While I Was Sleeping
The psyche doesn't flatter. It drags you under and makes you look.
Written sometime in September 2025.
I used to wake up gasping and shaken to my core from the nightmares, but the last year?
Silence.
Sleep had been a relief.
Until recently they started again.
Violent, disturbing, unforgettable.
Less like dreams, more like warnings.
More like initiation.
Dream One: The Sleep Trial
I needed money badly. So I volunteered for a medical study - a sleep trial. A year of sleeping while doctors observed my body and mind. I signed the forms.
They dressed us in white hospital gowns and led us to sterile rooms lined with beds. Bright fluorescent lights, too clean, like a hospital without warmth. I remember, lying down, surrendering to what I thought was safe.
But at some point, I woke up. I wasn’t supposed to wake up. Not yet. And I realized. It wasn’t a sleep trial.
It was a brothel.
While people lay unconscious in their beds, others came in to rape them. One after another, bodies used like they were no longer people.
I panicked. Tried to run. The halls were endless, fenced in by tall gates topped with razor wire. My bare feet slapped against the cold tile. My gown snapping at my knees as I sprinted.
A guard caught me.
And to make an example of me, he took a hook, shoved it through my cheek, and dragged me outside. He attached me to a tree, left me there overnight so everyone could see what happens to people who try to escape.
That’s how the dream ended.
Dream Two: The Mall and The Smoke
I was working for a financial firm - but it was in a broken down mall, where a store used to be, the mall half empty, crumbling, outdated. My first clients came: an Indian family. They told me they had an SUV and could give me a ride.
But when we walked out, it wasn’t an SUV. It was a two-seater truck. We all crammed inside, the husband, wife, their son, and me. Lying to my face as though it were normal. I was furious, but climbed into the vehicle anyways.
The mother drove. In a wide-open parking lot, full of empty spaces, she deliberately parked in front of another car and slammed into it. On purpose.
Later, back at home - dirt houses, almost Aladdin-like - N (no name for anonymity) appeared. He told me he wanted to get me a job where he worked. Something top secret. Something I wasn’t supposed to ask questions about.
In the sky, I saw three enormous smoke clouds, billowing out of huge smoke stacks: two were black, one red. They felt like omens, unnatural, heavy and demanding attention. I asked N if he knew what they were, he shrugged it off.
He pulled me into a dilapidated mansion. Inside, every room was a nightmare. Naked people, blindfolded, mutilated, living in cages. Their genitals cut and broken, some, non-existent, like eunuchs. They tried to fuck each other anyway, desperate, while political officials laughed, dressed in nice clothes, mocking them, telling them they couldn’t
Finally, I was lead to a bedroom to meet someone powerful. I shook his hand. Behind him, more mutilated bodies tried to copulate. He made a pass at me, and I snapped. Rage. I stormed out, certain they’d never let me leave alive.
But the door was wide open. No one stopped me.
I wandered through the streets. Civilization on one side, the uncivilized on the other.
I think to myself, “do we want more freedom, or more safety? Can’t have both.”
I crossed over. On the uncivilized side, I found an Indian woman selling beautiful hand made dresses. I bought two.
I walked further. The secure phone N had given me rang. I didn’t even know the protocol - was I supposed to answer in private? Did it matter? I picked up anyway.
A voice told me: “You didn’t get the job. Your profile is too public.”
That’s where the dream ended.