Nightmare

Last night I had one of the scariest dreams in living (well, in my living) memory. I'm a bit fuzzy about the details. I think I was in Bloemfontein in the house I grew up in, and I think I heard something outside. For some reason I got into my dad's Land Rover (which is usually parked in the back garden) and then two men appeared. They climbed out of those tow-trucks for roadside breakdowns. They said to me: "We are going to kill you."

In the dream I shat myself, but at the same time I was trying to figure out how to escape. Since I was in the car and they were outside (and I had no keys) I was a sitting duck. I remember pathetically saying, with every reasoning fibre: "Why do you want to kill me?" Like I could reason my way out of it.

What happened next was a jumble. A mixture of being away, thinking it through and just being muddled up. I remember thinking that if I keep my elbow on the hooter for long enough I could get the neighbours attention (maybe). I also made up my mind right there (in situ, in the dream), that if I survived this, I was going to leave the country for good.

This morning when I went to gym I was still a bit shaken. I think the dream was based on three or four things that got mixed together into the dream's premise. These were a sicky sort of feeling (sore throat and associated stress from being run-down), an article in The Star about a man whose wife was raped and children tied and bound (who expected to be killed - this disturbed me a lot while I read it), the residue of Oprah's excellent Bi-Polar coverage (a mother kills her son and then says 'I wasn't myself')...and finally, downing (unusually) the last drops of White Horse Whiskey when I found I couldn't nod off after watching Oprah.

It was all just a bad dream, right?