Do You Scare Yourself?

Something woke me at 0525 Sunday morning. Perhaps I heard the door closing as hubby left our bedroom to go to work. But whatever it was, I lay there in the dark listening to a thumping sound for several seconds before realizing my heart was pounding against my rib cage.

My first thought was to run for my blood pressure meds.

My second thought was of the dream I’d been having just before I awoke.

Vivid in its reality, I’d been running through an airport with a ‘bad guy’ just steps behind. I remember running through the concourse, swerving around people of all ages and carts piled with luggage. I needed somewhere to hide, but where? A restroom door appeared before me and I plunged through it, ran a few steps turned right, punched through a stall door, slammed the lock in place, shoved my pants down and dropped onto the toilet seat. Footsteps were right behind me. As I sat there trying to breath as normally as possible, a man bobbed past my stall, trying to peer between cracks in the door. Just when I thought I’d faint from holding my breath, a shout drew my chaser back out to the concourse. I sagged on the seat and listened to my heart beat against my chest wall. And that’s when I awoke.

Several things struck me at that point:

- I was a male in my dream. And if that was so, how’d I get my pants down so quick? I must’ve been wearing sweats instead of jeans.

- airport restrooms don’t have doors. They have wide curving entrances for handicap accessibility.

- it would’ve been obvious to my chaser that I was in the washroom since he would have seen the door closing behind me. Why then did he give up?

And then as I threw my hand over my heart, willing it to slow, I realized I’d been writing my inspy suspense novel, Translucent Trust earlier and just before falling asleep, I’d been working on a plot development which included a chase scene.

So I guess you could say, I scared myself.

Have you ever scared yourself? Do your stories come to life in your dreams?