I used to get nightmares a lot, some pretty nasty ones, and some creatively nasty ones, eventually those nightmares stopped even being scary or disturbing, just tiring, but for a few years now, I cant really recall having any dreams, not ones I remember anyway, until last night, I had what could be considered a nightmare, it was an edge case, not really terrible, but quite unsettling.
Like so many memorable and horrible dreams I have had, it started as something utterly mundane and even silly, I was spiderman for some reason, or at least dressed as him, not sure which at first, but it became the 2nd, but then things went odd, it turns out that in the dream, the reason I wore the spiderman costume, which covered my entire body (at least at first, it sort of vanished as the dream went on, replaced with normal clothes), was because for some reason I was a carrier of a horrible illness, or perhaps I was the illness, it wasnt clear, but anyone who came into contact with ANY of my cells, would just start to waste away starting from the point of contact, at first they wouldn't notice, but after a few seconds the pain would kick in, and it was a horrible death every time, first it would be like any fat would drain away from under the skin, then their muscles would waste away as their skin turned grey, and it would spread fast enough that they would inevitably die within a minute. The dream was me desperately trying to have any kind of life without killing anyone, to not leave a single hair or bit of dandruff behind, to not let my bare skin touch ANYTHING someone else might touch, to religiously and mercilessly wash everything, but it was just too hard, and people around me kept dying, and I saw every death in great detail and with great distress. People began hating me, even my friends got scared of me after a while, but they never did anything against me except a few shouting matches, which always devolved into something which caused their deaths, they got too close or a fleck of spittle hit them when I shouted or I had left trace amounts of cells on a surface, or in soil and they touched it...
By the time my alarm woke me this morning, I felt pretty shaken by it and if my commute wasn't so desperately long that I pass the time with audiobooks and I forgot about my dream at first when I got to work, I'm sure I would have hesitated going in for fear of hurting them, I know I was definitely apprehensive about it when I left the house. I obviously knew it was a dream, but I couldn't shake it for a while, and even thinking about it now is unsettling.
Now, Im pretty sure it is a stress dream of sorts, I haven't been sleeping more than maybe 4 hours a day in weeks (not counting weekends) and work has been insanely busy, busier than I have ever experienced, getting 2 hours to do a 6 hour task has become the norm, but I just wanted to get a 2nd opinion on the exact nature of the dream, the plague carrier element in particular, anyone have any thoughts? I mean I know Covid is an obvious go-to reason for this, but I don't think so, I haven't been all that stressed about Covid, no one I know has been touched by it yet.
Like so many memorable and horrible dreams I have had, it started as something utterly mundane and even silly, I was spiderman for some reason, or at least dressed as him, not sure which at first, but it became the 2nd, but then things went odd, it turns out that in the dream, the reason I wore the spiderman costume, which covered my entire body (at least at first, it sort of vanished as the dream went on, replaced with normal clothes), was because for some reason I was a carrier of a horrible illness, or perhaps I was the illness, it wasnt clear, but anyone who came into contact with ANY of my cells, would just start to waste away starting from the point of contact, at first they wouldn't notice, but after a few seconds the pain would kick in, and it was a horrible death every time, first it would be like any fat would drain away from under the skin, then their muscles would waste away as their skin turned grey, and it would spread fast enough that they would inevitably die within a minute. The dream was me desperately trying to have any kind of life without killing anyone, to not leave a single hair or bit of dandruff behind, to not let my bare skin touch ANYTHING someone else might touch, to religiously and mercilessly wash everything, but it was just too hard, and people around me kept dying, and I saw every death in great detail and with great distress. People began hating me, even my friends got scared of me after a while, but they never did anything against me except a few shouting matches, which always devolved into something which caused their deaths, they got too close or a fleck of spittle hit them when I shouted or I had left trace amounts of cells on a surface, or in soil and they touched it...
By the time my alarm woke me this morning, I felt pretty shaken by it and if my commute wasn't so desperately long that I pass the time with audiobooks and I forgot about my dream at first when I got to work, I'm sure I would have hesitated going in for fear of hurting them, I know I was definitely apprehensive about it when I left the house. I obviously knew it was a dream, but I couldn't shake it for a while, and even thinking about it now is unsettling.
Now, Im pretty sure it is a stress dream of sorts, I haven't been sleeping more than maybe 4 hours a day in weeks (not counting weekends) and work has been insanely busy, busier than I have ever experienced, getting 2 hours to do a 6 hour task has become the norm, but I just wanted to get a 2nd opinion on the exact nature of the dream, the plague carrier element in particular, anyone have any thoughts? I mean I know Covid is an obvious go-to reason for this, but I don't think so, I haven't been all that stressed about Covid, no one I know has been touched by it yet.
