D r e a m s

Sleep has never been kind to me. It is extremely rare that I get pleasant or even neutral dreams. Most of the dreams that come to me are very terrifying. What causes me fear is not ghosts or death. The underlying element is always madness. Something which is taken for granted no longer appears to be vaild. Going mad is the scariest thing that can happen to me.

I do not know if there is any difference between thinking and dreaming. Most of my dreams are built in a very intelligent manner. They are built as if a super-intelligent mind lays down the entire plot, provides me all the herrings and ultimately lures me into a trap. The ends of the dreams are usually bone-chilling.

The mental impact of these dreams is tremendous, but strangely, they disappear very rapidly out of my memory ! It is for this reason that I cannot recollect many of my scariest dreams. However, today I will try narrating one.

I had this dream, where I was a marine biologist. I was studying the ocean waters - the variations in salinity and their impact on the marine eco-system. This seems so weird to me because I have never been interested in chemistry or environmental biology. I have never even seen a movie/novel which resembles that dream. But there I was - dressed in blue lab-coats, conducting experiments very seriously. The entire laboratory is positioned inside a small ship which is navigating the ocean.

Typical to my dreams, I do not see any faces of people. The faces are entirely vague and very fuzzy.

In this particular lab, I make good friends with my colleagues, and there is one person who is a best friend of mine. One day, both of us (him and me) dive together into the ocean to collect fresh samples of water. I cannot explain why but I feel very strongly that this person and me are extremely close friends.

Soon I become engrossed in the study of the samples, when my friend tells me we should get back into the glass chamber. The glass chamber is a huge room at the bottom of the ship, through which we get into the sea.

I swim into the chamber and look back to see how my friend is doing. But he doesn't swim in along with me.

Instead, he quickly shuts the door to the glass chamber with a bang ! I give him a puzzled look.

And he returns it with a cold stare. Other colleagues of my lab appear next to him - all dressed in diving-suits and some carrying underwater telescopes. All of them are observing me coldly.

I turn back, and then I see it - a white shark is swimming rapidly towards me.

[This entire laboratory and the underwater equipment was just a farce. They were actually studying the attack patterns of sharks. And I was used for this purpose.]