Nightmare

I woke up in a panic at 5:03 am today.

I dreamed that I was back in Detroit, in my old house. My mother, my father and I were all there, my brother was not. It was night. Some malevolent being was trying really hard to get inside the house, which was pretty well-defended against invasion, yet we all knew we were trapped.

Then there was a flashback of some sort to us sitting around a dinner table with me begging my parents to move out of Detroit. I felt like they were so old and vulnerable. But they just never seemed to get around to it.

When the dream returned to the present tense--I was scared and angry because I felt like the evil could have been avoided if they had just listened to me.

My father (who really is ill but never was when we lived in Detroit) was bedridden, and though my mom was not, she continued to stay by his side in bed despite the danger. I was running around trying to both protect them and to save myself.

Soon it was apparent that there was nowhere to hide, that no matter where I could go, "they" were going to get us. Shots were being fired through windows and walls, missing me.

At the end, it was basically just a matter of when they were going to get us. My father got his gun out of the bedside table and I was proud of him for being so tough despite his illness and I thought the gun would ultimately save us. But then a man suddenly popped his head in the window. My father quickly shot him, and I thought--we will live after all! but then the man shot my father with a far more powerful gun.

I woke up shaking and sooo upset that I started crying, and though I was perfectly aware that it was not real, I could not shake the feeling for a long, long time.