#night terror
TERREUR NOCTURNE
Day 2 of @jonathan-cranes-mistress-of-fear‘s Scarecrow week 2018. The prompt was „Nightmares & Night Terrors“. And I think I have to explain this one. Hopefully you have some time for reading, this might get a little bit longer. :)
For this prompt I went for something called „Pavor nocturnus“. Night Terror.
First of all some facts (in case you don’t know this): Night Terror is a sleep disorder in which you suffer from feelings of terror and dread while asleep/„kind of awake“. Well, you are awake but you are unaware of your surrondings, feeling utterly terrified and you may even scream and cry. It can last up to 15 minutes, after that you fall asleep again and may not even remember anything the next morning. Night Terror is not a nightmare, it’s more similar to a panik attack. And it mostly occurs to children.
I suffered from night terror when I was younger for a long time. It only stopped when I was around 18. I just recently found out about what exactly was going on, I always thought I was having this weird, abstract, recurrent nightmare which always went the same:
I was dreaming about laying in my bed but suddenly I started to feel really uncomfortable. My sheets where no longer soft and nice, everything felt like it would crush me. And I started to panic, feeling fear up to the point of nausea. Then I woke up - and I don‘t. I was awake but I was not. I was often crying, running around in my room completely disorientated, I remember that one time I even said things like „No, make it stop, help me, please“. I kind of didn‘t recognise where I was, even though I knew it was my room (it‘s really hard to explain). I wasn’t able to „recognise“ my parents or react to anything they did or said. And then it eventually stopped. I was either going back to bed and fell asleep again or I would sit or stand somewhere, still crying and would try to calm down and hold onto my new found grip of reality. It was intense. And I think this may kind of resembles the feeling of fear toxin…
It tried to draw my night terror. Unfortunately it‘s nearly impossible. But oh well. It‘s my version of Crane again (unmasked this time), it will be my version for all the prompts btw. :)
