Nightmare

Every once and awhile, usually when I'm under a great amount of stress, I have a horrific nightmare that shakes me to my core. They are so realistic that I wake up and wonder if it really happened or if it was just a dream. I've even gone as far as reading the local newspaper online to determine if it really happened. Last night was one of those nights. I will warn you, the following is a bit graphic so read at your own risk. Remember, this was just a nightmare--it DID NOT really happen.

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The family was home. Me, my mom, my dad, my sister, and my brother-in-law. My brother-in-law was acting strangely. I couldn't pin point it, but he was somber and sulky. If you knew my brother-in-law, you would know that he is always energetic, talkative, and has 2 speeds: full speed & off.

He and my sister were fighting, not an unusual occurrence in real life. They fight all the time. My sister was being passive aggressive, my brother-in-law was being combative. My sister walked out the front door to get away from him. My brother-in-law followed her.

At this point my brother-in-law & my sister are outside. My dad was sleeping upstairs because he worked 3rd shift the night before, my mom was resting in her recliner, and I was doing Sudoku on the couch.

*WARNING* The next part is scary *WARNING*

Next thing I know, the house is on fire. It's burning fast, because it's an old wooden house and the wood is dried out. I yell "MOM THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!!!!" We run upstairs because the the whole front bottom 1/2 of the house is engulfed in flames and all the exits on the 1st floor are blocked.

Upstairs we open the door to the 2nd floor deck, only the deck isn't there. It had collapsed from dry rot the week before. The fire is moving up the stairs, my mom and I are hovering in the door frame, door open, with nowhere to go. I can feel the heat behind me. We jump into the rubble of the deck.

*WARNING* Graphic content follows *WARNING*

Once the fire is put out by the fire department, the sheriff takes my mom and I inside the house. They need us to identify a body. The body is my dad's, still in bed, sleeping in his usual arm flopped over the side of the bed, 1/2 sleeping on his stomach with 3 pillows under his head and one under his chest. His body is a black charred lump, but he looks peaceful, like he never woke up as he was burned to dead. He passed away from the smoke inhalation before he was burned to death. Small piece of comfort considering the way he went. Then the sheriff tells us there another body we need to identify. I'm confused, there shouldn't be another body.

We follow the sheriff downstairs to the front hallway. There is a lump under a white sheet. They draw back the sheet, it's my sister. They theorize that she ran back into the house after her husband set the house on fire. Her body is badly charred, except for the big toe on her left foot. The big toe on her left foot isn't burned at all.

After the shock of seeing 2 dead bodies, my mom shrugs and says "That's life" then walks outside, gets in her truck and drives away to her cabin 8 hours away while I am left to pick up the pieces and process it all by myself.

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I hate nightmares like this. I've had worse nightmares for sure, but they come so infrequently that when they do happen, they really shake up me. I just don't know what to make of it all, or how to process it. I know I shouldn't think about it, but it's hard when you have a nightmare like that.

Anybody out there have freakish nightmares that scary the bejeeber's out of you?