To speak of nightmares.

Recently in my creative mind I have discovered what I feel is an oddity.

I have had nightmares before. Moments in the dead of night where I would wake trembling, sweating and generally fearing my normal day to day occurrences transformed into the surreal.  Regular fears given life, given form, given creepy as fuck smiles and grins. Lately that isn't the case.

Lately my nightmares have turned interactive. Akin to interactive horror movies. Its pretty legit in my mind. I fear, I run , I perceive the horror. Yet on a totally different level I'm taking notes and relishing in the predicament I happen to be in. Two examples follow and I honestly have to say I love both of  the experiences I have been privy to witness.

Experience 1.

I'm trapped in a house with a bunch of other extras. They're extras because I can't recall names or faces, they don't matter. I'm walking through a room with a 'patient' on a gurney with one of the extras by my side.  Suddenly a clown bursts forth form the 'patient's' chest.  On one side that's some fucked up shit. You shouldn't see that. On the other side, I loved it. Scared the crap outta me and I honestly woke up smiling. Who expects that crap? I didn't, thus it stuck with me.

Experience 2.

My companion and I, because every good story is never about 1 person, have cornered some fleshy/skeleton zombie thing in a barn about to cleanse it of evil before it takes a little girl's soul. I brand the horror with some kind of runic script and I'm about to relish victory when my accomplice who has remained nameless and faceless declares that it's not the evil I'm vanquishing that's the root of the problem but it's still alive brother which bursts into the unholy form of my nightmare. My accomplice and I run the fuck away and the dream/nightmare ends.

I wake up at the end of both of these and legitimately smiled. They were both frightening in terms of my psyche presenting visuals to fuck me over yet I saw really good story elements in them. I have yet to have a nightmare/dream that has had a plot twist in it. That was simply amazing.  In example 1 I saw what should have been frightening but yet found the scare informative. What I'm afraid of can  be someone else's  fear and that can relate them to me. Relating to the audience is a good thing in most cases. Touching people through writing is truly a work of art and a bit of being psychic, to paraphrase the great Stephen King.

It has come to mind that at the moment my nightmares are what they are. They're interactive horror movies. I may run, hide, fight  and generally experience every emotion that horror brings to the table there is a part of me that is taking notes, studying my reactions and what the evil looks like so I can write it out later for some other audience to experience that same thing.

By they way, that clown looked awesome as hell in my mind. A clown bursting through a person's chests is fucking frightening to a lot of people. To me, it was an eye opener. I try to bring it back quite often but the clown in question has gone on vacation. Oh well. I'm sure plenty of other creeps, oddities, and  malcontents will pop up in my dreams to take note of and learn from. I honestly can't wait till my next 'nightmare'.