Mind the gap

After writing my last post, I started to notice that there is a great deal of not-so-scary things that frighten me these days. Things such as percentages and piles of dishes, prescription drugs, growing old and the gap between the train and the platform. And lately: sleep. It's not the darkness that accompanies sleep – I don't mind the dark. What gets me, is the dreams and thoughts that come uninvited once I'm out. I've been hosting some rather messed up nightmares lately. The one that is still so fresh that it meddles with sleep's appeal right now occupied me last night.

There was a dark path in a park, with lots of shrubbery along both sides. As I had been observing the path for a while, I knew that every night, drunk middle-aged men would walk or cycle down this path – some of them would even drive. There were different men every night, and they were usually lonely.

I liked hiding in the shrubbery, and sometimes I would stick my foot out and watch a lonely drunk trip. To make sure his head would hit the ground quicker than that his reflexes could jump in, I would push his back with one hand as the other pulled a tie-wrap from my pocket. This, I would loop around the baffled drunk's elbows. I always pulled the string so hard that the bends in his arms would meet behind his back.

At this point, the drunk was completely defenceless. I remember being amazed at how easy it was to achieve complete control over another human being, time and again. They never got any wiser, these drunks. This was also the moment I lost interest in them, and so the only thing I could think of doing with them was make them sit down in a giant freezer.

When I woke up in the morning, it wasn't the fact that I had dreamt of being a mass murderer that freaked me out. In my dream, I had been trying to explain to my family how I did it, while all they wanted to know was why.

This is why sleep scares me. It might bring more questions that I can't answer.