I Died in a Nightmare

It started out like many of my vivid dreams but this one was more realistic. Real friends were there with me, my friends Amy, and Chandra. We were at a community meeting for an upcoming election and started in the parking lot before ending in a conference room. While in the parking lot, some men kept driving by, some with their families in the car. The first came rolling by, windows down, his girlfriend or wife draped across him jeering at us even as he drove. The second stopped by a fence and hung up a flag, one side of which was innocuous enough, which was the side we could see. That man had his wife and daughter in the car with him, but they were quiet and looked ahead after he got back in the car while grinning towards us. One of our group walked over to the other side of the fence, shook his head, and pulled the flag off and turned it around for us; it had hunting targets on it and said “LIBERALS HERE.”

This was where we decided to head inside the building for our meeting. There was a group of about 20 of us, all Asian, Black, Latino. We started discussing mutual political concerns, protecting the marginalized, civil rights, and then I said, “Well, it’s indicative who’s actually here right now.” while looking around at everyone’s faces, all of us minorities, all of us worried. We had put out a sign outside the door to indicate this was where the community meeting was taking place. A huffy woman in an odd purple suit came to the door and started demanding why we felt we had the right to be there. One of the organizers spoke with her quietly and she finally left but not before saying, “I’m not done here!” Our room had two entrances, the hallway where the sign was, and another door that opened into an empty conference room with green carpet, that led to another hallway. We started to feel uneasy that that woman had come and it had been long enough we didn’t think anyone else would be joining us so we started pulling in the sign and shut the hallway door.

At this point of the meeting, different people were handing out various flyers and pamphlets on issues they wanted to work on. Amy was talking to someone else, and Chandra and I were facing each other holding hands, and she was telling me how glad she was to know me and couldn’t wait for our next cycle of personal growth and we hugged. Someone who worked in this building then came and said it was best we left when we could see it was clear…from the conference room. And that we should leave one at a time. I remember a tall Asian man checking the other door, seeing it was clear, and that he would text us when he got to his car. But shortly after he left, another woman came to that door from the other conference room. She came stomping up, in an ill fitting gray suit, as she started yelling at us, “You know you LIBERALS just have LOW INTELLECTS! What gives you the right to spout this shit? Why do you believe in this liberal shit? Huh?” As she was screaming at us, the other angry woman from earlier walked up behind this woman now and also started yelling at us. People were nervously trying to hide their pamphlets and papers in their pockets and purses.

At this point, I had my notebook and papers in front of me, with my phone. When another man joined the two ladies from that other conference room doorway, and then pushed his way into our room while yelling, as our organizer said we didn’t want any trouble and would all leave, I started a video recording on my phone but then locked the screen so it didn’t look like it was on but would at least get sound, just in case. This angry man and the two ladies were all yelling at us, asking “How dare you come in here spewing this shit? Why do you believe? Why do you believe?” Before any of us could leave, suddenly several more men entered the room, from both doors. One got in my face, as I tried to back away. He looked like Dylann Roof but extremely skinny, his face and body almost skeletal, eyes deranged, as if he was on meth. His skin looked sickly and pocked, and his eyes were terrifying, the whites visible all around his irises, although they were so dilated they looked like black holes. He had his left arm held behind him as he kept getting in my face and I yelled at him, “Step away from me!”

As I tried to back away from him, he sneered at me with his dirty yellow, broken teeth, as there was commotion all around me, and he said, “Tell you what, you got one chance. I’m gonna ask you once, why do you believe?”

“I don’t owe you any answers,” I started to say.

He began nodding and said, “Just as I thought.” He whipped up an AK47 that had been slung behind him, black metal and wood flashing before my eyes as I quickly realized what was about to happen. He was close enough that he needed to step back to shoot me and I desperately grabbed for the end of the gun with my right hand to point it away from me as he fired, and felt him blow the end of my middle finger off. The sound of the gunshot drowned all the noise out for a second, and then my hearing returned with a ringing sound, and the sound of terrified screaming from behind me. I turned towards my right realizing I was about to be killed here, as I saw another gunman and two women who had been shot in the face, and then I felt the gun in my back as he shot me through the heart from behind.

It was 4:04AM and I woke up in a tangle of sheets, hyperventilating, not knowing where I was but the terror was so real. It had been so real. After a minute I began sobbing, my body shaking uncontrollably with panicked tremors, and I reached for my phone to call my boyfriend who is away right now. He rejected the call as I sat there, having a panic attack, but messaged back “Did you just call?”

“Yes”

“Everything ok”

“I just had a terrible dream and wanted to talk. It was so real. If u can call for a few I wld appreciate.”

He called and talked me down, had me sit up and drink a glass of water after I sobbed through the details of my nightmare, told me to get in fresh pajamas and splash my face or take a quick shower to wash off the bad energy, and burn some palo santo. He suggested I maybe try to return to sleep on the sofa just in case, under our Buddhist tangka. So I changed, and washed my face, and burned some palo santo and blessed the bed where I just died in the most realistic nightmare I’ve ever had. And here I am, sitting with my laptop, at 5:16AM, because I didn’t know how else to dull the horror of my dream, because it was just so goddamn real. My middle finger actually hurt. There’s a tightness around my heart. Can you get PTSD from a nightmare? Maybe this was PTSD from reading about so many mass shootings? Have you died in a dream or had a nightmare about this happening to you?

Look at what we did with romaine lettuce when a few people died from eating it. And look at how nothing has changed with gun control. I died in a mass shooting in my nightmare. Thankfully it was only a dream but the terror was still so real. We have to keep fighting for #guncontrolnow. Let’s stop all the mass shootings in real life, so we can also stop mass shootings in our dreams.