Framework of A Dream

Framework of A Dream

         This is a true story that still makes me feel awkward to this day. I have many unexplained questions.

         I was so excited. I hadn't seen my aunt Christine in almost a year. She lived clear across the country, out in Arizona. However, during a month in the summer, she made her annual pilgrimage to see the rest of her family on the East coast. Summer was always a perfect time to get away from the oppressive heat of the desert. I always looked forward to her visit because she was one of my coolest relatives, and she always brought me back things that she would find out in the desert, like arrowheads or old pottery fragments.

          Christine always lived like a transient during her vacation, sleeping at different relatives' houses overnight throughout her stay. One of her first stops was my house, and I was ecstatic... until I found out that she was going to sleep in my room. It seems that I had been displaced to go sleep in my little brother's room while he slept with my parents.

         Honestly, I wasn't that upset about the sleeping situation -- I had often joked with my parents that my brother had a nicer mattress than I did since his was newer. So, for the one night that Christine was staying at our house, I didn't mind sacrificing my bed.

         Do you know how when you sleep in a place that you are not used to sleeping in, you can sometimes get strange dreams? Well, that was exactly what happened to me that night. I had a really strange dream. It seemed like something out of an old cartoon show. A character would run around helplessly trying to evade a falling object. He would move to the left and the object would follow; he would move right, but the item would be waiting for him. And the entire time, all you can see is the shadow at his feet growing larger, and larger, and larger, until eventually, a giant safe or piano flattens him completely. The familiar accordion sound ensues.

         Well, my dream was very similar. I was the unfortunate character. It was me standing in an unidentifiable background, trying to evade the shadow that signaled the approach of some unknown object. I looked up and couldn't make out what it was. Some giant object, just too blurry to comprehend. I tried to run, but that shadow was just to fast, and it viciously pursued me.

         Eventually, the point came when the object was just about to hit me, and I looked up. It was at this point that I awoke from my dream. By strange coincidence, it was also at this moment that a picture frame had fallen off the wall of my brother's room and beamed me in the forehead.

         Now being half asleep and awaking from a nightmare, I was already a little dazed. The occult occurrence didn't help. My first thoughts were that someone had broken into the house and tried to kill me; I hadn't realized that it was a picture frame yet. So I pretended to be dead (like it would have helped).

         After about a minute of not moving a single muscle, I slowly peered out through my slightly parted eyelids. No one was there. Everyone was in their respective bed sleeping. It was just me and that picture frame.

         To this day, I don't know what happened. I told my family the next morning and my mother asked, "Are you sure you didn't just dream the whole thing?"

          "Oh, no, Mom. I'm sure!" It was real. I held that frame in my hand; it really happened. Today, I like to tell that story to my friends around campfires or at other gatherings. I think it is a cool story. I joke about how I could have ESP or other funny alternatives. But i know that's not true. If I had ESP, I'd surely have found a way to make myself rich from it by now. I honestly don't know what it was that caused the ordeal. But in all honesty, I'm still just a little bit scared to this day, even four years later.