notably Exposure and Necessary Madness, include some violence—murders, beatings, arson, attempted rape. After all, it's difficult to write a thriller without some spilling some blood. I'm never all that comfortable writing about these topics, however, and I don't think that I do it very well. When I wrote Exposure, I worried that it was unacceptably dark; reviewers, though, seemed to see it as almost a romp.

I've mentioned in previous posts that I occasionally use my dreams as starting points for my stories. I wonder if I could harness my nightmares in the same way. Horror is a genre that I find totally beyond my understanding (other than at the level of parody). Dark erotica, however, like the work of Helen Madden or Polly Frost, is a sub-genre that I appreciate even though I've never been able to create it myself. Perhaps I could use my own dark dreams as a starting point. I should mention that in the recurring nightmare above, my negotiation is sometimes sexual. I'll offer myself for the pleasure of the evil crowd, in return for my survival.

The scenario above is not, of course, my only nightmare. I dream of elevator cables suddenly giving way (the classic dream of falling); of fat, chitinous bugs crawling out from the walls and across my skin; of losing my husband and having no idea where he is or how to contact him. The experience of assaulting my enemy is the most disturbing, though. I'd like to believe that's not me—but how can I disavow any of the images concocted by my mind?

For our Saturday guest, I've invited Kim Richards, horror author and founder of Damnation Books, to join us. Meanwhile, I'm understandably curious about the nightmares of my fellow Grip authors—and of our readers.

Ride That Horse!

It's 6AM right now. I've been up for over an hour, had a shower, dragged myself downstairs, made a cup of tea, some toast, started the laundry. I didn't get to bed the night before until almost midnight, and I hate that I've had only five hours of sleep (less, if you subtract the time I spent tossing and turning). But that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Sleep gets short shrift when I'm busy, and I am busy these days.

I've been thinking ever since I stepped out of the shower about what I could add to this week's topic. Not much, really. Like Lisabet, I dream and I remember my dreams. In fact, last night's dreams are still fresh in my mind, a confused jumble about me attending a science fiction convention and trying to find someone, maybe horror writer Matt F'n Wallace, to hold my purse (since when did I start carrying a fucking purse?!) while I run off to dance or chase aliens or go home because nobody at the convention likes me anymore. I dream a lot about science fiction conventions these days, probably because they've become so important to my writing career. I've attended five this year.

Of course, like Jenna, I've also had my bouts of insomnia, but unlike Jenna, I'm loathe to take anything for it. I guess I don't have insomnia that often, nor do I have a husband who's a light sleeper. I will say, however that for me, insomnia is the true nightmare. Every minute of sleep counts in my world.

Like Jude, I do have a tendency to work on stories while I sleep, though I don't recall dreaming about my writing when this happens. I just wake up and have a solution ready to go. Funny how that works.

Garce mentioned writers as people who live in a waking dream, bringing it to reality through the written word. Many of my stories come from vivid daydreams. In fact, the best stories are the ones that seize me while I'm awake, and I can't stop playing them over and over in my head, like a favorite movie, only I'm rehearsing the dialog and action and perfecting the scenery and plot with each pass through. I never get tired of doing that, either.

I obviously don't have Ashley's problem, since I remember my dreams, but I do sympathize with his wife. I woke up one morning and nearly punched Hubster's lights out because I dreamt he had kissed my sister. To this day, he gets into more trouble for things he's done in my dreams than for any actual transgressions he's committed in the real world. In fact, I think the worst recent nightmare I've had was about him divorcing me and refusing to give a reason why. I can't recall ever having woken up so angry and upset before.

I'm a vivid dreamer. I frequently recall my dreams. I usually post snippets of the more memorable ones on Twitter first thing after I get up. I've never used a specific night-dream (as opposed to day-dream) for any story, but somehow stories do manage to get written or edited while I'm off in Slumber Land. As for day-dreams, I'd be lost without them.

And all this has been covered by everyone else so far this week. So what do I have to add to this discussion that's unique, original, not yet mentioned?

Only myself, and my own weird dreams.

The first nightmare I can recall having happened was when I was five or six. It was about Flat Stanley. I dreamt he was shot and killed in the art museum robbery. I would never again let my parents read Flat Stanley to me, and in fact hid the book so I would never have to look at it again. To this day, I will not read Flat Stanley.

I dreamt once about a skull headed woman driving a horse-drawn cart. Her face and hair had been burned off in a fire, though the rest of her was untouched. I don't know why that one snippet of dream still hangs with me to this day.

In college, I dreamt about being on a search for a magical talisman. The search always took place in the same weird, endless underground city, in a rather seedy market place. That same year, I was taking a class on creativity. We had to pick a "talisman," an object to journal about (this was looooooooong before the days of blogging), think about, dream about. I dreamt about my object all right. My talisman was a piece of moss agate. I finally dreamt one night that I found my talisman in a dusty shop in the underground city. I broke it open and drank the milky fluid inside of it. It tasted flat, stale, salty, metallic. Nothing magical whatsoever happened as a result of that drink.

I dreamt once that Batman and Robin were hosting a news cast. Robin told a joke about the Marine Corps, and it was so funny, I woke up laughing. I startled the hell out of the Hubster, who asked, "What's so funny?" He says I told him, "It wouldn't translate well in real time." I spent the rest of the day walking around with a smile on my face that nothing could wipe off.

I dreamt that I went to visit my grandmother in a nursing home. I was sitting at her feet, chatting, when she suddenly said, "You know your old grandma is dying." I hugged her knees and said, "It's okay, Grandma." A month or so later, she did die, though that wasn't unexpected. That dream was the last time I really saw her.

I dreamt I was in my favorite aunt's house, being hunted by my other aunt, the one who had estranged herself from my family years before. The lights were all out, and I slipped from room to room, silently as I could, sticking close to the walls because even though I couldn't see it in the dark, I knew the floors had all collapsed in the middle of each room. My estranged aunt was always just a room behind me, hunting for me in the dark...

I dreamt once about the lousy part-time job I had as a cashier in a craft store. The dream was a nightmare, with nothing going right. In the midst of it, a man took me by the hand and suddenly I was standing in my yard with him. He asked me, "If you could be a goddess, what kind of goddess would you be?" I said, "I'd be a goddess of cats, and art, and creativity." "Then why aren't you that goddess now?" he asked me. I'm still trying to figure out the answer to that one.

When I really, really want to have a nightmare, I dream I'm back in college and I'm a cadet again. Either I can't find my dorm room, or I have to live in an apartment off campus but there's something wrong with the apartment or else I can't find it, and I know I'm going to get in trouble because of this. I hate dreaming I'm back in college. I really, really hate it.

I dreamt once I had a flying carpet and I rode it through my neighborhood. It was the neatest thing in the world!

I dreamt once that I stood in a train station, waiting for someone important to show up. A gorgeous young man stepped off the train and greeted me with a kiss. It's the only time I can recall having an orgasm in my sleep.

I dreamt once that I was the only person in a giant Barnes and Noble bookstore. It had millions upon millions of books, and the world's best cafe filled with all sorts of culinary delights. The second floor of the store was an endless series of baths, each one modeled in a different style, including a Roman bath and a Polynesian hot spring. Apparently the whole place had been built for me and me alone. It was my dream of Paradise. Then one of the tubs upstairs overflowed and the water rotted the floor until the top story fell into the bottom story and the whole place collapsed on itself. I woke up devastated.

During my second pregnancy, I dreamt I was a dominatrix, dressed form head to toe in a black vinyl bodysuit and thigh high boots. I was having strap-on sex with a friend, a woman I knew in real life. She wore a harness and nothing else. I was cruel and indifferent to her struggles against me. I woke up from that dream so disoriented and confused, for a while I wasn't sure if it had happened in reality or not.

Last week, I dreamt someone tried to mug me for my knitting. Yes, my knitting! I beat the crap out of the guy, but did not feel good about it afterwords.

And those are just a few of my nighttime dreams. The daydreams run the gamut from blisteringly hot sexual fantasy to the more mundane things like being on the New York Times best-seller list. And of course, I have those moments of waking lucid dreaming where I'm working on a story, and have become so possessed by the characters that I stand there, lips moving, mumbling dialog and narrative to myself like some sort of lunatic (do not let Garce and I sit in a cafe together; I'm certain someone would call the men in white jackets if they saw us both babbling and have us locked away).

Piers Anthony once wrote a book called "Nightmare" in which a jet black horse named Mare Imbrium delivered bad dreams to people. At the time I read that, I thought it was the coolest idea I'd ever heard of. Not surprisingly, I have dreamed of riding that horse.