You look around your room. Same old bed. Same old windows. Same creaky floor. It’s dark and the clock doesn’t seem to be projecting a time. It’s weird. You can see numbers, but they don’t make any sense. It’s almost as if you’re dreaming. You get up to see if it’s the power strip the clock is plugged into. There is a red glow coming off of the strip, signaling that there is electricity flowing. You unplug the clock and plug it back in, shocking yourself in the process. Sparks fly out of the plug and you pull your hand back, reflexively, trying to end the pain. The clock is back on though, and it’s readable now. Slowly, you get back into bed and attempt to fall back asleep. After some time, you open your eyes and the clock is weird again. And there’s a pain in your leg. You must have gotten shocked worse than you thought, as the pain grows. It continues to grow, until you can’t take it anymore, and you black out.

You wake up in a room, figuring it is your room. Except it’s not. There are no windows or doors and no matter how hard you stomp on the floor it doesn’t creak. There seems to be a faint light coming out of the floor making a strange noise. Its flickering and you think back to the clock and its crappy display. The light doesn’t pique your curiosity enough to make you explore more, so you get back into bed, hoping it’s just a bad nightmare. The light flickers more and more, making you worried that it's going to go out. Then you realize the noise has gotten louder. It sounds as if there are a million tiny little legs rustling up against each other. The noise gets louder and the light flickers more, and in your mind you know they must be related.

Looking around you see a small dot on one of the walls, and upon further examination you see it is a spider. It’s small and brown, its eight hairy legs grasping the wall. You back away; spiders give you the creeps. You’re not an arachnophobic, but there is something about this creature that makes you shudder. You get back into bed, marking the spot on which the spider is, mentally making a picture of it.

Time passes and you seem to wake up again. It’s the same room, no windows, no doors, same flickering light, same strange noise, same spider on the wall. You get up to examine the spider more closely, as there is nothing else in the room that seems to be intriguing. As you step onto the floor, your bare feet squish together. Another step, another squish. It has that same slimy feel as seaweed, except it’s mushier. The more you step the more it coats your feet. But you don’t want to look, fearing the worst. A few more steps and you’re at the spider on the wall again. You try to forget the squishy objects littering the ground and closely examine the spider. You put your face so close to it that you can see every one of its beady eyes. It twitches and suddenly moves, scurrying up the wall and away from you. Surprised, you take a step back and slip, falling softly into the gooey substance. It seems to flow around you, moving almost like a small wave. Daringly, you risk a look and realize that what you believed was one gooey substance is actually a million substances. As you watch, thousands upon thousands of spiders spill out of a hole onto the floor. They scramble over each other, attempting to put as much distance between themselves and the hole. You look at the bottom of your feet, realizing that there are lots and lots of dead spiders, squished together. A few still twitch here and there but for the most part your feet are covered in dead spiders. As you attempt to brush them off, your arms itch. The amount of spiders in the room is increasing exponentially and they need places to go, even if that place is on top of you. You stand up, disgusted, flailing your arms to get them all off of you.

You focus and notice a note on the wall, in the exact spot where the first spider was. It reads in scrawly handwriting “Follow the spiders? Follow the spiders?” As you read the note you realize you’ve heard it before. But you have no memory of why you know that. Actually you have no memory at all. While you grasp for memories, more holes open and more spiders appear. They scamper over each other and scramble around the room. Slowly they rise like a room filling with water. Ankle height, calf height, knee height. You figure you can wait them out. Bad idea.

More and more spiders flow out of the holes. You decide there is no way to fight back against them. You accept defeat and lie down, as thousands upon thousands of spiders cover your body. They cover your face, looking for any open space, any place to find safety. Your vision starts to go blurry as spiders cover your body. They enter your ears and mouth, filling your throat until you can no longer breathe. Then everything goes black.

You wake up. From a quick glance you can tell it’s your room. Windows, doors, and just shifting your body on the bed makes the floor creak. A sigh of relief escapes from your mouth. Then you remember the dream journal next to your desk. Quickly you scramble for the pad and pencil and flip to the page titled “Nightmares.” You scan the list seeing other nightmares you have had; monster under the bed, losing mom in the store, getting kidnapped by bad guys. Under the last one you write spyders. And fall back asleep.

You wake up again back in the room, no window, no doors, no creaky floor. There is no light this time. There is no longer the note on the wall either. After careful inspection, there is no trace of any sort of spider at all. There is a noise though, that starts to emit out of the floor. It starts with a low vibration, much like the start of a large turbine. It begins to increase in frequency. Your ears begin to hurt from the sound as the pitch rises. Your head feels like it is about to split, when suddenly, it stops. It’s not that the sound stopped, just that it reached to high of a pitch for you to hear.  You search the room, looking for anything that could help you figure out what is happening. With no luck, however, you find nothing and decide to lie back in the bed.

Again, you wake up in the same room, no window, no door, no creaky floor. You attempt to sit up and stretch, but you can’t move. Your eyes search frantically, looking from side to side to see if there is anything binding you to the bed. But there is nothing. You simply cannot move. Helplessness rushes over you and your breathing increases. You can feel your pulse quickening, your adrenaline pumping, your heart working overtime. If you can’t get it to slow, a heart attack is eminent. You concentrate and slow your breathing and close your eyes, trying to calm yourself down. When you feel sufficiently calm, you open your eyes again and see a silver object extending from the ceiling. It is a large syringe, filled with an unknown liquid, and slowly descending. A voice fills the room, and almost songlike says “We do what we must, because we can. For the sake of all of us, except the ones who are dead.” It goes on longer but you block it out, worrying more about the giant needle. As it descends more you try and pinpoint where it will enter your body. Not that you can move out of the way, your body still does not want to respond. The syringe falls closer and is directly overhead. In fact you can see it perfectly from your eye. Your eye. It’s going to enter you through the eye. And there is nothing you can do. As it gets closer, within inches, your eyes are forced open, as if there is some invisible man standing next to you, forcing you to watch this slow act. Inches, centimeters, millimeters. With one last effort you try to move your body, to wiggle out of the way of the long pointy needle. But you can’t. You eye makes a squishing noise as it is impaled by the giant needle. The mysterious liquid is deposited and the needle is out as quickly as it was in. Then everything goes black.

You wake up in the room yet again. This time your body responds and you are able to get up and walk around, still shaken from the giant needle. You try to search for where it came out of the ceiling and where the eerie voice came from.

After methodically running your hands over every surface in the room, you find a small button. You are hesitant to push it, not knowing what will happen. Your gut tells you not to push it, to lie back down in the bed and try and wake up from this horrible nightmare. The curious side of you wants to push it, to see what will happen. Suddenly, a voice, emitted from inside the wall, says the words “Schrodinger’s cat.” These words seem to impact you, deep inside, but your memory fails you once again.

You decide to push the button. A light shines into the room on the wall opposite you, just above the bed. It projects images of bombings and fires and death and destruction. You feel the pain in the people’s faces. You see the misery in their eyes. You feel like you caused all of this, like this one little action threw the whole world into turmoil. And you weep, because you feel as if it is your entire fault. It was your action. You go back to the bed and try and forget everything you’ve just seen.

After some time you wake up, back in your room.

From a quick glance you can tell it’s your room. Windows, doors, and just shifting your body on the bed makes to floor creak. A sigh of relief escapes from your mouth. Then you remember the dream journal next to your desk. Quickly you scramble for the pad and pencil and flip to the page titled “Nightmares.” You scan the list seeing other nightmares you have had; monster under the bed, losing mom in the store, getting kidnapped by bad guys. You see one entitled “spyders,” and laugh at the mistake you made as a child.  You go to write about the last nightmare you had. But the pencil doesn’t touch the paper. You realize your nightmares are irrational. And writing them down does nothing for you. You’re going to be scared of something all of your life. Life is not just dark and depressing. There is a happier side; you just have to search a little harder to find it. You take your journal back out and rip out the nightmare page. On the top of the next one you write “Dreams.” And fall back asleep.