Participation on last month's challenge was fantastic! Thank you all that submitted great entries. For this month, I thought with it being October that it would be fitting to visit a different aspect of life. Wherever there is light, there's darkness as well. Sometimes, the most inspirational things can be our nightmares.

October Challenge Theme - Nightmares

This challenge is open to poetry and prose. Since the theme could be potentially darker, do remember to keep it somewhat family friendly! Happy writing!

David L.
Writer's Forum Moderator

Ah, just in time for my annual Halloween story. Nightmares should fit in nicely.
~jon

Excellent! Glad the theme fits well then. ;)

David L.

Nightmares
J. M. Strother

A gasp for breath.
A start, awake.
Cold sweat
Around the neck.
Unwelcome visitor
Has returned.

Sheets twisted
Into knots.
Eyes wide
In the dark.
Hell on Earth:

My bed.

I'm working on a short story for Halloween, but came up with this short little poem (if it is a poem) in the meantime. Can't wait to see the other entries.

~jon

Attached Link: hhttp://www.omnivores.org/tiki/tiki-view_blog.php?blogId=1

~jon

**Fall into Sleep
a True nightmare
*SASk. . .
(empathy to what is happening to my daughter.)

Awake I do not want to be
alone in the dark
with misery
with the agony
of my stiffled scream
that haunts and taunts
in an empty dream~
my days are these
that don't mean much
when child and mother
can not touch
A nightmare that steals
both night and day
filling all with pain
that won't go away

And each vain appeal seals
the heart with lead
as though what is alive
might as well be
dead

till you turn away
from what once you loved
and
fall from the sky
fall from the hope
fall fall fall
from it all
to forever
sleep.

**

There's nothing like a deadline to loosen the nightmarish grip of a blank mind.   ;-)))

NIGHT FLIGHT

Waning strength loosens grip of

Tree roots mid air bare.

Gnawing fear of what is at hand,

Heart beating like the roll of drums

Marching on the battlefield.

Falling, falling fast to death

Stomach left behind at roots end.

Vertigo looms on minds' horizon.

Not letting me go unconscious,

To be unaware of what comes.

Miraculously landing on two feet!

Chased by some ominous force

In a thunderous night,

Feet slowed by engulfing sand,

Waves receding, holding tight.

Close, it comes closer.

Run, run like the lightening

Splitting the dark sky.

Loosen your grasp quicksand

Halting feet desperate to escape.

Screams muffled by fright,

Find shrill sounds propelled.

An ancient survival instinct

Deeply recessed in memory

Takes a sonic flight in darkness.

Lungs paralyzed by fear

Fill with pain instead of air.

Must breath to run from terror!

Diaphragm, like a heavy boulder,

Is useless in my hour of need.

It reaches for me

With clutching outstretched

Tendrils clawing at my back.

Centimeters deny capture

In this my last cry for escape.

Huh? What?  Breathe!

Where am I?  Bed?

My body cries out of need,

Shattering the nightmare,

With a trip to the bathroom.

©  Suzanne Burgos 2007

I refrain from reading other works until I have written my own.  This to avoid being shut down by the superb works I read.

Both of the poems above are so wonderful, and I realize how similar the experience of fear is interpreted in our sleep, and remembered in consciousness.

I think many of us learn that if we can identify the fear expressed in our nightmares, face it in reality, look for the way to handle the situation we fear, we conquer that fear.  For me, that meant doing what I feared.  Eventually, we can find release from the terrors of the night, if we are good students.

Jon, I loved The Empty Chair.  You really drew me into your story, and it is such a great story of a nightmare.  I took every stwp with you.

I also rejoice at your good news!

Suzanne

Thanks for the kind words, Suzanne. It's always good to get at least three people for a challenge. Maybe we'll pick up a few more before midrael unsticks this thread and opens the next. Hope so. Your poem certainly captured the essence of a nightmare, and I loved the ending.

It's harder for me to comment on Fall into Sleep, as it is such poignant and deeply personal piece. Unfortunately, not all nightmares occur in our sleep. My heart goes out to you, R2B, and your daughter.

~jon

Thanks Jon!  Your comments are encouraging. 

I'm new to the writing arena, poetry being my intial effort, because I love it so.  But hope to challenge myself with other writing forms.

When I read "Empty Chair", I felt very elementary in my skills, but I'm willing to stick my neck out there in order to grow.

Suzanne

Until I started posting here I never wrote poetry, always been a prose sort of guy. Then I took up tjames' monthly poetry challenge (miss him, and it) and discovered I sort of liked it. Proving only, I suppose, that we only grow by challenging ourselves. Still don't claim to be a poet, but I certainly enjoy taking a stab at it now and then.
~jon

Turbatus Torqueo
J. M. Strother

The worst nightmare I ever had occured the night after I had my wisdom teeth taken out. Come to think of it, the whole wisdom tooth thing was kind of a nightmare in it's own right, but noting compared to the hours that followed.

You are not allowed to take aspirin after any surgical procedure, oral or otherwise, so they gave me so prescription pain killer to dull the pain. Aspirin has always been, and remains, my preferred substance of abuse. Most of that other stuff, including the prescription stuff, can't even touch it. But it thins your blood, and you tend to bleed after surgery, so no aspirin.

Needless to say, I did not feel like doing much after the teeth came out. My dad drove me home from the oral surgeon's, and while I was still groggy form the general anesthesia everything was hunky dory. I just went up to bed and slept in senseless bliss. Alas, the anesthesia eventually wore off, and aching jaws soon woke me up.

I had a caring parents, so of course by the time I woke up they had dutifully gone to the pharmacy and gotten the prescription for the pain killer filled. My mom brought it up to me, along with a glass of water. She told me I should take it so I could sleep. I did.

What a mistake.

I don't recall the name of the the drug, but I'm sure J.K. Rowling would have dubbed it something like “Turbatus torqueo”, the restless torment potion. Even Snape could not have devised a more sinister concoction.

Instead of giving me dreamless, pain free sleep, this drug made me restless, so that I tossed and turned constantly, waking up every half hour or so. And every time I woke up I could vividly remember the nightmare I had been having. It was always the same nightmare, and when I would drift back off to sleep it would pick up right where it left off.

I was running for my life, on a sort of weird interchange that twisted and turned and seemed to go on forever. I was running with everyone I had ever know and loved, or even sort of liked. We all ran, desperate to escape what was chasing us – death itself. As I would run some of my friends and family would out pace me, leaving me behind to my fate or, perhaps even worse, I would out pace someone I knew and loved, and realize they were doomed. Then I would wake up in a could sweat, go to the bathroom, and go back to face it all again.

After a night of this Hell I went to the bathroom, dumped the pills in the toilet, and took some aspirin. Ah, at last, blissful sleep.

It strikes me, Suzanne, that my actual nightmare is not unlike your poem. I was reminded of it when I read your piece. You did a great job of capturing the essence of the experience. Keep on posting.

~jon

Jon, I'm sorry, but you made me laugh with that story, not in a mocking way, rather an understanding one..  I really think the basic stuff that nightmares are made of are univerally shared.  That is why I felt fairly confident that what I wrote would be identifiable to most readers.

As bad an experience that a nightmare is, when I look back on some of mine, I can't help but laugh.  Our minds can be so strange.  But, also, nightmares are a way of dealing with fear and pain, ways of hashing out how we do or do not handle difficult situations.  If we didn't have them, we would all be in a secured looney bin. 

We can use our nightmares to learn what we don't want to face, then we can face it and the nightmare ends.  The only trick is correctly identifying the coded symbols our mind devises.  That is the surreal part of a nightmare puzzle.   If only it would be as easy as taking an aspirin. ;-)

Suzanne

Here's one of my nightmares...

I'm on a train, I don't know why because it's not the kind of train I've ever seen except on films.

It's poorly constructed and made of weathered old wooden boards and there are massive open doors on either side of the carriage and a trap door in the roof.
Not the kind with seats for passengers, the kind people stow away on that never seem to contain anything as they run through empty country for days on end.

I know, because I know I've been here before and I know what's coming which is making me shake, even though it seems so ordinary to know that there is a creature on the train, bipedal and fierce with fangs and claws and hateful hungry eyes and I know it's coming and all it wants is to tear into me.

I run to one door and I try to close it, but the door is too big and I only just manage to force it closed before I hear this thing land on the roof, but the other door is open, a massive gaping hole in the side of the box that I know can't protect me even as I run over and tug at the rusty old handle to try and close it, wondering why I'm bothering when there is a door in the roof and none of them have locks anyway but I can't help myself, I run from one door to another trying to keep them closed while it plays with me because I am prey, tugging at one door, then bounding across the roof to tug at the other, scenting me working up a frightened sweat until I can hardly get a grip on the handles because I'm just running with sweat.

After forever and a half it starts to tear through the walls and I've got nowhere left to run.
I turn away, I never see it clearly even though there's daylight pouring through gaping holes it's torn through the woodworm ridden boards and I catch my foot on something and I fall.

It bites off my foot, but I try to crawl away anyway and it takes the other leg up to the knee.
I keep crawling away while I can hear it ripping through what used to be a part of me, then it comes back for what's left of both legs and all of me up to my ribcage but I'm still crawling along and away feeling those bits tear away as I try to escape with mess trailing out from beneath my ribcage which is the only part of my body touching the floor apart from my elbows and I'm screaming because it hurts so very much and I know you can't survive this, that I shouldn't even be alive and then I turn around and I tear out it's throat with my own teeth.

That's when I start to scream because I'm enjoying hurting it.

That's when I wake up and find I'm still screaming. 

Shoshanna, I think that is the worst nightmare I've ever heard.  I don't know how you survived that one.  I don't think I would be able to scream, I'd be frozen in fear.

Then of course there's the other nightmare I have....

I wake up feeling wonderful, I haven't got a single spot, I feel like I've lost a bit of weight lately and I'm looking pretty good for an old bird.
It's a full on technicolour Disney Day.

I feel inspired so I decide to try out a new hairstyle to go with that gorgeous new outfit I bought last week.
I feel hot.
I am a Staceys Mom.

You know the kind of thing - you go for a complete new hairstyle (for me that usually involves chopping a couple of feet of my hair) with a fresh colour livened up even more with daring highlights in highly contrasting tones.
It's bound to take years off me, I'll look even more fabulous than I feel.

For no good reason I take this risk at a hairdressers I've never used before and I'm introduced to their stylist "Tracee"

An hour and a half later I slink out of the 'salon' wondering where I'm going to find the nearest hat shop.
I'm choking down a bar of chocolate grimly hoping all that guff about it being full of feel good drugs is true and trying not to itch the chemical burns on my scalp.
 
Right now I feel like one of those awful dolls heads that get given to little girls to practice make up on and I look much worse than the ones who've been made over with poster paint and a Stanley Titan by demented four year olds.

Why do most bad highlights end up looking such a nasty shade of greenish orange?

The stupid trainee has got shampoo in my eyes (would that it was the worst of her crimes against me looking like a human being) so they are red and streaming as if I've been bawling for hours which complements my now blotchy face perfectly.

It starts to rain and my once gorgeous outfit that was going to complete the ill fated 'new look' gets soaked and I now look like a cross between a drowned rat and a bag lady.

It is at this EXACT MOMENT with that gigantic bar of chocolate sticking out of my mouth that I run into the most wonderful ex I ever had ( you know the one who got away that I really want to meet on my best looking day because I stupidly dumped him and regretted it afterwards)  and he introduces me to his underwear model new girlfriend. 
They are sharing an umbrella, arms linked together and happily filming their romantic day out with a camcorder so I am doomed to be captured for all time in full colour at high resolution looking like a greedy wreck.

And I realise that I am not going to wake up from this nightmare, because I'm not even asleep.

:-)

ROFL!  And I can't stop.  You captured a great nightmare there, Shoshanna.  Thank heavens I have the ability to live what I read.  It helps me enjoy such pleasure, as well as terror. :biggrin:

Suzanne

Hi all thanks for placing your thoughts and visions here. I feel pretentious when I try to be inspirational. But it comes from a good place however trite my words can be. Thanks for letting me share. Peace all and best wishes....RoBBo aka NoobasaurUS The Nightmare Attacks The worst nightmare is the one you are in When the grinning stops and the pain begins Torn from your sacred place Without the rest that makes for grace Frantic and dazed in a new reality It seems the worst of it is that it will never end You'll never get to joke about it with a friend That in this unbearable place you'll forever stay In one infinitely terrifying moment without night or day And then you wake and make some strange connections Things you might haved feared or hated Scatter in all directions Nightmares and dreams have lost most of their power When you awake in the world that still grows flowers No one wants change when it stops the joy But a change for good is like a child's brand new toy Another chance to play, to join in life's song A place you might even want to belong And when and if it ever comes back I hope you remember to pass it on The nightmare you had was there to make you strong So even if your nightmare is the wide-awake kind Sometimes you'll find solace on the other side Maybe its not salvation but at least its not forever No chains I've ever seen Can hold change back A dream's just a dream Until the nightmare attacks