Originally Posted by Arkanin
Thursday night, my sleep was pretty screwed up. The trouble is, my apartment's building-wide fire alarm went off at about 2:30 AM. I sleep from 11:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M. or so, but after the alarm woke me up, I couldn't sleep again until 5:30 AM or so, thereby perfectly torpedoing my rest. I went to work that morning and felt fine until lunch, coasting on adrenaline. As the day wore on, I started to drag and by 3:00 PM I was completely exhausted with a nasty ear-splitting headache. I decided to go home a bit early, at 4:30 P.M., since I couldn't concentrate on my work, and as soon as I got home I took a couple aspirins. I laid down in my bed to take a nap.
When I take a nap, I almost always wake up naturally after a couple hours. Today, I conked right out around 4:40, and when I woke up, it was 11 P.M.! Good thing I ruined my sleep schedule during the weekend. I wanted to go to bed at 11 P.M., but here I am just waking up. I putter around on the internet until about 4 A.M., and then I fall asleep again.
At some point, I was dreaming and I became conscious. In my dream, I was in a small, cozy house when I sensed an unpleasant but not terrifying presence. I looked out a window pane in this dream and saw the face of a man. It was not outright malicious yet the face was an object of fear. I became conscious that I was dreaming, yet I decided not to wake up yet. The awareness that I was dreaming gave me the grit to defy this person who was doing something unpleasant to me.
I locked eyes with him as something bizarre started to happen. He had a power over me, and the details of the world began to spin and fade as he sucked me into another place. All I concentrated on was this man's face. I started to snarl at him defiantly and flailed at him to catch only air -- what he was doing was wrong, and unpleasant, but not terrifying. I knew I could wake up, so I wasn't that afraid and just kept dreaming (As an aside, the only other time I knew I was dreaming I got excited that I was conscious in a dream and that woke me up. I don't know how I kept a cool enough head to stay asleep this time.)
The next thing I knew, I was in a dark, cyllindrical place, a much less imaginatively constructed place than the old one. It was all very hollow, very fake. I knew I was dreaming here. I was more or less floating around, and I was more of an airborne camera than a person. I was alone and I didn't feel afraid, but I could very vividly remember the face of the man. At some point I started to experience something sexual, which woke me up. I was in my bed, lying on my side, and I wanted to dream again beause I was enjoying whatever was going on. I was awake for a couple seconds, long enough to realize I was in my bed and safe. I imagined the face again, with my eyes open.
This time I literally lapsed back into my dream while completely conscious. It was like the face I imagined had such a vivid connection to the dream that it yanked me right in from a state of a wakeness. Entering the dream was an experience that I can hardly describe. It was unpleasant and unfamiliar, yet interesting enough to be worth it. I felt a numbness slide over my back, my vision became black, and I felt some part of me becoming dormant, necrotic even. the entire process was very strange. I wonder now if this is what it feels like to fall asleep every night, and our memories simply don't record it when it happens.
I floated around for a bit in the cylindrical place. Here, the man's face was right at the tip of my memory, always present in my mind. But something woke me up again. I was conscious, in my apartment, for a few moments. I am completely positive I was awake at this point. Everything was real, and crisp. I checked the clock on my wall, and it said it was 5:56 AM. I imagined the face again. At this point, I think I was very curious. I 'fell asleep while conscious' again, my body becoming paralyzed as before. As I got sucked into dreamland I started tingling. I tried to move my hand while falling asleep -- I managed to drag it a couple inches with a superhuman effort. Everything went black and I was in my apartment's bedroom again. This was a dream, but at the time I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or actually behaving like a lunatic in my apartment. I could move freely now, and I was running around my room on my hands, doing cartwheels, and sticking my head into the laundry like a complete lunatic. At some point I fell down on the floor and couldn't figure out how to get up. I became afraid, and woke up.
I was laying on the same side, safely in bed. I hadn't moved, except for my hand, and the clock says 5:59. I try to imagine the face again, to go back to the dream. This time, it doesn't work. I hold still for a few seconds. I get up and start writing this post before I forget it all.
