The Recurring Dream

I have become apprehensive of falling asleep, for this single, most horrific nightmare, more so because it recurs every night!

It might seem petty now when you hear it, but at the dead of the night, when you are all alone and darkness has engulfed not just your room, but the entire world as far as you can see, and you are alone - every person who cares about you, or every person you know is fast asleep - at that time, even the ticking of the clock is enough to upset your nerves. My nerves are already quite weak and jumpy, as they are.

Now, this dream, that has stolen the appeal of sleep from me, is set in the dark damp bottom of what seemed to be a cave or well. I am not bound or tied up, but I'm unable to move. I hear indistinct whispers, as if some people are quarelling in a language not known to me. Just as a feeling suffocation starts to swell up because of the blinding darkness, the whispers grow closer.

Very soon, a few men, with fire lamps in their hands, dark, scantily dressed and tattoed from head to toe, approach me with what seemed to be hunger and craving! I try to break loose from the paralysis that was pinning me, to set free and run away from the cannibals and the dank dark place, but I fail to make any movement. The captors soon get to me and start to poke my skin, as if to see if I'm fleshy enough for a meal or not. Then one of them with protruding teeth and a large nose smell me and shake his head. Not ready, he seemed to say. Partly relieved I lay in suspense of what happens next.

One of them, a tall and skinny one, then approaches me with some gruesome liquid in a wooden bowl. Another one holds my mouth open, and the liquid is shoved down my throat.

I wake up in terror and nausea, glad to find that I'm safe in my bright and warm apartment. I wonder if what I was fed was some fattening concoction, like the ones they feed in cannibal stories we read. And I promise to myself not to fall asleep again.

More than a week has gone by, and there has not been a night when I haven't had that spine chilling nightmare. Even my days now seem to be passing by in some sort of a stupor. I might have had to get help, but one day the dream changed, or at least a part of it did.

The one with the protruding teeth and large nose poked me and sniffed me, and then this time he had a different smile on his face. Meal is ready, he seemed to say. They fed no goo this time, but tied my limbs to a pole. Two of them then took the pole on their shoulders and carried me through a tunnel to an open space lit by a fire in the middle. About a dozen cannibals looked at me hungrily!

My limbs seemed to be able to move now, but this time I was tied. I twisted and struggled as they carried me to the fire. What horrified me the most was that the fear, the rush of adrenaline and even the searing heat of the fire did not wake me up from my nightmare!

Slowly I wondered, if the goo they had fed me was not to fatten me, but rather to paralyze me, hallucinate me and make me believe I had a bright and warm apartment. For so much as I can remember, I was already quite fat!