Dreams and Nightmares

Posted on 26 Apr 2018 @ 6:03pm by Petty Officer 3rd Class Constantin Vansen

582 words; about a 3 minute read

I am floating.

A lot of people find it a strange experience. Floating. You don’t have the control that people have on terra firma. At least, most people don’t. Some people, or species, are battler with floating. Like me. Floating is second nature. The body adjusts, the way you can manipulate yourself. It is like a dance. It feels like a dance. It is graceful simply because you can’t be anything but graceful. Harsh movements will send you spinning.

You can’t lose control when you are floating.

If you do, you risk injuring yourself. You can’t react the same way so you learn to curl up if you lose control. Because hitting a shoulder, a backside, a knee will be less damaging than if you hit your stomach. Your organs are all in different places when you are floating. Not to mention that a human body acts differently in zero gravity. It’s more than hair floating.

Put it this way, I had a shaven head until I was about twelve.

It’s that everything acts differently and you sleep differently. Position doesn’t matter, up is down and down is up and you just notice because of the artificial markers you put down. If you are on a ship, it is easier. It is the flight deck that matters. It is the Captain’s Chair.

The rest doesn’t matter. You strap yourself in and close your eyes. Blankets are a bit useless.

Trust me on that.

I float in my dreams. And my nightmares.

In my nightmares, I can’t move even if I try. I am strapped to a chair and everything is floating around me. Unsecured. Liquids. Solids. Floating.

Blood. My blood.

Like bubbles of it, escaping past my lips, my nostrils, my ears, my eyes. I open my mouth to scream but it isn’t just that there’s no gravity.

There’s no air.

So no sound escapes.

It always makes me wake up with a scream.

Sweaty legs tangled in a blanket that I always throw off myself as if it burns. If it is towards the end of my sleep cycle, I move sluggishly. Everything is heavy. The first stop is always the same. Bathroom. Mirror. Cold water on my face, watching myself to make sure that I am not bleeding. Because while it doesn’t happen often, the nightmares still come and when they come they are strong.

I’ve had them since I was ten.

I wish I could say it was just a kid’s imagination. Would have been easier. Problem is, sometimes you find things out there in space. In the black. Like shuttles that got lost. It was where I saw it. I couldn’t tell you what species the woman had been. But I know this.

She was strapped in her chair and there was frozen blood floating everything. And her eyes were gone and her lips parted. And we scavenged that shuttle, took everything of worth.

And we left her.

So now and then, I am her. And I am in the moment before the cold would kill. That split moment, that minute, where you would still feel it all.

And that is my nightmare. Starts the same way as my dreams. As my safe place. As my happy place. It’s seductive because they start the same way. It’s just the way it ends.

Like we all end I suppose.

RSS Feed