Necking Nightmares


It happens to me quite frequently that if I see, hear, imagine, or watch, a thing that is out of what I usually encounter, it sticks in my mind like a leech. If it is an unpleasant thing, it is most likely that I will be hosting a train of nightmares for the nights in the line. The nightmares may range from scary to deadly to almost killing.
Just the other day, I rented out a soap called Doctor Who from the library as there were nothing else that appealed to me. I must say it had the most bizarre plot. It was about a global do-good man who could travel in time and space. Well, in the first episode of the second season, he goes out to the time of Queen Victoria who happens to be on the way to visit her son. The son, on the other hand, has been captivated by werewolves, who were disguised as his servants. The princess was held captive in the barn along with some maid and with a caged wolf-like-man. Then the whole incident happens where the wolf gets out and chases everybody -just the usual thing, you know - that doesn’t sound scary at all while I am writing this, neither did it frightened me while I was skip-watching it. Moreover, the cinematography was very bad especially of the first episode and it looked all fake. However, that night my eyes opened probably around 2:00 pm and I constantly felt that someone/something below my bed was extending its arms towards me trying to do -I knoweth not. But now as I write about it, I think the hand was of a wolf-man, a werewolf. It doesn’t sound even remotely scary now but when I was in the situation, wish it felt like how it sounds now. I have a theory - words just can not say things especially when it is not your native tongue. Probably, even if you are good at it, you may create circumstances and examples that psychologically mold people into imagining situations that evoke, what the writer expects, a similar kind of feeling. But all in all, I think words are worst when it comes to actually conveying the underlying true feeling knitted with the words. Alas, words aren’t feeling, and feelings aren’t words.

Switching my gear back to the story, I would rank this nightmare only 6 out of 10 on the 0-to-10 scale of dreadfulness of nightmares I have experienced so far. More will follow in my subsequent posts. Whenever, I see nightmares, there is just one thing that seems to be helping me calm down - I try and remember the face of Lord Buddha and chant a prayer I learnt when I was a kid. It is a Buddhist chant. However, lately I have realized that I constantly confuse this prayer with the prayer that is called before meals. I feel very terrible at times and sometimes tears roll down my eyes when in the dread of the moment, I just can not recall the correct prayer. I feel as helpless as a drowning limbless frog in arctic ocean, the floor of which is crowded by humongous sharks with sharp teeth. Perhaps, if the reader tries to imagine the climax in the movies when a fast techno track runs in the background and things happens real fast - the chasing, the shooting, the screaming, the death, the laugh, the screech of cars , the love making, the fire, the cops, the helicopters, the man or men in black, the… - I feel the same rush in my mind when I am hunted by the nightmare and I just can’t recall my prayer. No, it’s not the rush of the excitement, but the utter impatience, the helplessness to fast-forward the movie so that I could now what actually happens in the end, so that I could know what is the prayer actually.

Now I just hope my tonight is a good night, a laku noch, a buenas noches, after writing about nightmares. Probably I should have written this in the morning, not when I see my bed extending its arms and calling me in for aaaaaaaaa nightmare, a goodnite sleep, a sleepless night, …I don’t know but I certainly feel I should stop personifying my bed or else soon it will start appearing monstrous!