experiences

This happened when I was little. I had a dream. In the dream I was following a girl in a blue skirt through a dark, narrow alley. Its sides were houses as tall as skyscrapers. They stretched up as high as they stretched out before me such that the sky was just a thin blue line in a distance and not bright.

When I looked back down, the girl was walking before me. Actually, she was kind of skipping, from right to left to right. I followed the same pattern but I was walking. Her blue skirt and her hair, black against the blue skirt, were the only things I saw in the darkness. Rest of her was black and one with the surrounding.

We walked for a while, wind some corners. I don’t know why I was following her but something about her movement was alluring, not is a sexual way for I was myself a little girl then and as straight as I am today. Her movement was sharp, swift, precise and graceful and I just followed to…see more of that?

Anyway, we walked for a while and came upon a cave. We were still in the alley. This cave looked liked it was kind of stuffed there, between the tall houses. It even had a pair of blue curtains covering the mouth. The curtains were blowing in the wind that seemed to be coming from inside the cave. It made my feet cold.

The girl entered the cave. Now this is how it happened, curtain-wind-definitely a gaping hole-girl enters-curtain-wind-door! I tried the door because I too wanted to enter the cave but it wouldn’t budge. So I pulled at it will all the strength I could muster, planning to break the lock (lol) and banged on it.

I was at it when I heard my parents calling me from far away. I panicked.  If my parents found me, I wasn’t going in there and I just had to. I banged on the door louder, screaming to let me in. I could hear my parents nearing. They sounded scared and for a moment I was like ‘should I return?’ but I only banged some more, frantic to get in.

Suddenly, there was light and I was like, ‘I know this door.’ This is the door to the rooftop. Then I noticed I was standing on the staircase that led to the door. Then I was like, ‘Hmm, I’m dreaming’ when I was actually starting to wake up. But I was still half asleep and confused. My mother was down at the end of the staircase looking at me scared. My father’s eyes peeped out from the banister.

‘What are you doing?’ my mother asked, looking very much on guard.

‘Toilet’ I don’t know why I said that. That wasn’t the reason but I realized, as I started to feel more awake, that I did really need to go.

‘Well, it’s downstairs honey.’ (In Nepali)

When she said that, I just ran to her in sudden terror. She, too, almost had a heart attack. One second I was there looking dope, next I am coming down full speed. All this was funny the next day, though I had carried my pillow and blanket to sleep with my parents that night.

I am sure you know by now that I was sleep walking but what was chilling about this was, at those last moments of my desperate banging on the door, I was thinking ‘Enter, climb over. Enter, climb over. Enter and climb over. Fast, fast fast!’ That day, that door stood between me and my mushier, bloody version.

This wasn’t the last of my sleepwalking. Second time, I ran downstairs to the main entrance door. Someone was following me in my dream. I was in my own house and wherever I was running in my dream was where I was running in reality. Only, in my dream, the lights were on and I could see but the lights were actually turned off. So, after much banging on the front door, when I woke up because the thing almost caught me, I was a little discordant. I could see, then I opened my eyes and couldn’t? However, I was aware of someone running towards me, calling my name. The horror! Didn’t I just wake up?! It was only my mom.

All my neighbors were talking about someone’s screams the next day. My mom said that she woke up from an uneasy dream only to hear my loud, terror filled ‘mommy!’ I said that once and the next thing she heard was my feet pitter pattering off like I was running away from a hell hound. I don’t remember calling her in my dreams though. Hmm. It is all funny now. I haven’t sleepwalked after that.