Nightmares...them's bitches!

I landed Saturday morning after a rather long week working CES 2012 in Las Vegas. It was brutally fun, enjoyable, but plenty more work than I had expected. It goes without saying that I'd do it again, but I really wasn't prepared for how destroyed I felt come the final show day on Friday the 13th.

Anyhow, I crashed rather hard that evening and suffered three successive nightmares that scared the living bujeebuz outta me. Seriously, I've had nightmares, but these felt so real, each waking me with distressed breathing and panic.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 14th, 2012

1. I'm at my Aunt's house, but it's not the layout I know it to be. They still have a basement, but it's laid out differently as well with two doors leading down two separate stairwells, one acting as some sort of boot closet, dividing the two by yet another door.
   
   I told my Mom I needed to tell her something and she said we should keep it a secret, that she would go down the stairs to the boot closet and I could tell her through the door (don't ask).
   
   At any rate, we agree and as I go down the stairs and reach the bottom in front of the door, I am compelled to look into the dark corner leading into a sub-room. The moment I do, I am overcome with a great sense of dread as my vision and hearing is literally attacked by shaking booms. It's almost as if I'm being jostled violently, without actually moving. I try to look away, but each time I do I am yet again compelled to look...increasing the intensity...
   
   ...at some point I begin to make a figure out among the horrible shaking and rattling...dark-skinned, slender, long stringy hair and long fingers...piercing red eyes.
   
   I look away, but I'm compelled to look again. The creature is closer. I look away, and return my gaze to realize the creature is closer yet. I look away one final moment, then look up and the creature is there, in front of me...it lets out a ear-piercing shriek and I wake.
   
2. Similarly, I'm at my Aunt's house with the same unfamiliar layout. Again I am compelled to descend the stairway to the basement, but before I can take a few steps, something pushes me. I watch myself fall...I hear my bones crack and break, and before I hit the basement floor I stop, levitated, apparently, and I am thrown violently across the room. I wake before I hit the wall.
   
3. I am asleep, next to my wife Amanda, at my parents house in my old room. I hear some faint noises...growns and shuffling. I am awoken by Amanda in hysterics. She says to me "Something came out of me!"
   
   Hesitantly, slowly, I pull the sheets down and begin to notice blood. The blood becomes heavier, thicker, until finally I reveal the source...a child, Amanda has miscarried a child we never knew we had...

The intensity of these nightmares is both troubling and new. I have never had such nightmares of such violent and vivid magnitudes that they would wake me up and haunt me to the point I'd need to write them down.