Nightmares

I had a nightmare today for the first time in years. I won't divulge the details for I don't want to be in breach of dreamer-dreamee confidentiality, but there was one funny scene at the end that I'll risk telling.

I'm running out of the dream-setting's house, headed for my car. There's a guy chasing me by the bizzare name of Alek-Alex. This is obviously my subconscious giving me a wonderful clue that I'm in a dream, but I don't perceive it as such. Alek-Alex has two defining characteristics - his ridiculous name, and his temper problem. The dream makes it abundantly clear that you REALLY don't want Alek-Alex to "freak out." Unfortunately, Alek-Alex is about to do just that.

Anyway, I reach my car and it's some kind of mini-car, like the Smart Car but ten thousand times smaller. This doesn't phase me at all of course; there's a psycho named Alek-Alex chasing me! So I get in and I look sort of like this:



...though not quite as dashing as this fine specimen of masculinity.

After some wriggling, wiggling, waggling, writhing, worming, and loads of tongue-on-shoulder panting, around 50% of me has managed to get in the car, but my giant Mr. Olympia legs just won't fit. I feel around, praying for a button or lever that unfolds this "center for ants" into a bus and finally find a button that slides out the front of the car a bit, giving me some more legroom. There's one catch though: as soon as I let go of the button, it snaps right back at four times the speed of light. I play catch and release with the button as I shuffle my legs around, risking all kinds of horrible kneecap-to-eyeball injuries and all with no insurance, but there's absolutely no way I can get either foot to reach the pedals. For some reason the idea to hold the button down while driving doesn't even cross my mind.

At this point Alek-Alex still hasn't emerged from the house, but I'm panicking nonetheless. Alas, then I woke up, fortunately for my dream-safety but unfortunately for the story aspect.

Sometimes I wonder - when I wake up from a dream, maybe the dream me stays there and has to live out the conclusion of the story. He's never led on that this might be true; in every subsequent dream he's as good as new despite all the abuse from hordes of Alek-Alexes, but who knows? For his sake, I should be taking sleeping pills.