True Story

My panting chest ached under the pounding of my heart. The lactic acid burning holes in my quads as I sprinted from the black figures hastily approaching me. I knew I was going to die. The black figures were going to kill me, but I hadn't done anything wrong. This whole scenario was a fallacy, and suddenly I knew I was asleep. I had entered into a place between sleep and consciousness but was terrified, still. I urgently but calmly told myself to wake. My eyelids slowly opening to reveal my bent arm pressing into the pillow next to my head. I could feel my heavy body, but all of my limbs were numb. This is what my dead body will feel like.

I had entered back into a mindful state but my body was still in delusion. I tried to scream for help but audible noise and mandible movement was a no-go. Am I actually dead?

My mind was playing tricks on me. Some sort of undiagnosed, undiscovered mental illness. How was I this detached from reality, my mind trapped in a living, breathing corpse. Willing my arm to move and my voice to sound, I realized I had left a lucid dream into a nightmarish reality, drowning my senses in a panic that only true wakeful reality can evoke. Just as I had plundered into the darkest depths of loneliness and despair, I came back. My arm moved and I lifted my head experiencing a freedom that triumphed all freedoms ever experienced in prior dreams.

To this day I have no idea what happened, but will never forget the terror of that one lucid dream.