A Nightmare of Note

I had a nightmare the other night. The kind that startles you out of sleep and won't allow you to go back bed. A perplexing experience. I was running late to catch a bus to go to a class that I was already late for. I was in Washington, as evidenced by the damp grass and grey skies that surrounded me. It was either early morning, or perhaps shortly after sunset. An ambient light was just over the horizon and the air was cool but not cold. I was walking along a narrow stretch of trail that ran alongside a parking lot for some kind of massive shopping complex. Negotiating my way around some caution tape that was laid out in an oblong shape directing me around some unknown obstacle, I felt anxious.

I looked at my watch - it was nearly nine. I hurried. The trail twisted out ahead of me - a lone stretch of single track across an otherwise empty grass field. Just as I was about to enter a dark space in a tree lined patch of woods, what appeared to be some type of tunnel that would eventually lead me to my beckoning bus stop, a voice called out... "Part of you is ready to meet him, but part of you isn't." At that moment a man, or maybe a creature, shrouded in darkness came bounding toward me down the path from whence I came. It traveled in a neolithic fashion, hunched over using its arms to propel itself forward at a pace I couldn't outrun. But I tried. It was too dark to see. Too dark to know what it was. I ran, looking over my shoulder, trying to decipher what was chasing me, and why. All I knew is that I wasn't ready to encounter it. Whatever it was. And that I needed more time. As the creature drew close, its shadow enveloping me, I called out, "No! Not yet," holding my arm outstretched in an attempt to prevent this thing from doing its bidding. And then I was awake.