Spiders and dreams

When I woke up this morning I hastily checked myself all over to see if any of my little dream companions had made the ride through to real life with me.

Those little critters get in everywhere.

Usually my dreams are either so uneventful that I forget them soon after waking up, or so full of adventures that I have to explain them to someone in case their histories are lost forever.

But there are occasions which are quite different to either of those. These are the dreams in which I thrash about and make strangled moany noises. Note: that's according to my darling. As far as I'm concerned I'm screaming at the top of my lungs and attempting to run with legs that have been inconveniently dipped in cement.

I can't pinpoint the exact time I first had a spider dream, but they are now my constant companions. (I can remember my first nightmare, in which I was swinging out over a graveyard and then woke up and walked into a bathroom that had creatures popping out of the wall like it was a giant advent calendar. I then really woke up and determined that I would never sleep again.)

They're also odd in that they can be tacked into the middle of any other type of dream, and take it over completely. A dream about walking on the beach? Ruined by the spiders. A dream about getting something from the garage? Ruined by spiders. An awesome adventure dream involving zombies? Completely enjoyable until I tried to get through the window which was festooned with spiders.

In the scale of dream horrors, these are my definite winners.

There's some sort of sliding scale of dreams that seem to be shared widely, if not universal.

Highest up are the flying dreams. They're the absolutely ultimate best dream ever.

Down from that are adventure dreams, which come with an entire backstory and plot.

Then are dreams that disappear as soon as you wake up.

Then are the school dreams where you're trapped in high school on exam day forever. Clothing optional.

Down another rung is the poorly constructed elevator dream where you're moving between floors when all the walls of the elevator drop off and the floor tilts wildly. I don't know who constructs the bloody things, but they should find a new line of work.

Then there are the spider dreams.

There's also a lower level of dream from there, where you have a bad dream about spiders or monsters and wake up into another dream where something even worse happens, and then when you wake up properly you're so tired you fall straight back to sleep into either part one or part two and pick up where you left off.

And if you're very unlucky you reach the absolute bottom of dreaming which is where you fall asleep and something awful happens and you can hear, see, and feel everything as normal but are completely unable to move. I've only had that happen on multiple occasions over the course of one night, but that was enough.

Apparently, this is the dream responsible for the phenomena of believing you've been abducted by aliens.

I just thought I'd died and nobody had bothered to tell me.