Guest Post: An ominous masturbator

From my good friend H:

"It is night, and I am asleep in my bedroom. I wake up frightened. I walk into the living room; it is very dark and I hear the hiss of the gas heater. Crouched beside the heater is a man masturbating. I can only see him in silhouette. None of his features are visible. I am terrified of this man. I have a pencil in my hand, and I stab him with it. When I stab him, he groans softly and ejaculates onto my hands.

This is one of the most intensely frightening dreams that I have ever had. The most vivid aspects of the dream were the sound of the gas heater and the noise he made when he came. Sometimes in a terrifying dream, I become paralyzed, but here I didn't have any difficulty moving (even though my heart was beating so hard!). I was always scared of the heater in that apartment--scared that it would ignite a fire or something. I used to sleep on the couch a lot, and always had my ear open for when it would come on. The heater was almost as ominous in the dream as the guy."

*****

H had this dream some half-dozen or so years ago, but wrote this account for me recently. I know the apartment she was living in at the time. The heater was in the living room, which was between the bedroom and the kitchen. After she sent me the account above, I called her to discuss it further. I asked her if the guy was on the bedroom or kitchen side of the heater. She told me he was on the bedroom side, crouched against the narrow stretch of wall between the heater and the doorway out of the apartment.

We could not come up with a satisfactory interpretation of the dream, but we did mention a few ideas. A pencil resembles a penis both in its form and its name. ("The penis mightier than the sword"?) I brought up the possibility that the scary heater might be a fear of her own libido (heat of passion, bitch in heat), and her stabbing the guy with her pencil could be a representation of a desire she might have to be the active, penetrating partner rather than the passive, submissive one in some (sexual or otherwise) relationship.

Land shark

Another childhood nightmare. Again, the details of any plot elude me at this date; it is the final image that I have remembered all these years.

*****

I am being chased by a shark. I run into a parking lot to escape. I run as fast as I can, but the shark catches me. It closes its jaws around me from the feet up. Only my head remains when I wake up in terror.

Frankenberrypus

Another dream from my early childhood. If there was any plot to this dream, I no longer recall it (though I feel like maybe it somehow also featured a shopping mall...?).

*****

Between the bed and the wall in my parents' bedroom at my grandmother's house, I see the Frankenberry cereal mascot with eight writhing pink octopus tentacles. It terrifies me.

A monster shakes the earth

Here is another dream I remember that I had as a very young child.

*****

I am in the living room of our second-floor apartment. I hear a tremendous crashing, so loud the earth shakes with every clap. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! I run down the stairs to our external door, which is deadbolted. I look out the window and see a gigantic-- like, storeys tall-- version of this guy pounding over the horizon toward our house. I am terrified. I try to scream, but I cannot make any sound, only a voiceless wheezing.

*****

I believe this dream was my first experience of the "unable to scream" phenomenon. This experience is not common for me, but I have had it a few times. It hasn't really bothered me as an adult as I generally recognise it as an instance of sleep paralysis even as it's happening. In spite of being frightened by this dream as a five- or six-year-old, I still love all things Muppet.

The first dream I remember

I'm sure this is not the first dream I ever remembered, but it is the first dream I ever had that I still can remember now. Well, actually, what I remember now after so many years probably is a memory of my original memory of the dream. I believe I was about three years old when I had this nightmare.

*****

My mother and I were making cutout "giants." The brown quilt [that was frequently used in real life] was prominent. My mother showed me her creation: a small paper "giant" head. It was a jolly cartoon-like face, with a red mustache, bald head with red curly fringe, and a round nose. Then I looked at what I had cut out. I was not so skillful with the scissors. My "giant" face was a ragged, shapeless thing, white with black jagged holes for "features," but not in any discernible arrangement. It bore no resemblance to any kind of face at all. Looking at it filled me with horror.